Poohsticks

2011-11-01T08:50:00.001-07:00

Think!: Blindfold Drawing

2011-05-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

We needed a project yesterday. Something a little silly, kind of fun, something to give us a breather from the grind. I looked up the latest Think! challenge, Blindfold Drawing. Perfect. We blindfolded ourselves, drew blindfolded for a short time, switched papers, drew some more, and Voila! A masterpiece to color, with lots of giggles.

Conversations

2010-03-26T22:50:00.001-07:00

Me: "I know you miss your sister. But eventually you're all going to grow up and move away and live in another house, and it will be just me and Dad."

Middle Gent: "But Mom! I want to live with you. Can I marry you? Why can't I marry you?"

Me: "Well, honey, I'm already married. Daddy might be upset if I decide to marry someone else. Besides, moms can't marry their kids."

Gent: "But I want to live with you. Do I have to grow up and marry a girl?" (As though he's thinking of marrying a toad or a slug, mind you.)

His Older Brother chimes in: (exasperated sigh) "I have to get married because I can't be a Family Man if I don't have a wife."

Seriously, little dudes, it's not going to be that hard to grow up. But I suppose the idea of adulthood is a bit daunting yet, especially the idea of a wife and no Mom.

Middle gent finally decided that it might be all right to marry a girl if he still lives next door to me. Lovely. I hope my future daughter-in-law and I get along.

Wordless Wednesday

2010-03-10T12:11:00.000-08:00

Building Bridges

2010-02-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

In the fall, the fine young gents chose to do a bridge-building study. Third-grade gent has ambitions to be an engineer who builds bridges "and other stuff." Well, sort of. He's either going to be an engineer who cooks and plays music for fun, or a musician who cooks and builds bridges, or a famous chef who designs bridges and kitchens and plays several instruments. And why not? We started our bridge study with this amazing book:

Bridges: Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test (Kaleidoscope Kids), by Carol A. Johman.

The book is a wonderful blend of information and hands-on practice. We had a grand time making human structures to demonstrate the principles of tension and compression. The fine young gents learned about different occupations involved in bridge building and drew and labeled their favorite of the three basic types of bridges.

And the fine young gents started building:
Third-grade gent started with a single sheet of paper across two books. Will it hold a car? He took notes on his failures and successes. He ended up with an accordion-fold sandwiched between two flat pieces to give his Hot Wheels a sturdy smooth bridge.

We've only gotten halfway through the Bridges! book. We keep getting sidetracked by other fantastic building resources, like Bill Nye the Science Guy's video, Structures. Check out these egg structures!

We also got the idea for this bridge of straws and pins from a Bll Nye video:
The gents wanted to explore and discover construction using household materials, too. They made a maze for the Minotaur, a ziggurat, pyramids, and refrigerator box forts. They built bridges using stacking cups, dominoes, marbles mazes, pick-up sticks and (of course) wooden blocks.
I stepped around and over block bridges, mazes and houses for weeks.

The holidays afforded construction opportunities with a new set of materials. What can you make with graham crackers and leftover icing?
Or gumdrops and toothpicks?
Or gingerbread and candy?
And we've been doing challenges from one of our favorite blogs, Think! No pictures, so no posts, but we've kept ourselves busy. Eventually we'll finish our Bridges! book, but not (I think) our bridges study.

Next up, the book the eldest of the fine young gents spotted the day after Christmas and went, "Oooooooooooooo."
I didn't see him for nearly an hour.

ReRun: A Mathematician's Lament

2010-02-15T10:27:00.000-08:00

Originally posted 3/08

"A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare....
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the 'language of music.' It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school."

From the introductory paragraphs of this article:
"A Mathematician's Lament," by Paul Lockhart.

If you love mathematics, read this article. If you have hated mathematics since you stepped foot in your kindergarten classroom, read it. If you were dumbfounded by division, befuddled by algebra and confused by geometry, read it. If you're teaching a young person (or people) mathematics, or if you have a child who is or will be learning mathematics, read it.

Actually, if you're teaching a young person anything, read this article because it's got a lot to say about teaching. And about math. And about learning.

Read it right now. Really.

Go ahead. I'll wait for you.

Who knew that I could be blown away by an article about teaching, about learning mathematics? For real. I'm not exaggerating for effect. I nodded my head. I laughed. I scribbled all over the paper. I said "Yes!" and "Exactly" right out loud a couple times. I read the article during a fine young gent's gymnastics class, and I'm sure the people nearby were a little leery of the crazy lady muttering to herself as she read.

I was inspired to be a better teacher. By a math article. Go figure.

I was always a bit of a math-o-phobe myself. Until I got to college and stopped attending my math classes. Instead I read the textbook, muddled through on my own....and loved it. Statistics, trigonometry, the other math classes I took that I can't remember the names of. Suddenly I got it, I understood math, all by myself. I turned in all of my homework, but I only attended class when I didn't understand the assigned lesson. It usually took ten minutes to figure out what I'd missed, then I'd work on my English papers until the end of class because I thought it would be rude to get up and leave while all of the other students sat and listened politely and quietly. (A side note: Handing back a midterm test my trigonometry instructor pointedly remarked that three people scored above 90%, and he was happy to report that the two people who scored above 95% actually came to class regularly. He looked right at me while he said it, to where I was hiding away behind the tall guy in the back of the classroom. I got a 93.) My point is that I found math classes excruciating. But I found out that I kind of liked doing math.

Back to the article, the analogy with which Lockhart begins. Can you imagine teaching music this way? Not allowing children to sing or play music, an activity that comes to most of us as naturally as breathing or speaking, without learning the theory and notations first?

Or painting? (Another analogy used by Lockhart.) Having to learn color theory and perspective before you pick up a paintbrush?

Science? Memorizing the scientific method and the periodic table before you can look through a microscope or mix baking soda and vinegar?

Yet we rarely explore mathematics playfully with our children as an art, as an experience, as a way to play with the ways the world works. Mathematics is a part of our daily lives: Cooking, drawing, jumping, building. Children naturally count things, measure things, create meaningful patterns in their play. And we don't take advantage of it because we don't know to recognize and point out the mathematics in our daily world, because the way we were taught didn't give us a grounding in playful mathematics and exploring math ideas. (The way I was taught, at least...and though I can't speak for the general "we," I suspect that many of you had similar educational experiences.)

Lockhart points out that mathematics is a discipline, as much of an art as music or painting, and in our culture we've reduced the teaching of math to math facts and how-to without addressing the theory, the why, the art behind the drills and the formulas. He writes:

"There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the 'poetic dreamers' and the 'rational thinkers' most people would place mathematicians into the latter category.
Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers found any), and allows more freedom of expression then poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on the properties of the physical universe)." (p. 3)

And later ("Exactly!" I said as I scribbled notes on the paper, drew a big red star in the margin, repeat as I re-read it today):

"By concentrating on what, and leaving out why, mathematics is reduced to an empty shell. The art is not in the "truth" but in the explanation, the argument. It is the argument itself which gives the truth its context, and determines what is really being said and meant. Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity--to pose their own problems, make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, to cobble together their own explanations and proofs-- you deny them mathematics itself." (p. 5)

Lockhart is passionate about mathematics, and he's passionate about teaching mathematics. He's not just sounding an alarm, a call for change. He's not blaming teachers or students or parents. He's asking us all to look at mathematics differently, to see its beauty and complexity, and to find ways to help our children experience math without killing their natural passion for learning. He writes about how to teach mathematics as an art...and how not to. How to engage students. How to help them make sense of it all for themselves and how to inspire a meaningful relationship with mathematics. How to create a sense of discovery.

And that's what teaching is all about. No matter what the subject.
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Books to Inspire Playful Mathematics

Buy them for your children. Check them out from the library. Leave them laying around without saying a word. Read them yourselves. Pick a day or two to do math puzzles instead of workbooks. Play the games. Tell the jokes. Work out the riddles.

It's fun. I promise.

Math for Smarty Pants (Brown Paper School Book) by Marilyn Burns.

I Hate Mathematics! (Brown Paper School Books) by Linda Allison, Marilyn Burns, and David Weitzman.

The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Rotraut Susanne Berner, and Michael Henry Heim.

Family Math for Young Children: Comparing (Equals Series) by Grace Coates, Jean Kerr Stenmark, and Brian Gothberg

Family Math (Equals Series) by Jean Kerr Stanmark, Virginia Thompson, and Ruth Cossey

Family Math : The Middle School Years, Algebraic Reasoning and Number Sense by Karen Mayfield-Ingram and Virginia Thompson.

Math By All Means series (Various authors).

Math Wizardry for Kids by Margaret Kenda, Phyllis S. Williams, and Tim Robinson

Janice VanCleave's Geometry for Every Kid: Easy Activities that Make Learning Geometry Fun by Janice VanCleave

Janice VanCleave's Math for Every Kid: Easy Activities that Make Learning Math Fun by Janice VanCleave
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More Fun Math (and links and book recommendations) at Poohsticks here: Math

Go figure! The Fascinating World of Mathematics: "Links to math games, activity ideas, puzzles, articles, learning and teaching aids, freebies, math in daily life, 'unschooling math,' overcoming math anxiety, and much more..."

Copywork: A Cheerful Mom

2010-02-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

Is a picture still worth a thousand words if it's a picture of words?

This is first grade gent's copywork. Last month we had one of those days. Weeks? Enough, anyway, that I did a Google search for quotes on cheerfulness and good attitudes for this gent to copy into his composition notebook. Today's quote: "A cheerful friend is like a sunny day, which sheds its brightness on all around." (John Lubbock)

This fine middle gent is clever and mischievous, a bit of an imp. Halfway through copying the quote, he put down his pencil, erased the word "friend," and wrote "mom" in its place. Gave me that cheesy little grin and a kiss. After I took this picture and he'd finished copying, he drew hearts all over the board.

I've noticed that the opposite holds true as well, at least in our home. A grumpy mom is like a stormcloud. Why is it, I wonder, that anyone else in the family can have a bad day and the others just keep on going, but when I have a bad day, when I'm feeling grouchy, glum, grumpy it infects the entire family? Mom sets the tone for the whole day.

My fine young gent has inspired me to remember that I've never regretted kindness and that gentle words and a smile help set young feet on the right path. I'm going to print this picture and put it on my fridge to remind myself that I want to shed brightness on our days.

Stardust

2010-02-07T13:32:00.000-08:00

We're made of stardust, and stardust is atoms.

How to Get a Kid to Eat Squash: Squash Scones

2010-02-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we had squash scones for breakfast. I had leftover butternut squash and happened across my pumpkin scone recipe. Squash, whole wheat flour and not a lot of sugar make this a delicious tasty way to begin the day. A caution: If you've got, er, discerning children like mine, make sure to call these Pumpkin Scones, as the word "squash" suggests defilement to my particular eaters. The fine young gents devoured these scones.

Delicious "Pumpkin" Whole-Wheat Scones

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix in a large bowl:
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. all-spice
A pinch of fresh nutmeg

Using a pastry blender, cut in:
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled butter
Cut in butter pieces until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Optional: Toss into the flour-butter mixture a small handful of dried cherries or cranberries.

In another bowl whisk together:
1 large egg
1/2 to 1-1/2 cup mashed butternut squash, pumpkin or sweet potato
Approximately 1/3 to 1/2 cup buttermilk (or more)

Note: The buttermilk is approximate because it depends on the amount and consistency of your vegetable. Fresh pumpkin has a very different consistency than canned pumpkin, squash has a lot less moisture than pumpkin, and sweet potatoes have a different texture, and so on.

Add wet ingredients to flour mixture and stir until flour mixture is just moist and can be patted into a ball. If your dough is too dry to make a ball, add a splash more buttermilk until the flour is just moistened and can be molded into a ball.

Turn out your dough onto a floured surface and knead gently until mostly smooth. Pat into a circle about 1 inch thick. Cut into 8 wedges and place wedges on an ungreased baking sheet. If desired, brush scone tops with milk and sprinkle each scone lightly with a pinch of sugar. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden-brown.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Squashy yummy golden goodness.

2009: The Year in Review

2010-02-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Wordless Wednesday: Las Caletas

2010-02-02T22:54:00.001-08:00

Great Pyramids

2010-01-30T16:55:00.000-08:00

Our middle gent turned 7 last week.

Sniff. Seven??? Already??? Can't your sweet momma have one more year of delightful six? Excuse me for a moment while I collect myself. Alas, and hooray!, it seems I get a year of delightful seven instead, which is just as marvelous.

He asked for chocolate cupcakes, and we all decorated. The frosting was really that bright blue. Yowza!
For his birthday, he got the new Playmobil Sphinx with a Mummy. And, way cool, some Tomb Raiders with Camels! Let's side track for yet another moment. (Bear with me.) We've been studying Egypt. Our Egypt study has stretched several months past our timeline because the fine young gents have been so fascinated by the ancient Egyptians, middle gent in particular. We've even priced airline tickets to Egypt, mostly to explain why we're not going. He's not even deterred by the fact that it's blazing hot in Egypt. He wants to sail on the Nile River, visit the Sphinx, and go inside a pyramid. "Someday, Mom," he promised earnestly, "I'll go to Egypt with you." I certainly hope so, my darling.

To my point. Playmobil sells a Pyramidtoo. It's pretty awesome. It's also pretty expensive, and they were out of stock at the store for which we had a 50% off certificate. So, no pyramid. A fact my fine young gent noted. "Hmmm. We need a pyramid."

Note the "Teachable Moments" label at the bottom of this post. My poor gents.

"You're right, honey," I said. "Let's build a pyramid!"

We started with paper:
We printed several pyramid templates. The gents and I spent a happy half hour cutting and folding paper pyramids from different kinds of templates. I didn't do a lot of teaching or talking. (I know, right? Me! I didn't talk a lot. Maybe I should go lie down.) I just let the different templates, which ended in the same pyramids, work for themselves.

My fine young gent noted that the little paper pyramids weren't quite big enough. So I pulled moving boxes out of the attic. Then the real work began.

"How am I going to make a template for you?" I asked the gents. They blithely asked me to print one. Then they said, "Oh. Yeah," when I reminded them of the limitation imposed by the size of our paper. They were a little stumped, so I measured the templates with them...each side of the base was the same length because the base is a square. Let's measure the edges of the triangles that make up the sides....OH!

Fortunately, loving math-brain was available to work with our eldest gent:
They did it the math way, with multiplying and such. I helped middle gent. I didn't want to think that hard, so we did it the measuring and observing way, recreating the template by deciding how long our sides should be then copying the model. Fortunately again, loving husband had to go to work, so eldest gent and I created the largest pyramid together the measuring and observing way, which meant that he got to see how both equally valid methods ended with the same results. He cut it and folded it almost all by himself.

Ancient Egypt has taken up most of our living room floor.
Now we just need a white-walled palace from which the Pharoah and his soldier can dangle the captured tomb raiders.
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Pyramid Templates:
The template the boys chose, as our boxes were rectangular. You have to check out this whole site: Paper Models of Polyhedra Could it possibly get any more math-awesome?

Pyramid template at Do To Learn Kids

And from our beloved Enchanted Learning: Make a Pyramid

Wordless Wednesday

2010-01-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

I Spy with my little eye.....

2010-01-22T21:07:00.000-08:00

Can you see it?

"Tell the boys to watch out for the iguanas that are black and orange," said Mazey the housekeeper/advisor/handy-woman. "They're pretty mean and agressive. Not that they'd want to touch something that looks like that."

Ha!

I went and warned my fine young "Mom, can I keep it?" gents right away.

Nature, Nature, Everywhere

2010-01-20T16:49:00.001-08:00

Nature Study: The boys found an ant nest outside the Dolphin Center in Nuevo Vallarta. It's what they do.

They also catch pollywogs.

And throw rocks, and build dams.

Who says we took the week off school? Outdoor studies abounded in Mexico: Ants, pelicans, iguanas, butterflies (mariposa!), water, rocks, sand, trees (Bananas! On a tree!), flowers, birds.

Life is good.

Wordless Wednesday

2010-01-19T17:26:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas

2010-01-18T10:50:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas surprise: We bought a few small gifts for the fine young gents and a lovely young lady, then we pooled the rest of our Christmas budget and some savings, and we took them to Mexico for a week-long vacation. The picture above is where we stayed. I was relaxing on the balcony, picked up my camera and snapped that shot. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

We'd been planning this for almost a year. The kids knew something big was up, but had no idea what it might be. "Is it the mall? Is it a trip to Baker?" asked the younger lovely young lady. I am terrible at keeping secrets, but I did it despite nearly blowing it several times. Thank goodness for oblivious children, eh? By Christmas Day I was thrilled to finally reveal the big secret, partly because I was so excited about it and partly because I could finally stop worrying about accidentally telling. Heh.

A little funny story: The eldest of the fine young gents opened his packing list on the outside of the big box. His mind immediately leapt to the most cool and exciting trip he could imagine: "WE'RE GOING TO GRANDPA'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" The annual trip to Grandpa's is the highlight of our year, especially for the ladies and gents, who love to fish with Grandpa and work at the store for donuts and hot chocolate. So excited was he at the prospect of going to Baker City that when his sister opened the box and pulled out a Puerto Vallarta travel guide, he groaned. "We're not going to MEXICO are we?????"

Heh heh.

Obviously they changed their minds:

Our vacation was spectacularly perfect. More to come.....

Pumpkin Buttermilk Pancakes: Edited

2009-12-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

Fine young gent requested pumpkin pancakes for his birthday breakfast and even helped make them. He's decided that he wants to be a cook when he grows up. These buttermilk pumpkin pancakes are a lovely rich orangey color, with a mellow pumpkin flavor and they're not too sweet, perfect with just a little maple syrup on top.

Note (12/30/09): I'm changing the recipe. Want pumpkin pancakes that are even better? Add 1/3 c. sour cream for pancakes that are even fluffier and more flavorful.

Buttermilk Pumpkin Pancakes

Heat your griddle to about 350 degrees.

Mix in a large bowl:
3 cups flour
4 Tablespoons brown sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt

Mix in a smaller bowl:
2+ cups buttermilk
1 1/2 cup pumpkin puree (directions for making fresh pumpkin puree here)
1/3 c. sour cream
2 eggs (For fluffier pancakes separate the eggs, mix in the yolks now and set aside the whites in a small dish)
3 Tablespoons melted butter

If you've set aside the egg whites to make fluffier pancakes, beat the whites until they're nice and fluffy but not stiff. You can use a stand or hand mixer, but with two egg whites it's almost as easy to beat them by hand in a small bowl with a whisk.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring until just mixed. Particularly if you're using fresh pumpkin, the thickness of your pancake batter will vary. Add more buttermilk or milk until your batter is of the desired consistency. If you've set aside and beaten the egg whites, fold them gently into the batter. Let sit for 5-10 minutes before pouring your pancakes.

Pour the batter onto the griddle, about 1/4 to 1/3 cup per pancake, depending on how large you'd like your pancakes. Brown on both sides. Serve with maple syrup. This recipe makes about 2 dozen pancakes, giving my family of seven enough for breakfast with a few pancakes left over for lunch or the freezer.

Still have pumpkin to use? I'll post my pumpkin oatmeal scone recipe soon, and fine young gent and I are are planning on trying out a pumpkin gingerbread recipe this week so we'll let you know if it's delicious.

Or try this pumpkin bread/muffin recipe from The Fresh Loaf. It is to die for. We made nearly two dozen muffins, some with mini chocolate chips and some without, and they were all gone by the end of the afternoon.

2009-12-19T21:48:00.000-08:00

Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472-1553). The Nativity, ca. 1515-20

Whom have we, Lord, like you?
The great one who became small,
the wakeful one who slept,
the living one who died,
the king who abased himself to ensure honor for all,
blessed is your honor.

It is right that heavenly beings worship your humanity.
It is right that earthly beings worship your divinity.
The heavenly beings were amazed to see how small you became,
and earthly ones to see how exalted.

(4th century prayer, Ephrem the Syrian)

A Wordless Wednesday (Very Late)

2009-12-19T16:44:00.000-08:00

Cave Painting

2009-10-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

History and art rolled into one big messy fabulous project. We're studying ancient history, so what better way to start off the year's art studies? Cave painting has several advantages as an elementary-age art project: It's big. The materials are easy to find and to use. Cave paintings are very simple when it comes to subject and color. The pictures are not intimidating for children to imitate. You can fingerpaint or paint with sticks, draw with charcoals and pastels, or get even more creative and try to mix paints using dirt, leaves and spices.

You need:
Printed pictures of cave paintings from around the world and/or books with photos and brief explanations of cave paintings
Brown paper bags for practice paintings, or for your project if you choose not to do a large wall painting, crumpled then flattened
A large sheet or two of brown paper, crumpled and flattened
Charcoal sticks for drawing
Pastels for drawing (reds, browns, oranges and yellows)
Paints (Black, brown, red, yellow, orange)
A drop cloth
Rags for clean-up

Session one:
We studied cave painting as an art form. Look at cave paintings from aroud the world. Notice what makes them the same. What differences do you see? Why might people have painted these paintings? What did they paint? What do you think they used? Then do a warm-up drawing. Cut open a brown paper grocery bag. Crumple then flatten the bag. Draw your cave painting on the bag using charcoal and pastels. This step allows the children to experiment with the materials to find out what works and what doesn't, and to experiment with themes and lines and colors. Naturally, the fine young gents drew many weapons. Arrows, spears and blood were popular.

Session Two:
If you've got the time, the materials and the space, create a wall-sized cave painting. Use large paper, the kind teachers put on their bulletin boards. Crumple it then flatten it to simulate the curves and rough texture of rock. Attach the paper to the wall, put down a drop cloth if you're using paint, and let the children paint and draw their cave paintings using paints, pastels and charcoal, even dirt, sticks and leaves. Allow plenty of time for exploration of the materials and of the subject matter.

A flash from the past, a segment of our first cave painting, painted by our eldest lovely lady when she was in seventh grade:
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Internet lesson plans:

Cave paintings: Animals in Art

Art History: Create Cave Paintings

Cave Art: Discovering Prehistoric Humans through Pictures

First Day of School

2009-09-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

First day of school: Journals in backpacks, pack a lunch, ditch the books and get outside for an Explore, an expotition.

It was a beautiful day for a trip to the river. Sunny and warm. Bit of a breeze. Dragonflies and minnows and a scolding Steller's jay.

The pear orchard is on the way to the river. We picked pears. Perfect.

Third-grade gent was so excited to break out his new paints that he skipped lunch to paint in the dry creek. There's something absolutely delightful and satisfying about that kind of enthusiasm.

Down the trail they go! It's been a while since we had a full-blown nature outing.

The fine young gents were thrilled to be hiking in a favorite place, eager to follow their feet.

First-grade gent. Look at that smile! He loves collecting things. Mount Pisgah is mostly oak savannah, with many varieties of oak trees. He collected acorns.

The fine young gents found a new place along the river with many rocks. They spent nearly an hour re-engineering a rock dam built by a previous visitor. Bonus: One of the fine young gents chose bridge-building for a fall study, so we all got a hands-on head start on the Bridges unit.

After a grand time splashing in the river, we all settled down with nature journals.

Writing, handwriting, spelling, science, nature and art all rolled into one. And we're out-of-doors. Perfect.

I'm going to print this picture and post it on the refrigerator. This is why we homeschool.

Life is good.

Gone Fishin'

2009-08-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

Where has the summer gone?

2009-08-23T22:04:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy living my life there's just been no time to write about it.

Boys are as funny and loud and boy-ish as ever. Thinking up crazy things to do much faster than I can think of things to forbid. Don't golf in your soup. Don't sit on your brother's head. No, you cannot try to open the laundry chute and slide down, and it's not a good idea to try to hurdle the picket fence or to use whatever that is as a sword either. Do hug your momma tight.

Lovely lady the elder has moved to Portland to live with her mom. A wonderful opportunity for her to build a different, more daily, relationship with her mom and her mom's husband before she's grown and off to college. And an opportunity to attend a wonderful alternative school. But it's still a little too close to home to share without tears. I miss her.

Lovely lady the younger is....lovely. Relaxed and funny. Her quirky, charming self. Storms are fewer and farther between. She's confident in who she is and where she wants to go. Where did she learn that? I wish I could send some of that self-assurance back to my fourteen-year-old self.

Loving husband is as loving as ever. Calm and steady.

And me. I've been in the garden, in the kitchen, at the park, riding bikes, scolding kids and hugging them too. Painting, planting, pickling, picking, preserving. Playing. Steering the ship. Squeezing every last bit of summer out of these days. If I give my children no other gifts, I want to give them the joy and contentment that comes from a life well-lived, work well-done, people well-loved.

Life is good. We'll be back when school starts.

Today's Harvest

2009-07-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

Eight sweet onions

Two medium pickling cucumbers, planted at lovely lady's request
(Imagine her disappointment when she found that the plant grows cucumbers, not pickles.)

Three zucchini

A bowlful of raspberries

A bunch of fragrant lavender

And two buckets of blueberries from the blueberry field down the road.

And I picked sour cherries yesterday, so there are cherries in the dryer, and cherries in the fridge waiting to be made into pie and jam.

Life is good.

Catching Up: Fabulous Fourth

2009-07-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

"Hey, Mom!"

I called my mom on the phone just before the Fourth.

"Want to come sit on a hot sidewalk for two hours, sweating and watching tractors? For a bonus, you might get your eardrums blasted out by sirens and get hit in the head with Smarties."

Why do we do this? Every year, I think to myself, It's going to be hot. I want to stay home. I've seen all this before. And every year we go to the parade, barbecue, go to the fireworks. Why do we sit in the blazing heat watching firetrucks and Boy Scouts on bikes? Why do we eat outside in the back yard? And why do we pack everyone up, drive for forty minutes and sit for an hour waiting for a thirty-minute fireworks show then drive home to tuck in tired, cranky, sticky kids?

And every year....We sit on the sidewalk chatting and stealing the Smarties from the kids' candy bags. The people in the parade smile and wave. We see the same tractors and horses that we saw last year. We gather in the back yard, family all together, with good food and good fun. And we sit in the cooling evening next to the river. I remember why I love the Fourth.

This year's highlights:

The parade. Always. There's nothing like a small town parade. No fancy floats here. The veterans wave and salute, farmers bring in tractors, the insurance agent drives his car through town, the churches pass out fliers, the horses and bikes and red-white-and-blue everywhere. People are smiling and waving.

Our guests. It is perfect that our friends from China are here for this oh-so-American holiday. They get to celebrate our country with us. This year I learned that in China, they too celebrate a holiday with fireworks on the riverbank, standing in the gathering dark awaiting the show. It was familiar and foreign to them.

Backyard gathering. It was 93 degrees, but in the shade of the filbert and magnolia it didn't feel like it. Our family was there, the people I love. That's my favorite part. I insisted that someone play Uno with me, so there was an Uno game at the picnic table. The food was delicious, melon salad and chicken and watermelon and macaroni salad and hot dogs, even delicious vegan sausages. And an impromptu talent show, which deserves its own line.

The impromptu talent show. I don't know how this came about, but we held The First Ever 4th Family Talent Show. We had yo-yo tricks, silly acts, a contortionist, singing and even...eating. Come prepared with a talent next year! Note: Eating no longer qualifies as a talent unless you're going to eat something gross or amazing, like bugs or fire.

Fireworks. I grumped about having to go to the fireworks. I groaned. I tried to think of a way to get out of it. In the end, like every year, I went anyway.

And just like every year, settled in the cool evening by the river, surrounded by my family, watching our children play with their cousins.....

I realized (again....when will I learn?) how much I love this holiday. And why. I like the parade and the picnic and even the fireworks. But my favorite parts are the quiet moments, and the silly ones, and even some of the loud ones: The children playing, visiting with the people I love, waving at smiling strangers in the heat, watching the sun set by the river at the end of the day, and even tucking in tired, cranky, sticky children.

Life is good.

Pictures of last year's Fourth here, featuring the same old dude on the same tractor, and the same firetruck too. Oh yeah, same kids too, just shorter.

Here we go again....

2009-06-29T14:47:00.001-07:00

Farts and burps and giggles, oh my!

We've got guests from China again this summer. Guess what the fine young not-so-much-gentlemen are doing?

Burp! Beeelch! Giggle, giggle, teehee!

Not purposely. But still.

This year, I joked again, "Tolly, Cherry will go back to China thinking that little boys in America have no manners."

Cherry is such a lovely and earnest young lady. "Oh, no. You have very lovely little boys." I laughed and said, "Well, I expect little boys in China burp too."

"Oh yes," she replied, and laughed. "Yes, they do very much."

So, to all the Chinese mothers out there saying the Chinese version of "Oh for goodness sake. Say 'Excuse me' and move on," I salute you. And the gents send a little giggle to all of the gassy little boys.

Jam

2009-06-22T10:24:00.001-07:00

6 flats of strawberries, U-pick: $70 and 4 hours
3 flats of strawberries from the farm stand: $60 and 10 minutes

New lids, freezer containers and freezer bags: $20
Processing strawberries: An entire weekend
Cleaning the kitchen top to bottom: 1 hour

Saturday night take-out pizza (because the kitchen was full of strawberries): $35
Ice cream for the children after an afternoon of picking strawberries: $9.50

Afternoons of conversation with dear friends, time for the children to play with friends in the strawberry fields, good exercise and spending time out of doors. And freezer and pantry full of a year's supply of sweet local strawberries dried, frozen and made into jam: Priceless.

Life is good.

Happy Father's Day!

2009-06-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Musings

2009-06-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

In Which We Attend 8th-Grade Promotion
Last night lovely lady, 13, went through her 8th grade promotion. My baby girl is in high school.

Excuse me while I catch my breath.

I don't know how this happened. Not the high school thing, even though I'm a little short of breath over it. The hair and the shoes and the black eyeliner. I'm not sure how I became the mom of that kid. The girls I saw in school who were a little rebellious and different. The girls I'd see outside the high school when my lovely lady was little, and I'd think, "No way, no how. What are their parents thinking? Maybe their parents don't really care much about them."

Heh. Life has a way of handing us our assumptions, our "not-my-kid," our "No way, No how" on a silver platter, eh?

There she is in all her pink-haired, wearing black, life is-dark, skull t-shirts, Converse-wearing glory. I paid for the hair and helped her lace up her boots. And I adore her to the ends of the earth.

I've learned from this challenging young lady to pick my battles, and more importantly that there don't need to be battles. That it's important to find ways to say "Yes." To honor her idea of who she is instead of my ideas about who she should be, no matter how cute I think she'd look in that baby pink polo. That a daughter with the confidence to be a little different is more important than what other people think.

In Which I am Shocked, or A Lesson in Appropriate Clothing for Young Teens

So, the other reason I'm not the least bit bothered by the pink hair and etc. I was shocked by what the other girls were allowed to wear to the graduation. I thought I was pushing the envelope by allowing my lovely daughter an above-the-knee dress that shows a hint of cleavage. That sparkly pink dress is conservative compared to the outfits of many of the other girls. The little black dress with a plunging neckline worn with three-inch heels was a popular choice. There were a couple girls whose dresses made me want to run out with a robe to cover them. Excuse me folks, but they're fourteen. Perhaps we could leave a little to the imagination, at least until they're in their twenties and old enough to decide for themselves if they want to dress like....well, they're only fourteen, if that, so I'll be kind.

Let's just say that the pink hair and Converse is looking beautiful to me right now.

In Which My Daughter Really Does Need Me, or Adventures in Autism, or Ways to Connect

I've shared my struggles with my lovely lady and the ways in which her disability impacts our lives. Take the surliness and emotional turmoil of a typical hormonal teen girl, throw in a good dash of My Mom is the Most Embarrassing and Unreasonable Person on the Planet, and remove the social filter, and I've got quite a parenting challenge on my hands.

Over the past spring we've had lots of grumping and fussing and "Leave me alone." A deep need for some peace and solitude after a long day of social interactions. It's heartwrenching when a young person so embedded in my heart doesn't want to have much to do with me and makes it crystal clear. I was genuinely concerned for our relationship. Until the morning the phone rang, around noon, and it was my precious lovely lady. "Mom, I was thinking about my trip to Arizona. Do you think I need a new swimsuit?" I ventured that I thought the one she had was probably just fine. "Oh. Okay. Thanks, Mom. Bye."

I realized that increasingly over the past few months the phone rings midday, and it's my lovely lady. She'll ask me a question or share a pressing thought or ask advice over a little concern, then off she goes about her day. All issues that could very well wait until she gets off the bus.

A quick connection. A "Mom, I need you." A way to reach out and preserve our relationship and still get the quiet she needs at the end of the school day.

And so I can be patient. That little phone call was all I needed to refresh my spirit and renew my faith that deep down in there, my baby still needs her momma. Pink hair and all.

In Which I am a Really Cool Mom...

2009-06-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

("None of my friends' moms will let them do this.")

On the table

2009-06-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Dinner Menu

Fritattas, made with eggs from our own hens and my sister's:
--Baby beets, fresh onions and spinach, all from the garden
--Fresh onion from the garden, diced bacon, broccoli and tomato from the Farmer's Market

Beet greens from the garden and Swiss chard from the Farmer's Market, sauteed and steamed with fresh onion from the garden

Homemade honey whole wheat bread, made with honey purchased from a friend, served with butter and homemade strawberry jam

Strawberry-rhubarb pie, made with strawberries from the front yard and rhubarb from the neighbor
---------------------------
We're making the move. We avoid processed foods. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. We serve oatmeal instead of breakfast cereal. We're growing, picking and preserving our own food. Eating seasonally. More local foods, grown by and purchased from people in and near our community, and we're participating in Community-Supported Agriculture. We drink locally-roasted coffee instead of Peet's. Our diet is continually evolving. Ten years ago, we ate a lot of pasta and potatoes, out-of-season vegetables, store jam with all of its preservatives. We didn't read labels looking for foods without high fructose corn syrup. We didn't eat a lot of salad, not a lot of green food at all, actually.

There's got to be a balance, and we haven't dived in headfirst. We can't grow our own rice and wheat in the back yard, nor do we have any desire to do so. We love bananas and eat broccoli and salad year-round, and though we purchase less than we used to, these foods are still staples in our home. That may change as our diet continues to evolve, as the children get older and more tolerant of green food and things that taste different, and as we educate ourselves on the pleasures of eating seasonally.

When I look at last night's menu, though, turning into a "locavore" isn't really what I'm thinking of. I'm delighted by good food. I'm grateful that we have the means to serve simple delicious meals to our children. And I feel a sense of connection to my meal, satisfaction that I know where a lot of that food came from: I can look out the window at my garden and at my hens scratching in the dirt. (Around my peas!! Ack! SHOO!) My children planted seeds in the dirt and saw them end up on our table as greens. Ten minutes before I sauteed a fresh onion, it was in the ground. Some of our vegetables were bought from the people who had just harvested them from their own gardens that morning. On Wednesdays, my house smells like fresh bread. We met a new neighbor who gave us rhubarb for free simply because he had enough to give away. My children play with the children of the family who sold us our honey, and I know that the chickens that lay the extra eggs we buy live in a large and clean pen. Our scraps and discarded stalks and rinds will turn into rich soil in which to grow more food for our table.

Life is good. Food is good.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-06-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

In the garden

2009-06-01T13:20:00.001-07:00

Strawberries

Peas

Beans

Beets

Chives

Sunflowers

Harvest

Today, we harvested three small onions to make more space in the onion bed, thinned eight tiny baby beets, picked four heads of lettuce and a head of bok choi. Yesterday's strawberries and free rhubarb from the neighbor down the street are on the counter in a beautiful pie. It's time to harvest the rest of the spinach to make room for tomatoes and peppers and eggplant. The roses and peonies are blooming.

If you need me, I'll be in the garden.

Top Ten Reason Homeschoolers Are Doing a Right Thing

2009-05-31T17:02:00.000-07:00

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Ten Reasons Why Homeschooling Parents Are Doing the Wrong Thing: http://teacherrevised.org/2009/05/30/the-case-against-homeschooling/

Not Tuesday, but I've got a Ten. Here are my top ten reasons why homeschooling parents are doing a right thing:

10. So “You were totally home schooled” may be an insult among college freshman in the dorm.
Let's balance it with:
"Homeschooling seems to be working great. Your children are so comfortable speaking with adults." (Our pediatrician.)
"I love having homeschooled kids in the library. They're so well-behaved." (Our librarian.)
"I wish I was homeschooled." (Many children my children meet and play with on the playground, at gymnastics, in the neighborhood.)
And my personal favorite, since college is, after all, about getting an education and not just a taller version of middle school: "I love having homeschooled students in my classroom. They ask thoughtful questions and are more interested in learning the material instead of slapping something together for a grade." (A college professor living on my old block.)

9. "Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools."
Hahahahahaha! Hoohoohoohoohoohoohoohoohoo! Heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee! This is supposed to be an argument against, I think, doing schoolwork at the dining room table (and by extension at home in general). Although I'm pretty sure public school families eat their Fruit Loops and meatloaf at home at their tables too, right smack where many kids do homework.

What kind of argument is this? The table on which the learning takes place has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of learning. I could quibble back about buzzing fluorescent lights, the kid flicking his pencil, whispered conversations, texting in class, staring out the window wishing to be outside and on and on, but the reality is that most children will learn where they are taught. Having a learning-focused structure and routine in a homeschool or a public school is far more important than the table or the place.

8. Is homeschooling selfish?
I enjoy my childrens' company and know that their time with us is short, so I want to savor every moment. Is that selfish? We love learning and exploring together. Is that selfish? Though I am committed to my community and expect my children to model kindness and compassion and good behavior, I don't feel a responsibility to send my children to school to be role models for others. As a matter of fact, I think that would be a struggle for them, and I also believe there are many other areas in which they can reach out to others far more effectively. Is that selfish? I know that I can offer a quality rigorous individualized education that allows them time to explore their passions and develop their talents and gives them time to play and be children. Is that selfish? We happily and willingly pay our tax dollars to support our local and state schools, and we choose not to send our children to already crowded public schools because we've thoughtfully and carefully chosen a different lifestyle, one that suits us. Is that selfish?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I believe in sending out into the world creative, joyful, well-adjusted, educated young adults with a sense of honor and of responsibility to their communities. That's my goal, and it's an important one, not just for me and my family, but for the community and the world at large.

Not selfish.

7. God has given us our children to raise up and doesn't have anything official to say one way or the other about homeschooling. That's a conversation between Him and those asking. Period.

(Quite frankly, #7 was a cheap shot. Score a point for that tolerance kids are supposed to be learning in schools. Or not.)

6. Homeschooling parents/teachers are confident and want to teach our children to learn. Since we're educated and wealthy (see linked post, argument 8) we can teach many subjects, and for those we can't, we often can afford to pay for tutoring, private classes, college classes or internships. Even when we can't, we're creative and smart enough to find resources in our communities for subjects we are not comfortable teaching. We learn with our children, which offers them the realization that the world is not divided so easily into "experts" and "non-experts" or "imparters of learning and wisdom" and "receivers of learning and wisdom."

Notice I didn't list my degrees or qualifications. I've got them, but it's more important that I am willing, like any good teacher, to continue to educate myself in the subjects I'm teaching and how to teach them.

5. I can understand why some school teachers might feel threatened by homeschooling, even though my personal decision is to teach my children at home is absolutely no reflection of my beliefs about public schools or public school teachers. As a matter of fact, most public school teachers are heroes in my book, and I support my neighborhood schools. But one person's like or dislike of a particular education style is neither here nor there, and to expect to make a rational case against anything by saying, "I don't like it" is a stretch. I don't like chocolate cake, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

4. "Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?"
Hmm. It could. Because hey, I may have mentioned that families are the primary unit for socialization. But then again, I could write a similar statement about public school. When we homeschool, the world is our classroom. Our children learn and interact with people of all ages, beliefs, abilities, and socio-economic backgrounds and get to explore their unique talents rather than being stuck in age-segregated classroom with children of roughly the same socio-economic status (because they're all from the same neighborhood) learning exactly what everyone else is learning. We study other cultures in-depth instead of skimming, skipping, focusing primarily on Western and American culture and history, and making a Chinese dragon every Chinese New Year and calling it a study of the rich and complex culture and history of China.

And "homeschooling" is not synonymous with "schooling at home." You can find homeschoolers out in the community, visiting the elderly, working with master gardeners in community gardens, volunteering in the animal shelters, serving meals at the food banks, teaching young children, helping their neighbors, out in the woods. That's an awful lot of exposure to the many subcultures we can find in our own communities.

3. Oh boy.
A) Socializing children by throwing them into a room year after year filled mostly with children of the same ages....not natural socialization. Large-scale public age-segregated education is a fairly recent historical development, folks.

Ask a teacher who's been teaching for 20+ years about how behavior has changed in their classrooms over the years. (Go ahead, and before you criticize, I have asked. I've had this conversation with many experienced teachers.) They'll usually point to two things: Video games and television, and families. The family is and should be the primary unit of socialization. Even the most homeschool-hating teacher has to agree with that. Kids with parents who expect and insist on appropriate social behaviors usually display appropriate social behaviors, no matter what their school choice. Add in the bonus of getting out into our communities and homeschoolers follow something much closer to the time-tested model of healthy human socialization than age-segregated group education. Not a criticism of public schools or group education. I'm just pointing it out.

And b) Only an hour a day? Including neighborhood play time? Obviously the writer of this post hasn't looked at my calendar, or the calendar of the homeschool families I know. As far as socialization, at the park you might be able to pick out the homeschooled children because they're friendly to everyone, not just the kids their age. They're confident with adults. But other than that, guess what? They're kind and rotten and sweet and selfish and funny and angry and creative and quiet and wild. They're kids just like all the other kids.

2. Homeschooling parents are risk-takers. We're not necessarily folks who will choose the path that everyone else is taking. Guess what? That's good for us, for our children, for our communities and for our society. None of us, parents or teachers, want cookie-cutter kids, a society of automatons. When families choose to homeschool, we're "gambling" that we're creating a life-long love of learning, that our children will be leaders, that they'll grow up to be people who think for themselves and take risks. Every path has risks, and the fact that a thoughtful decision was made for a child to go to public school or private school or to homeschool is far more important than choosing blindly because other people are doing it or because it's just the way we do things, no matter which path you choose.

1. "And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky."
So glad there's no hate there. Who was concerned about tolerance and acceptance?

The homeschooled children I know, from preschool age up to post-high school graduates, have all been exactly who they are. Some confident, some creative, some intelligent, some funny, some mannerly, some charming, and yes, even some "geeky." Just like kids in public school. Just like kids all over the world. Kids are kids, people are people.

It's time to put to rest the idea that homeschooled children are socially inept. Or, for that matter, that they are all paragons of good behavior and virtue. We're just like everyone else. Some kids are socially gifted, most are socially fine, and some struggle with social skills. (Which, incidentally may be why some are pulled out of school for homeschooling in the first place, because the teasing or the feeling of not fitting in became intolerable.) But the idea that sitting in a classroom for several hours a day=appropriate socialization, or that homeschoolers never get out around other children, or heck, even that all public-schooled students are mouthy cursing pregnant brats...it's just. not. that. simple. When we start making those kinds of generalizations we distill the richness and variety of human experience into something so much less.

Gah, I hate those Pollyanna people who chirp things like, "We should all learn to celebrate our differences," but (shhh, don't tell!) I may be turning into one of them. Goodness, this forty(ish) thing and all of that "with age comes wisdom" stuff sucks. (Not that I'm necessarily wise, just...nicer? More tolerant? Definitely older, anyway. Heh.) Let's take a little time to learn and respect. It's all right to disagree, but maybe before we start taking potshots (ahem, "God hates homeschooling"??) at someone we don't understand, we should try having a conversation. A real conversation, the kind where we ask one another questions and try to see why others do what they do. We might actually learn something. And that's what it's all about.

This deserves its own tiny little blog post....

2009-05-23T12:20:00.001-07:00

This morning, I picked my first red, ripe strawberry of the season.

And I didn't share.

What We're Reading

2009-05-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barabara Kingsolver.

The story of one family's attempt to eat locally. I haven't gotten much further in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle since the day I used it as a teeny tiny pillow for my back yard nap in the sun. It's been sitting Under Things. You know that's an actual place, right? Under Things. It's near its sister city Behind Things, on the way to On The Floor. It has been recently recovered from Out of Sight, Out of Mind, the province in which Under Things and so forth are located. Actually, it was under my Rainbow Resource catalog, and I re-found Animal, Vegetable once I finally placed my curriculum order. My dear friend B passed this book my way once she'd finished, and the first couple chapters have been engaging and fun to read. I can't wait to finish. But first I've got to finish my other books in progress.

The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, Wendell Berry.
The Art of the Commonplace is taking some time to read. Partly because I keep losing it. Mostly because Berry's essays are rich and thought-provoking, beautifully written. Trying to read the entire book at once would be like trying to eat an entire cheesecake in one sitting. Once I finish reading an essay, or even a part of one, I need time to process what I've read before beginning the next. Berry focuses on the importance of community and advocates a return to a more organic agrarian-based model for society. Read a Wendell Berry essay online: "The Pleasure of Eating"

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, Diane Ackerman.
A true story of a Polish family, a zookeeper and his wife, who saved the lives of Polish Jews during WWII by hiding them at the Warsaw zoo. It's a remarkable story about remarkable and brave people.

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built: A No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Novel, Alexander McCall Smith.
I'm a fan of Mma Ramotswe and her old Botswana ways. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels are charming and delightful. I recommend them to many friends looking for a good book for leisurely reading. I've been enjoying the series on television, as the books have been turned into an HBO series. Botswana is beautiful, and unlike most television series these days, the HBO version of McCall's books are good clean fun.

Bob Books, Set 1: Beginning Readers.
Four-year-old gent has asked me to teach him to read, so I'm digging the Bob books out of the basement and reading of the adventures of Mat and Sam once more. Predictable plot, flat characters. But who could ever tire of "Mat sat on Sam. Sam sat on Mat."???? I already know how the story ends, but the giggles never get old.

The Twenty-One Balloons, William Pene du Bois.
"It's good," says fine young gent, 8. He should write book reviews. Heck, maybe I'll start reviewing books like that. Good. Bad. Okay. Heh. It would be easier than trying to find something to say. I've never read The Twenty-One Balloons, so I can't say if it's Good, Bad or Okay. But fine young gent seems to like it.

Island of the Giant Pokemon (Pokemon Chapter Book #2), Tracey West.
As great literature goes, eh. But six-year-old gent's first chapter book was a Pokemon book from the library. He's reading and enjoying, and I'm sure I read plenty of fluff when I was a kid too.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5), J. K. Rowling.
Fine young gent, 8, finished The Goblet of Fire and watched the movie. As per our agreement, I am now reading number 5. Why, oh why did I agree to this? The last time I read a Potter book out loud, I swore I'd never do so again. Not because I don't enjoy the stories, but they're so long. And the gents insist I do voices, which is a challenge both because my British accents stink and because there are so darn many characters that it's hard to come up with a distinctive voice for each. Oh, the sacrifices we make for our children! Ah, it's not that bad. I'm a Potter fan, and one of the benefits of reading the books out loud is that I get to experience the story with my gents.

Serving Up the Harvest: Celebrating the Goodness of Fresh Vegetables, Andrea Chesman.
And a gardening/cooking book, my Mother's Day present to myself. A seasonal cookbook based on the produce available throughout the year, Serving Up the Harvest will come in handy this summer when we get our CSA box, and when we harvest our own veg from the garden. Who knew reading vegetable recipes would make me hungry and impatient to get into the kitchen? I've got plans for the spinach in the garden already! Yum.

The children's hospital

2009-05-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was lovely lady's choir trip. Seventeen middle-school-aged girls, six chaperones riding public transportation all over downtown Portland. It was a weekend jam-packed with activities, and the girls had a blast.

We got to ride the aerial tram to Doernbecher Children's Hospital to sing for the patients. Children with cancer and blood disorders, children who've been seriously injured, children with severe disabilities.

The woman who met us at the tram told the girls, "It's okay to feel sad, but it's hard for the patients to see you cry. If you start to feel sad, go find one of the adults and they'll help."

That was great advice for the first two floors. The girls sang on a busy floor with children going in and out and stopping to listen, many of them in wheelchairs with some sort of cast. The girls sang on a floor where the patients were all isolated so that they wouldn't give or get infections.

Then we went to the next floor. Many of the patients had doors decorated with their pictures, their ages, their hobbies. We moms had all heard the songs a bajillion times before, so we read the doors. "Hobbies: Diving, soccer, singing" and "Favorite ice cream: Chocolate peanut-butter" and "Pets: Cha-cha (cat) and Swimmy (fish)." Beautiful smiling pictures of the children in their best health, playing soccer, sitting on the grass, playing the guitar.

Then we individually got to these stats on the doors we were reading:
Age: 13
Age: 15
Age: 12

And we looked at our beautifully healthy girls singing in the hallway. Our daughters and their friends, girls the same ages as the patients in those rooms. We had to step around the corner so that the girls couldn't see us, and there weren't any grownups there to explain and to help us feel better. So we tried to think about something else, anything else.

Once you become a mother, you can't help but understand how precious are the lives of children. You grieve for the worry and love and fear that those mothers are feeling, even knowing that your own tears don't help them one little bit. You picture your own child lying there in that bed. You're brought face-to-face with a parent's worst nightmare, watching your child ill, suffering, dying.

Later one of the girls asked, curious, "Why are you so sad?"

"When you're a mother, you'll understand," replied one of the moms.

Hug your babies tight. And give them an extra kiss for me.

Mother's Day

2009-05-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

A Day in the Life: Here Comes the Sun

2009-05-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

It's been gray and chilly and drizzly. I have been utterly exhausted for days, so tired that I wanted nothing more than to just crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep for a week.

Today there was sun.

I dug up the grass that had invaded the strawberry bed and planted new strawberries. I weeded the garden. I thinned the spinach, the beets and the salad greens, so we're having fresh green salad tonight for dinner, the first harvest of the season. I planted basil and baby bok choi and carrots.

I had help in the garden. Kindergarten gent and his second-grade cousin each earned thirteen cents squashing snails, and they sat on the edge of the garden box snacking on baby bok choi they thinned from the salad mix. Kindergarten gent will not eat any green food that we put on his plate. Green food is defiled and heinous and foul. But I casually mentioned that his older brother loved the bok choi so much he ate it straight out of the garden, and next thing I knew my greens-hating gent was pulling off a leaf and chewing. "Yum!" he said, and helped himself to another. I tried not to faint or show my amazement in any other way, lest I call his attention to the fact that the food, in any other circumstances, might be considered green.

I baked bread, the honey whole-wheat bread I used to make when I was a kid.

I took care of the chicks and the chickens, cleaning and watering and feeding. Collected two round eggs, one still warm.

I read a book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver) and I napped in the sun. Well, that's not entirely true. I read about two sentences of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Then I used the book as a sort of tiny pillow. The napping part is true.

I am sunburned and dirty and scratched and tired. My hair is frizzy and wild. My fingernails are dirty, and I went barefoot in the garden so my heels are a disgrace.

But I feel whole. I didn't realize until this day how much I craved sunshine.

I just took two beautiful round brown loaves of bread out of the oven. The house smells of fresh bread and soup, and my favorite ceramic bowl is full of fresh tossed greens-spinach, beet greens, lettuce. My children are out-of-doors riding bikes and looking for bugs in the grass. A day of sunshine and good work and outdoor play has restored me. I feel like my self again, refreshed. I'm off to swing in the hammock until dinner time, with my book.

Life is good.

Musing....

2009-05-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

It's chilly and sprinkling outside. Here's what I said to my eight-year-old about, oh, fifteen minutes ago when I sent him outside to play: "If you get cold, come in and get a jacket."

How stupid is that?

First of all, he's eight. He knows what to do when he gets cold. It's not rocket science. That ranks right up there with "Be careful" (duh) and "Don't fall." (Also duh.)

Second, I just looked outside. Not only is he not wearing a coat, he's taken off his shirt.

A Late Tuesday Ten: What's Up?

2009-05-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ten Things Keeping Me Busy, or An Update of Sorts

1. Planning a choir trip.
I'm planning a three-day trip for lovely lady's choir. Phone calls, emails, faxes, meetings. Details. Shopping. Fielding phone calls from parents worried about everything from their trip account balance to the swine flu. I can't wait to go on the trip, and I can't wait until it's over.

2. Choir.
Spring choir started, upping the number of choristers in my family (and thus the number of separate rehearsals for the Mom Taxi) to four. The Spring Concert took up an entire day with rehearsals and performances. Now the concert is over, the spring choir is over, and the season is winding down.

3. Karate.
We signed up for a family karate class. The boys and loving husband and I attend together. it's a blast, and well worth the time spent, but it takes up two mornings a week, time we really don't have to spare.

4. Swim lessons.
Fine Young Gent the Eldest has been taking swim lessons all year, with the goal of joining the swim team. Fortunately for our schedule, he loves swimming but is re-thinking the swim team idea because he also loves karate. But I bit the bullet and signed up his younger brothers for swim lessons this session. My thinking: I've got to be at the pool anyway, and if I take them now, no summer swim lessons. So I sit on my rear end on those ridged metal bleachers for 30 minutes, twice a week, reading a book. They learn to swim, I get to read. Win-win.

5. Reading.
I manage to fit it into the cracks of my life, and I still read during the boys' Quiet Time. Right now I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver), still working on Green Housekeeping (Ellen Steinbeck) and The Art of the Commonplace (Wendell Berry), just finished Free Range Kids (Lenore Skenazy) and The Backyard Homestead (Carleen Madigan, ed.)

6. Laundry.

7. School.
Math, language, science, the works. We're studying astronomy this term. For a while we had a balloon solar system on the boys' ceiling. Second-grade gent is working on writing a novel using the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program. Sounds a little ambitious, but he's having a blast. It sounds so...pretentious. "Yeah, my second grader is trying to write his first novel. What's yours up to?" Really, he's just having fun filling out the pages and using his creative brain to write a story just like every other normal second-grade kid. Kindergarten gent has been grousing about doing school work even though it takes him only 20-30 minutes, plus our science readings and fun activities. I told him "Suck it up buttercup."

8. Play.
Still making sure that despite my busy schedule the boys get plenty of time for the "work" of childhood: Play. Especially as spring rolls out the sunshine and flowers.

8 1/2. Thinking about the garden and getting outside while the boys play.
It's been pouring rain. They go play in it. I look out and think, "Gee, I wish I enjoyed gardening in the rain."

9. Watching American Idol.

10. Not writing on my blog.
Too busy. When things settle down there'll be more pictures, more projects, more out-of-doors.

I'm still here....

2009-04-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't abandoned my blog. And....

I am planning a choir trip. Chaperoning another. Spring choir has started for kinders, so I have four kids in choir.

Lovely lady was in a Bridgeway House play last weekend.

The choir finale concert is this weekend.

Loving husband, the fine young gents and I have taken up karate. (Yes, me! Karate. Who'da thunk it??) The Eugene School of Karate offers a family class for homeschoolers. It's fab-u-lous.

We have new chicks.

Eldest lovely lady has prom in two weeks.

It's garden season.

I've made two trips to emergency/urgent care in the last week. (One for lovely lady's friend, one for our peanut boy.)

And the laundry mountain is never quite tamed.

I'm so busy living my life that I don't have time to write about it. See you when things calm down.

Wordless Wednesday: I Spy an Egg

2009-04-15T17:18:00.001-07:00

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: In the garden

2009-04-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

Prepared beds

Snap peas

Spinach

Rhubarb

Shelling Peas

Onions

Raspberries

Cauliflower, strawberries, more onions, lettuce and bok choi, potatoes. Sweet peas and nasturtiums.

Life is good.

Life in a small town

2009-03-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

My grandfather told me this story:

It snowed a couple weeks ago in Baker City. The snow plows had cleared the roads, but his truck was still blocked in the driveway, and he was out shoveling snow out of the driveway so that he could get his truck out. A woman was walking down the street, walked a little way past Grandpa's driveway then turned around and walked back the other direction.

A few minutes later, here came a man on a tractor. He plowed the snow from around my grandpa's truck, waved and drove off.

The next time it snowed, he came down and plowed again. Just a wave and off he went.

Grandpa said he'd like to thank him, maybe take him something, but he doesn't know where the guy lives. A few days ago, he saw the man walking down the road leading a couple mules. So now he knows he can find the man's house. He'll just drive that direction until he finds the house with the mules.

Color Study

2009-03-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

We're winding up our color studies. It's been a fascinating and motivating subject for the fine young gents. Which isn't surprising when you think about it. Color is immediate and relevant. It's something we experience every moment. A color study combines, overlaps and intersects art and science, and the experiments are simple, fun and accessible. And memorable. The fine young gents often talk about color in terms of science and art, remarking at the red light waves that must be bouncing off a shirt, for example. On the way home from a visit to Grandpa's, kindergarten gent stared out at the brown hills and remarked, "Mom, I can't see any tertiary colors out there."

At the beginning of spring break, we spent some school time doing color experiments. We're moving on to an astronomy study this spring, but we didn't want to miss some of the fun activities we'd seen online and in our experiment books, so we spent a fair amount of time playing with color.

Catch a Rainbow from Kidzone Science:

You need:
A shallow bowl
Milk
Food color--red, blue and yellow
Dish soap
Printable recording sheet (optional)

Drop food color at the edges of the bowl as shown above. Add 2-3 drops of dish soap to the middle of the bowl. Sit back and watch the colors swirl and combine.
Then complete the record sheet:

Is Black Black?
(Pictured in notebook above.)

You need:
Black markers, 2-3 different brands
A coffee filter
Water and an eyedropper
A tray or dish

Cut the coffee filter into strips. Choose one brand of black marker, and color a big black dot at the edge of a coffee filter strip. Do the same with the other black markers until you have a dotted strip for each brand of marker. Set the strips in your tray or dish and drip water on the black dots until they are saturated. Make sure your strips are not touching so that the colors don't bleed onto one another. Wait for the colors to wick up the filter. What colors do you see? Are the colors used by each brand different? The same?

Color Filters

You need:
Colored cellophane, different colors
Paper
Markers
Flashlight (optional)

Using your markers, draw a rainbow (or other colorful picture) on your paper. Place different colors of cellophane over your picture. What happens to the colors? Now take your cellophane and place it over different colored objects in the room. What happens to those colors?

For more cellophane fun, take the colored cellophane and a flashlight into the closet or other dark place. Shine the flashlight through the cellophane. (Moms: This kept my fine young gents entertained for an hour.)

Make a Rainbow

You need: A prism and bright light

Find a prism and experiment with making rainbows in the sunlight.

Color Mixing

You need:
4-6 glasses or bowls
Water
Food color--red, yellow, blue
Eyedroppers, spoons, measuring cups
Tray and towels or rags

Place the glasses and bowls on a tray. Fill three glasses or bowls with water. Add several drops of red, yellow or blue food color to the glasses so that you've got one glass of each color. Set out the the colored water and extra glasses or bowls for mixing. Use the spoons, measuring cups and eyedroppers to mix colors! Make sure to have a rag handy to clean up spills!

Victory Gardens

2009-03-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

Victory Gardens: http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/

Eugene/Springfield--Victory Gardens for All, food does grow on trees: http://www.victorygardensforall.org/

A Day in the Life: Field Trip Friday

2009-03-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

"Arigato, Makiko-sensei!"

2009-03-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

The fine young gents are learning Japanese from their lovely older sister. I've been paying her to teach the boys an art and Japanese class every Wednesday.

She's taking Japanese in high school. She wants to go to Japan this summer. The boys want to learn Japanese. I don't speak Japanese.

She's earning money for her trip, and teaching helps her to use the Japanese she's learning in school. The boys get to learn to speak, read and write a little Japanese, and they get to spend some time with their beloved sister. I get some time to myself to read or make dinner or plan the next day's lessons, or to just sit and stare out the window.

Win-Win-Win.

Life is good.

Wordless Wednesday: In the Hammock

2009-03-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

Science: Color and Vision

2009-03-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Last week we took a slight detour from our science and art color study to explore color and vision. We finally got to try the Bird in a Cage experiment from one of my new favorite experiment sights, Exploratorium Science Snacks. Not snacks for the tummy, snacks for the brain! Quick and simple science experiments, complete with thorough explanations. Perfect for filling 15-20 minutes.

You need:
Posterboard or thin cardboard (Scraps work just fine.)
Colored paper--red, blue and green
White paper
Pencil and scissors
Black marker
Bright light--Try this on a sunny day for best results!

Draw a silhouette of a favorite animal onto the posterboard. Cut it out and use it as a template to trace your animal onto the red, blue and green papers. Cut out your colored animal shapes and glue them to your white paper. (We used the science notebook pages.) On another white paper, draw a birdcage, jungle, or other habitat for your animal using the black marker. Place your pages in bright light and stare at one colored animal for about 30 seconds. Then stare at your cage (or other habitat). What do you see?

You should see an afterimage, a colored image of your bird. Your white paper reflects blue, red and green light. You've tired the cones in your eye sensitive to the color at which you've been staring, so you see the other colors more strongly. If your red-perceiving cones are tired from staring at the red bird, for example, the blue- and green-perceiving cones are stronger, so you should see more blue-green light bouncing off the page, which creates a blue-green afterimage.

A common variation on the afterimage experiment uses the American flag. Create an American flag using black and green stripes, and black stars on an orange background. (Directions here.) After staring at your flag, then directing your eyes to a white page, you should see the traditional red, white and blue American flag.
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3D Stereograms: Magic Eye

Magic Eye, by Magic Eye, Inc.
Check Magic Eye books out of the library. They will keep the kids entertained for what seems like hours. It's fun snuggling on the couch staring at the pages, trying to get the seemingly random patterns on the page to pop out into 3D pictures. Having trouble? Read this: How to see 3D for an explanation of how it works.

Then make your own stereograms online:
Create your own 3D stereogram
This application lets you draw your own picture and choose your colors. We're having a blast with this. The fine young gents drew their names and printed their personal stereograms to paste into their science notebooks.

Choose from different backgrounds and pictures at Easy Stereogram Builder. (The stereogram above was created using this site.) Then read about how they work. There's a great explanation of stereo vision here: What is Stereo Vision?
-----------------------------------

We love Bill. Watch Bill Nye the Science Guy: Light and Color for some color and light science fun.

"Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!"

Happy Pi Day!

2009-03-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's almost over, but it's not too late!

Celebrate Pi Day!
Pi is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535... Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th.

About Pi

The Pi(ano) Song

How to Celebrate Pi Day

School in the garden

2009-03-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was feeling achy and tired and yucky. There's something going around. I really wasn't up for our Friday nature outing.

I thought, "We need a day off." I said, "Maybe we should just read all day." I grumped, "I don't want to doooo anythiiiing."

Instead, I took the fine young gents outside. We've got nature in our back yard too. We shoveled the last of our dirt pile into the wheelbarrow and hauled it into the back yard. Good heavy work for growing bodies. The boys told me that the dirt was good for the garden because it has lots of nutrients. We leveled our front yard planting area and planted second grade gent's dahlias and his brother's lilies. They read the packages to follow the planting directions. We discussed what we'd like to plant in that spot this spring, and they seriously considered what our family eats and enjoys most from the garden. More strawberries, they think. Then they voluntarily pulled weeds and explained to me that we needed to leave the weeds root-side-up so that they couldn't get nutrients or water from the soil. We dug up a garden box and they told me that we needed the light new planting mix mixed into our boxes because it will make the soil less dense so roots can grow. They have absorbed so much from our casual conversations about the garden.

Then I was pooped. I really am a little under the weather. The work was just what I needed and it did me good, but now my body was saying "Time to rest." So I hung in the back yard hammock. I was soon joined by two busy giggly wiggly little bodies. We swung and giggled and then we calmed to listen to the birds. Later the boys drew their dahlia and lily bulbs in their nature notebooks, and pictures of what they think the flowers will look like once they bloom.

My boys work really hard when given the opportunity. Every time this week that I was out there hauling dirt, they were right there with me. Meaningful work is important, not just for adults, but for children too. They need to see that they are making a difference and that their time is valuable. Ditching the books for the morning and spending our time out of doors was a good decision. I forget sometimes, in our drive for academic rigor, that we need a balance. Time to read and learn from books, time to explore and experiment, and also time to work, time to play, time to cuddle, time to rest. We got a little of each yesterday, and we were refreshed at the end of the day.
------------------------------------
A note for Dawn....
This has nothing to do with my post, except that I took it while we were outside yesterday. Dawn, until you get some warm weather, I'll share our spring with you:

I can't wait to see your crocuses when they bloom.
-------------------------------------
And a garden note....
Look at this urban farm: Urban Homestead, Little Homestead in the City: Journal of a Self-Sufficient Urban Life

They call themselves eco-pioneers. They've got ducks, goats, chickens, and a beautiful garden on a fifth of an acre in Pasadena, California. Check it out!

Nature Notebook: Azalea

2009-03-12T11:05:00.001-07:00

2009

2008

2007

Wordless Wednesday: Ten minutes ago....

2009-03-11T12:22:00.001-07:00

Wordless Wednesday

2009-03-11T12:14:00.001-07:00

Spinning Color Wheels

2009-03-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Spinning Color Wheels

You Need:
Posterboard or light cardboard
A pencil and a ruler
Scissors
Crayons
A sharp point to poke a hole in the cardboard (The pencil will do in a pinch.)
A straw and a craft brad OR string OR a pushpin and a wooden dowel, optional
(Shirts also optional if you're at home and it's sunny out.)

Trace a circle onto your posterboard or cardboard. Using your ruler divide your circle evenly into sections (this makes a fun mini math lesson!) like the picture shown above, or like this:
For one side of your circle, choose two primary colors, or two complementary colors (colors opposite one another on the color wheel), and color the sections of your circle alternating colors. On the other side of your wheel, color the sections using colors of your choice.

Once your circle is colored, poke a small hole through the very center. Use the hole to poke your craft brad, push pin, or string through your circle.

Craft brad and straw: Poke a small hole into the straw, insert the pointed end of the brad that's already sticking through the circle, and widen the ends of the brad so that it won't slip back through the straw. Spin the wheel!
Push pin and dowel: Poke the end of the pushpin through the center of the circle into the dowel. Make sure it's pushed in firmly so that it won't fall off. Spin the wheel!
String: Thread the string through the center of the circle. Holding both ends of the string (one end in each hand), swing the circle around and around, twisting the string. Pull the string tight and watch your wheel spin!
Or....just spin your wheel!

What happens if you use two primary colors? What happens when you use complementary colors?

Why does it work?
Color and Spinning Wheels at Newton BBS Ask a Scientist.

This is a simple project, and lots of fun! We used this lesson plan: Spinning Color Wheels from Crayola.com. It calls for using string through the center of the circle. We used several kinds of string and yarn, and attempted to fasten our circles to the string in various ways, but we could not get our circles to wind tightly enough on the string. They just flopped around and refused to spin. It wasn't time wasted. We found all kinds of techniques and materials that just won't work. Next we experimented a little with methods we've used in the past for other projects: A straw with a craft brad was just the ticket for preschool gent, kindergarten gent used a push pin and a wooden dowel, and their older brother cut straight to the chase, deciding to forgo the spinners altogether and spinning his circle on the floor instead.

Check this out! Color Matters--Amazing Science of Colors. Chockful of information, experiments and color facts, including Color Matters for Kids.

More science, art and vision fun for adults: Here's a fascinating web exhibit entitled Color Vision and Art: Vision Science and the Emergence of Modern Art.

Read this book: Hot, Flat and Crowded

2009-03-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, Thomas L. Friedman.

"What kind of America would you like to see--an America that is addicted to oil and thereby fueling the worst autocracies in the world, or a green America that is building scalable alternatives to crude oil and thereby freeing ourselves from the grip of countries who have drawn a bull's-eye on our back and whose values we oppose?

What kind of America would you like to see--and America that is steadily outsourcing more and more blue-collar, labor-intensive manufacturing jobs to China, or a green America that is building more knowledge-intensive green-collar technology jobs...which are more difficult to outsource and will have to be the industry of the future, as fossil-fuel energy supplies dwindle and world population grows?

...a green America where the U. S. goverment imposes steadily higher efficiency standards, forcing a constant flow of new thinking around materials, power systems, and energy software making us the most energy-productive country in the world?

...a green America where inventing a source of abundant, clean, reliable, cheap electrons, which could enable the whole planet to grow in a way that doesn't destroy its remaining natural habitats, becomes the goal of this generation...

...a green America that is seen as the country most committed--by example--to preserving our environment and the species that inhabit it, earning the world's respect?"
(from Chapter One, "Where Birds Don't Fly," p. 23-24)

Everyone should read this book.

Make no mistake, it's hardly a light feel-good read. It's depressing and challenging. But whether you agree with Friedman wholeheartedly or not, he's right about one thing: We are rapidly outgrowing our available resources. Something has to change, and now, or humanity's ability to survive on this planet will be compromised. And our country has a choice: America can lead the way or we can get left in the dust.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

2009-03-06T20:43:00.000-08:00

From the Hult Center website:

Soaring in the Soreng

Location: Soreng Theater

Presented by Bridgeway House

At the Hult Center, hopes and dreams take flight as children and young adults affected by autism perform in this original showcase of many talents. Crafted by the performers, Soaring in the Soreng offers a limitless horizon of perspectives on having wings and taking flight.
Each uniquely talented performer showcases an ability to rise above the personal and societal obstacles with which they are presented each day. Bridgeway House offers each performer support in finding their own way of soaring as they demonstrate that 'the sky's the limit!'

Sat, April 25, 2009 - 1:00pm

Lovely lady will participate in this Bridgeway House Theater event. Read about her previous performances here: Theater

The Sling

2009-03-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

I cleaned out my hallway storage chest today. It's a quick seasonal job, doesn't take long.

I ran across my baby sling. I really need to move the darn thing, because I run across it twice a year, and I always think the same thing: "I should give this away to a new mom, someone who really needs it."

Except then, as I hold it in my hands, I am flooded with this:

Babies. I miss the way they smell and the way they sound and the way they smile. I miss walking with baby cuddled close to my body, snug and warm. I miss shopping with a baby slung to my chest and little ones holding my hands. I miss round heads and little fingers. Chubby knees, fat feet, tiny ears. Soft bellies, big watchful eyes, round cheeks.

I miss my babies. When I wasn't paying attention, they grew long legs and cheekbones and big boy voices. Why do they have to go and do that?

I cried a little and put the sling back in the chest. That little piece of fabric is still carrying my babies.

Raspberries

2009-03-04T16:30:00.000-08:00

It's been perfect weather for the backyard gardener. Rain in the evening, clearing throughout the day, sunny and cool, or even almost warm, in the afternoon when it's finally time to get out into the garden. I've been gradually preparing the garden for spring planting. This week, I tidied the raspberries: Pruned, thinned, weeded, mulched. The photo was taken about halfway through the process. Here's a clear, concise, step-by-step article on how to prune rapsberries: Time to Tame the Raspberry Jungle.

Three days ago, I was digging up and whacking away at bare sticks. Today many of the larger canes had tight reddish buds with green leaf tips peeking through. Spring has sprung.

Wordless Wednesday: Spring(ish)

2009-03-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

Color Study:Shades

2009-03-03T14:10:00.000-08:00

You Need:
White paper (we folded our papers in half lengthwise to create narrow strips)
White paint, black paint and one other paint color of your choice
Paintbrushes
Paint tray, old yogurt cups or lids, or something similar for paint mixing
Newspaper
A rag or two in case of spills

Prepare your area by setting down newspapers, setting out your materials, and choosing your paint colors and brushes.

Read Color(Step-By-Step Science) by Robert Snedden and Sabrina Crewe. This is the best kids' book on the science of color that we've found so far. It's got thorough and colorful explanations of different aspects of color, and several color-related activities and experiments, including step-by step directions for making a shade chart.

Squirt two big squirts of your chosen color paint onto your mixing tray.

In the middle of your paper, paint a stripe of your chosen color.

Squeeze a drop or two of white paint into one of your squirts of color, and mix thoroughly. What happens to your color? Paint a stripe of that color onto your paper, to the left of your original color. Mix in a few more drops of white paint. Paint another stripe to the left. Continue mixing in a few more drops of white and painting new stripes until you reach the left edge of your paper.

Now try the same thing in the other squirt of your original color, this time with the black paint. Be careful to start with only one drop of black! Black can quickly overpower your original color, so it's better to start with one drop each time, then add another if you need to. Paint a stripe of that color onto your paper, this time to the right of your original color. Continue mixing in a drop or two of black and painting new stripes of color until you reach the right edge of your paper.

Set aside your shade chart to dry. Try another color! Or make another shade chart by mixing your color with its complementary color (the color opposite your color on the color wheel) instead of using black or white. What happens? What happens if you mix your color with a color adjacent to it on the color wheel?
_________________
Color Wheel and Color Mixing at Enchanted Learning

Lesson Plan: Tints, Tones and Shades

Memory Poem

2009-03-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

All Things Bright and Beautiful
~Cecil Frances Alexander

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.

The purple-headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset, and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;

The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell,
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.

Printable version of All Things Bright and Beautiful at storyit.com Classic Children's Poetry

Sun Bread

2009-03-01T21:50:00.000-08:00

Sun Bread, Elisa Kleven.

Sun Bread is a lovely story about a baker who tempts the sun back to her cold and dreary village by baking a delicious warm loaf of bread shaped like the sun. It's a charming story, and Kleven's illustrations make the book a delight to read. A sun bread recipe is included at the end of the book, making story time transition naturally and delightfully into the kitchen, especially on a dreary winter day.

Every once in a while, the fine young gents just fall in love with a book. Elisa Kleven is one of our favorite author-illustrators, ever since we chanced upon The Lion and the Little Red Bird. As a matter of fact, I was looking for The Lion and the Little Red Bird as a fun accompaniment to our color studies. It wasn't on the library shelf, nor was another Poohsticks favorite, The Paper Princess. (Poohsticks review of both The Lion and the Little Red Bird and The Paper Princess here.) But Sun Bread was on the shelf, so I checked it out instead. The fine young gents have been reading and re-reading it ever since.

Today I found Sun Bread at Robert's Bookshop, so I bought it. The gents were delighted when I walked in the door with an armful of books, and even more delighted to find a special favorite to keep on our shelves.

Read more about Elisa Kleven, her picture books, and her art at her lovely website: www.elisakleven.com. There's even a link to a delicious recipe for sun bread!

Science and Art: Color Lesson

2009-02-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

Read Color, Ruth Heller. There's a clear and colorful explanation of printing using four colors: Yellow, cyan, magenta and black. Or find another simple explanation to read (like this one, The Science of Light: Made from Dots).

Dotty Dots: You need a pencil, a piece of white paper, a yellow marker, a red marker, and a blue marker (preferably a cyan blue rather than a royal blue). Draw three circles with a gray pencil on the white piece of paper. In one circle, use the red and blue marker tips to make red dots and blue dots, as close together as you can get without overlapping. In another circle, do the same with the blue and the yellow markers, and use red and yellow dots to fill in the third circle. Look at the circles close up--can you see the separate colors? Now ask another person to hold up your paper as you look at it from across the room. Can you still see separate dots of different colors, or do they blend to look like one color?

Colors under the microscope: Look at a variety of pictures--photographs, postcards, books--with a magnifying glass and under the microscope. Do you see tiny dots used to make the rainbow of colors? Now look at a part of a printed photo or postcard that looks white. What do you see under the microscope?

The Side Show (detail), Georges Seurat

Bonus Lesson: Read about Georges Seurat. His art was influenced by the science of color. Look closely at his pictures, and you'll see that they're composed of tiny dots of pure color.

Wordless Wednesday: Color wheel

2009-02-24T21:31:00.001-08:00

Tuesday Ten: What We're Reading

2009-02-23T08:42:00.000-08:00

I'm Reading:

Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening, Steve Solomon.

It's garden season. Last week I got out and started digging up my garden boxes. It's time to plant peas, and soon I'll be planting spinach and potatoes. Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades is my new garden bible because it's written specifically for this wet temperate region. In other vegetable news, I called the Food for Lane County Youth Farm to sign up for a CSA box again this year. I can't wait!

Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States (Studies in Mathematical Thinking and Learning.), Liping Ma.

"Mathematical knowledge is based on both convention and logic. However, convention...serves as a shelter for those who don't have a conceptual understanding of a mathematical procedure." (p. 31) Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics was mentioned on a homeschool message board, and it's not available at our library, so I bought it. So far it's fascinating. This book is worth a separate post of its own. I hope to get to that soon.

A Collection of Math Lessons, Grades 1-3 (Math Solutions Series), Marilyn Burns and Bonnie Tank.

A Collection of Math Lessons showed up while I was looking on Amazon.com for the Liping Ma book, and this book is available from the library. It's got hands-on activties designed to stimulate mathematical creativity and problem-solving. The fine young gents and I have done the first math lesson, math necklaces, and it was great fun all around. Also worthy of a separate post.

Read-Alouds:

Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers.

I finished Mary Poppins last night. We were all a little sad. The fine young gents were charmed by the Banks children and their magical adventures with Mary. Second-grade gent's favorite chapter was the visit to the zoo, kindergarten gent still asks questions about Michael's bad day, and preschool gent wants me to re-read the visit to Uncle Wigg who went rolling and bobbing about the ceiling. As for me, well, I found myself delightedly exclaiming as I started each new chapter, "Oh, this is one of my favorite chapters in any book, ever!"

The Magic Pocket: Selected Poems, Michio Mado, Anno Mitsumasa, and Empress Michiko.

The Magic Pocket is lovely Japanese poems translated into English. The orginal Japanese is printed on the facing page. The elder lovely lady is teaching her brothers Japanese, so I keep my eye out for library books that they might enjoy. She's been reading some of these lovely poems in English to the fine young gents, and in Japanese to herself, delighted that she can read them in their orginal versions.

The fine young gents are reading:

Wag a Tail, Lois Ehlert.
Lois Ehlert is a favorite of the fine young gents. Our youngest gent has had this on the shelf by his bed for a couple weeks now, and he's fascinated by the dogs and their adventures.

Planting a Rainbow, Lois Ehlert.
Gardening and colors. A perfect companion to our soon-to-be-spring studies. The illustrations, of a garden planted in a rainbow of flowers, are bold and simple, beautiful and accurate.

Is It Red? Is It Yellow? Is It Blue?, Tana Hoban.
There are no words in this book, just color circles at the bottom of each page of the brightly colored photos of a city. I checked this out from the library to go with our color studies, and the fine young gents keep pulling it off the shelf and poring over the pictures. It's bright, colorful and engaging, perfect for all ages.

Divide and Ride (MathStart 3), Stuart J. Murphy and George Ulrich.

These MathStart books are a fun way to introduce and reinforce math concepts. One of the gents chose this book at the library, and it's been floating around the house ever since. With no prompting from me, I might add. They've got fine math minds and they think it's fun. I still scratch my head about that one. How is it that my children love math? Actually, I don't scratch my head, I think I know why. But that's another post too.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J. K. Rowling.

Second-grade gent has decided he's ready to tackle number four. He read the second and third books in the Harry Potter series last year, then decided to take a break because they were getting scary and longer. Two weeks ago, he mentioned that he might like to read The Goblet of Fire, so I made him a deal: Not only will he get to watch the movie after he reads the book, I'll read the fifth book as a read-aloud once he's finished the fourth. Last week we had a Potter-a-thon and watched the first three movies, and yesterday he started Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He's already captivated.

Photo Challenge

2009-02-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

I've been tagged by Valerie (whom I have the pleasure of having met in real life) at Insane Parents Unite! Open your pictures folder. Open your sixth folder of pictures, choose the sixth picture and write something about it. Then tag six blogs. (Here's Valerie's sixth photo.)

And here's mine:

It's Levi, mixing paint in a dish. We made prints on paper. This picture is even in the linked post. Not very exciting.

So I counted six folders from the bottom, to last year's folder, then took the sixth photo from the sixth folder of 2008:

Snow in the back yard trees. In this rainy, fairly temperate climate, waking up to snow is like waking up to find that it's Christmas, except snow is a surprise. The whole neighborhood looks like a new place, and everything here shuts down so it's quiet and still. I wrote a post about this snow, and the above picture is in that post. Hmm. Looks like you're not getting a new picture today after all. But it's still lovely to revisit that day.

Now I have to tag six people. This is a simple one, ladies, so please play with me!
Cristy at Just Me
Megan at Irie's Fascinating Life
Nina at Painted Rainbows
Dawn at Follow Me
Elizabeth at News from the Desert (Or East Coast or some other state!)
Laura at Two Pilots and a Princess
And you!

Midnight Musings: Barf!

2009-02-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

The fine young gents have been reading Calvin and Hobbes. Six-year-old gent is particularly fascinated by "not my brother, the other one" Calvin's antics, and recounts the strips with gusto. His favorite these past two days is Calvin barfing in the middle of the night. Which led me to ponder in the middle of the night....

When did we outgrow the word "barf"?

BARF!

It sounds just like what it is. A loud, round, rough word, a vivid verb, the epitome of onomatopoeia. Instead we use the pale and sickly "vomit" or the bland "threw up" or "puke"--such a wimpy word.

From now on, I'm going to say "barf." Barf, barf, barf.

(And then, finally, I fell asleep. I need to stop drinking caffeinated tea before bed.)

Today, I'll be saying "epitome of onomatopoeia" all day long. Try it! It's delicious.

Science and Art: Color

2009-02-18T18:12:00.000-08:00

Last week, we started our color study with an art project as basic as you can get: Think of something brightly colored. Choose colors from the crayon box and draw it. We have two beautiful drawings of rainbows and a paper with circles and L-E-V-I written all over hanging on the fridge.

We read about wavelengths of light in The Visual Encyclopedia of Science (DK).
Explanations of light and color online:
Visible light waves at the NASA website for kids
How Are Rainbows Formed? at Science Kids
Lightwaves and Color at The Physics Classroom (for older children or for adults)

Next, a color wheel study. Kid Zone Science has some nice material, including The Color Wheel, a colorful explanation of primary and secondary colors and a color wheel worksheet.

Today's study, a simple science study of color: Coffee filter colors

You need a coffee filter, markers, an eyedropper and water. A paper plate, thick paper towel, or baking sheet is nice too, as it keeps the inks from bleeding onto your work surface. Color large dots or thick lines of single colors on your coffee filter. Drop water on the ink dots with the eyedropper. It's fun to watch the colors wick across the filter, so take some time to observe. Set aside the filter to dry. Once it's dry, observe what's happened to the colors, especially at the edges. We discovered that our colored inks separated into different colors. We used Crayola markers and they worked dandy. The best color markers for the experiment: Brown, which separated into orange-pink-purple-blue, and green, which spread into a vivid blue edged with the faintest line of yellow.

The fine young gents recorded the results in their science notebooks using this form. It's a great all-purpose science form for young students. Students to make a prediction, observe, and come to a conclusion based on the observation, which, when you think about it, is the nuts and bolts of a science experiment.

A color study lends itself to a blending of art and science, and since we had all of the materials on the table we ended with coffee filter butterflies. Color with marker on a coffee filter. Use lots of bright colors! Drop water droplets onto the colors with the eyedropper and set aside the coffee filter to dry. Once the coffee filter is dry, scrunch the filter into a decorated doll clothespin. Add pipe cleaner antennae or tie a ribbon around the top to hang your butterfly.

Next week's art studies:
Color mixing and the Color Wheel from Enchanted Learning
Actual color mixing, and creating color wheels based upon these lesson plans: Color Wheel and Twelve Color Wheel

Upcoming science experiments and notebook entries:
Catch a Rainbow (also from Kid Zone Science)
Spinning Color Wheels from Crayola
A drawing of light wavelengths copied from our science encyclopedia
Bird in a Cage at Exploratorium's Science Snacks
The Science of Light at the Annenberg/CB Math and Science Project Teacher's Lab
Create a rainbow with the prism we've got stashed around here somewhere, and maybe with the hose too if we get a day that's sunny and warm enough.

Reading:
Color, Ruth Heller (This is a great explanation of color in printing and as a general color study. Fantastic!)
Mouse Paint, Ellen Stoll Walsh (Lovely intro to color mixing for younger readers.)
White Rabbit's Color Book, Alan Baker (Another wonderful color mixing book for younger kids.)
Color Me Science (Experiment With Science), New Book of Popular Science. (On request from the library.)

Books, books, books...

2009-02-17T22:34:00.000-08:00

Got this from Sara at The Learning Umbrella:

“Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.” Some of the list seems to come from the BBC’s Big Read list of 100 favorite books in Britain, although not completely and not in entirely the same order.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X +
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X +

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X +
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X +
6 The Bible – X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
Running total: 10

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X +
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – not complete, so *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X +
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks X
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
Running total: 18

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X +
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X +
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X +
Running total: 25

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen X +
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X +
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X +
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres X
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X +
Running total: 35

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins X
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
Running total: 44

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons *
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth X
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
Running total: 52

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X (ugh, is there a symbol for "hated it"?)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt X
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
Running total: 59

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X +
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome X +
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession - AS Byatt X
Running total: 67

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Running total: 75

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X +
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole X
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X +
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *

Total: 86

So many good books!

Pink Eggs

2009-02-16T10:48:00.001-08:00

Valentine's Day Breakfast Menu:

Pink heart-shaped pancakes
Strawberry-blueberry puree
Strawberry whipped cream
Strawberries
Strawberry scrambled eggs

The eggs were supposed to be pink. We have eggs for breakfast almost every day, and I wanted them to be special for our Valentine's Day breakfast, so I decided to try strawberry eggs. I set aside some strawberry juice from the last of the strawberries we picked last summer. I scrambled the eggs with just a little sugar. Then I realized I'd need the strawberry juice for the pink whipped cream, so I decided to use the strawberry-blueberry puree to flavor the eggs.

Strawberries are red.
Blueberries are blue.
Farm-raised eggs are orangey-yellow.

Anyone who's done the most basic study of the color wheel knows this one:
What color do you get when you mix Red+Blue+Yellow?

They still tasted good.

Think! Trash

2009-02-11T12:43:00.001-08:00

Think! Challenge, Week 24: Trash. Without clues about the project, choose five pieces of trash out of the trash can. Using those five pieces, along with scissors, tape and string, build a fish that will float.

Our trash can is filled with pencil shavings, floor sweepings and used tissues. Ew.

So I saved the "good" trash for a couple days, and pulled everything out of the recycle bin except for the paper scraps, and asked the fine young gents to choose their items from that pile.

Tolly started with a plastic tray from a package of cookies, two pieces of of a mechanical pencil, a cone-shaped plastic drink lid and a metal rod.
He said, "I don't know how to make a fish!" Which is the point. How does one make a fish with such odd materials? His older brother, always ready to tell others what to do and how to do it, picked up the cookie tray and said, "This is the body." I shooshed him and shooed him back to his own fish. But he was right. Of all the materials, the cookie tray was probably the best candidate for a fish body. Tolly saw immediately that he had a head (plastic lid), two fins (pencil pieces) and that if he slid the rod through the lid, he could fasten the head onto the fish by fitting the rod neatly into the groove in the tray and taping it in place. He taped on the pencil fins too, and off we went to the bathroom sink.

Problem:
It didn't float. I prepped him ahead of time: "What will we do if it doesn't float? If it doesn't work the first time, remember to look for the parts that sink so that you can redesign your fish." At first he filled the sink with more water, to see if that was the problem. It wasn't.

So, back to the drawing board. He decided his fish needed an anchor to keep it from floating away.
It worked! Actually it sank again, but he turned his fish over so that the tray floated like a boat. Success!
He's very excited about his fish. It's still floating in the bathroom sink.

Calvin chose two styrofoam blocks, a plastic drink lid, a paint sample card and an elastic band. He started with the idea of floating rather than fish, and since he already knew the styrofoam would probably float, he wanted to see if it would float if it had holes poked in it. (Actually, I think his first idea was just to poke the styrofoam with the scissors and the rationale came later. Right about the time I said, "What are you doing?")
He ended up changing materials halfway through because his paint card ripped and the other styrofoam block was too big. He traded for two more plastic lids, leaving him with the large styrofoam block, three lids (a mouth and two fins) and the elastic band, which he strapped onto the back of his fish to make a tail. It floated, even with holes, and he's been playing with it in the bathtub this afternoon, transforming it into a droid boat or some such.

Think! Slippery Silverware

2009-02-11T10:02:00.001-08:00

Think! challenge, Week 23: Slippery Silverware. Make a tower as tall as possible using 8 forks, 8 knives and 8 spoons.

My fine young second-grade gent had a blast with this one. He's starting to get into the rhythm of the Think! challenges. If at first you don't succeed, try....

Try....

Try again.

He got frustrated because his more ambitious attempts resulted in crashing silverware. It made a great clashing noise, but after a couple crashes it just wasn't as fun any more, so he went for a shorter but more stable log-cabin-style design. Once he happened on the idea, he persevered even when the rounded spoons refused to cooperate, and discovered that he could further stabilize his structure by adding diagonal supports. The final tower:

We've only got so much silverware, so while eldest fine young gent built, his brothers occupied themselves, doing math:

And making silly faces at Mom.
Later, the two of them created elaborate single-layer silverware sculptures like this one:

Today, we created floating fish out of trash, for Think!, Week 24. Pictures and more to come.

Adopt a word today!

2009-02-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

starrify: v., to decorate with stars

blateration: n., blabber; chatter

frutescent: adj., having or approaching the habit or appearance of a shrub

http://www.savethewords.org/

Looking to the future

2009-02-07T23:34:00.001-08:00

Imagine my confusion when the eldest fine young gent announced on the way to piano lesson, "When we grow up, we're going to be minors."

???

"We're going to get jewels and stuff out of the earth."

Aha. Miners.

They've got a plan. They'll live in a cabin on a mountain and mine. They'll sell all of their diamonds and jewels to get money, and the gold they'll sell for free to the poor people. Then when they run out of money, they'll just go back to their mine and get more jewels.

They won't give any money to the rich people, because the rich people are greedy and bad and only want more money. This is the point where I finally stepped in, a bit gingerly: "Are all rich people greedy, do you think? If it's not fair to think badly of someone who has no money, maybe it's not fair to think badly of someone with lots of money. What if we just judge if people are greedy and bad if they act greedy and bad?"

Silence. Well, crumb, I think. I killed the dream.

Then, "Oh. Well, maybe we could give the money to the good rich people so that they can share and help the poor people too, and then they can be good."

Which led to a discussion that filled the rest of the journey to piano and afterward too, about resources and charitable foundations and sharing, and how we're rich in comparison to most of the world, and our favorite gems.

I know they'll figure out soon enough that it's not that easy, that fabulous fairy-tale caves filled with jewels and heaps of gold don't really exist on this earth. For now I'm just charmed that the plan is to keep some and share some. That's a worthy plan for the future.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-02-04T19:52:00.000-08:00

Catching up with Think!: Coins

2009-02-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

Think! challenge, Week 22: Clever Coin Stacking. Using 100 coins, build the widest possible structure that stands at least 1 inch tall, with as few coins as possible touching the table.

"I have to use all of the coins?" In a dismayed voice. Yes, darling, that's the challenge.

For this fine young gent, part of the challenge is thinking-through. He's a bright guy. Answers to problems often just pop into his head. The value of the Think! challenges for this young man is just as much in learning persistence and the value of making mistakes, in not finding the right answer immediately. Creative thinking isn't only flashes of brilliance, it's experimenting to find out what doesn't work and why so that one can try, try again. At least that's what I tell him.

You can see the point in his structure where he gave up on the "as few coins as possible touching the table" part. He got frustrated when his widening structure kept on collapsing, so he built more pillars. And that's okay, it's his structure. I encouraged and made suggestions during the building, and we discussed following the guidelines for the challenge afterward. Here lies my ongoing Think! challenge: To encourage the fine young gents to persist and to follow the directions without killing the creativity or the fun. How do I help them to persist in the face of frustration, to look for solutions without leading them to my answers, help them to follow the rules without feeling constrained by them?

The final structure measured 9 1/2 inches wide. He was happy with his finished product:

The younger gents chose not to participate in the challenge. But they still enjoy the Think! challenges, because they're given materials for building or creating that they might not have thought of on their own. Kindergarten gent started by building a tall tower of pennies, then got sidetracked by sorting and counting the coins. While his brother built a coin bridge, I played a coin counting game with this fine young gent: Can you find three coins that add to thirty-six cents? How many different ways can you make forty cents?

The youngest gent just wanted to stack coins and knock them over. He played with the coins for quite a time after his brothers had returned to their regular schoolwork. For this fine young gentleman, one of my favorite things about the Think! challenges is that the unusual materials keep him happily occupied and challenge him to experiment with new materials.

This week's Think! challenge: Silverware
We can't wait to try this one!

In Stitches, Part II

2009-02-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

Last night we went to Splash!. It's this really cool swim center with a play pool, a water slide, a lap pool, a warm kiddie pool, and a pool with rolling waves. We had a blast splashing and sliding and swimming and riding the inner tubes.

I turned from giving middle gent a five-minutes-until-we-leave warning to see loving husband waving and pointing, and eight-year-old gent walking toward me crying and dripping blood from his chin. He'd been falling off his inner tube on purpose, got pushed down by a wave and landed hard at the bottom of the pool, right on his chin. This after having dived too deep under a wave and landing on his nose at the beginning of the swim, then landing on his forehead mid-way through the session leaving him with a scrape and small cut. He's not a reckless guy, but he loves to swim and he plays hard.

Back to the cut on the chin. It figures: He fell right after both the urgent care and the after-hours clinic closed, on a weekend when our ER-doc neighbor is out of town. Just like his brother two years ago. Doctor Mom waffled. It's on his face, but not bleeding much. It's deeper than a scratch, but not very big. Didn't hurt much at all.

I called the on-call nurse. Like that's going to be any help. She can't see it. She recommended having it looked at because it's on his face. The deciding factor was the shape. If it had been a straight cut, I'd have slathered some Neosporin on it and used butterfly bandages. But it split in a crescent shape, like someone had jammed a thumbnail right into his chin. So to the brand-new ER we go.

Fine young gent suggested I bring our read-aloud, The Blue Fairy Book. Having a read-aloud in the emergency room for all of the waiting sure made the time pass quickly, but here's a tip: Stories like "Bluebeard" and "Trusty John", not good emergency room reading. There's blood practically dripping from the pages. And we're not faint-of-heart. Red-Riding Hood gets eaten. Sometimes the good guy dies of a broken heart or doesn't win. But "Trusty John" was so bloody that I summarized the end instead of reading it out loud. Bleah.

The stitches part was quick and easy. The doctor decided to put one stitch in, then added another once the actual stitching started. She and the nurse actually made the experience fun for our brave young gent. They admired his cowboy boots, laughed at his jokes, and voted him Bravest Patient of the Night. It was interesting: When youngest gent got his stitches, he had a male nurse and a male doctor. The process of getting stitches was very straightforward and business-like. This time, my fine young gent had a female nurse and female doctor. It was a very collaborative process, with suggestions and "What if we use the new....thingie, the squeeze one?" and "Do you think we could...?" Too small a sample to tell if it was a personality or a gender issue, but fun to see the contrast nonetheless.

And finally, a picture. Not too gruesome:

In Stitches, Part I (Levi's stitches) and Levi's stitches picture.

Art Study: Native American Art

2009-01-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

Our fall history study: Native American history and culture. I wrote a review of our Native American study using History Pockets: Native Americans, and promised an overview of our art studies. Finally, as promised, here it is. In addition to the History Pockets, we read a few pages from Native American Art (Art in History), whichever section dovetailed the best with the art project we'd planned.

Buckskin Painting (Pictured above)
From Native American Art (Art in History), Petra Press.

You need:
A brown grocery or lunch bag
Crayons
Household wax (or an old candle, in a pinch)
Thin dishtowel or rag
An iron

Cut and flatten a brown paper bag. Using crayon draw a picture on the bag. Crumple and flatten and crumple the paper a few times to make it soft and wrinkled. Rub wax all over the paper, cover with the dishtowel and iron.

Read: The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, Tomie DePaola and Storm Maker's Tipi, Paul Goble.

Coil Pots
Internet lesson plan here
You need:
Air-dry clay (You can find this at any craft store.)
A cup of water
Acrylic paints
Glaze, if desired

Coil pots are a fun and easy project. Many Native American peoples made pots and other useful items out of clay. Flatten your clay and cut circles for the base, roll snakes of clay, and coil them into pots. Dipping fingers into the water, then smoothing the water onto the coils allows the coils to hold together better. Let the pots dry according to the clay package directions, then paint with acrylic paints. If desired, paint with gloss once the paint has dried to make a shiny pot.

The fine young gents had a fine time with this project. So much so that I bought more clay when I went to the store-that-shall-not-be-named. (Shhhhh....I went to Walmart. It was next door to another stop, so I shopped there. Don't tell anyone who knows me.) The value of the coil pots was not necessarily in the end product. As you can see, despite our reading and looking at clay art online and in our art book, the pots don't necessarily look as though we're imitating Native American clay pots. The value of the clay pots was in the experiences with clay. What an adventure! The guys dutifully made their clay pots, but were most interested in finding out exactly what they could do with the clay. Make sure to include lots of time for experimentation.

Sand Painting
Lesson here

You need:
Posterboard, cardboard, or other fairly stiff paper
Pencils
Glue
Paintbrushes
Colored sand (buy it at the craft store, or color your own using play sand and tempera paint) in small dishes
Spoons
Lots of newspaper and a rimmed baking sheet

Easy idea. Really really messy. And I don't usually mind a mess. Definitely look at pictures of Native American sand painting beforehand. We got the desired result: An afternoon of color, a chance to experiment with new materials, an opportunity to look at a kind of art we'd not studied before and even better, to try it ourselves.

With older children, try this: Poetry and sand painting lesson

Dreamcatchers
Directions here at Enchanted Learning
You need:
A bendable twig
Thin wire
Twine or yarn
Beads and feathers

Dreamcatchers are fun and fairly simple to make. We used twigs from the back yard maple to make our hoops and fastened them with leftover wire from a beading craft kit. The fine young gents wanted to use our orange twine, but a yarn or a rougher string would probably work better, as the nylon twine was slippery against the slippery bark of the maple twig. The gents had a grand time decorating with the beads and feathers, and 3 months later, the dreamcatchers are still hanging on the fine young gents' bedposts.

Information, legends and directions for making dreamcatchers

More great directions for making Native American dreamcatchers

Dreamcatcher store, books and links

Clay bead necklaces
Lesson here
You need:
Air-dry clay
Clay tools or similar for carving lines and shapes into the wet clay
String or twine or leather laces
Glass beads (optional)
Blue paint

Make your beads out of clay-- flat, square, round. Experiment with different shapes and sizes. Once you've created a bead, etch designs and patterns into it using clay tools, bamboo skewers, or the wrong end of a cheap-o paintbrush. Let dry according to clay package directions. Paint blue. When dry, string them onto the string (with or without glass beads) using knots to hold the beads in place.

This project was our favorite. We got to play with clay again. The fine young gents were glowing over their beautiful necklaces and wore thema ll afternoon. Second-grade gent gave his away to the girl next door, and I noticed today that it's still hanging in her play space.

Foil Necklaces
From History Pockets: Native Americans

You need:
Paper and pencil
Scissors
Cardboard squares
Foil
Tape
Beads or macaroni beads
Glue
Yarn or string (about 18 inches)

Another favorite. Cut a 3x3 paper square. Draw a symmetrical design onto the square and set it aside. (The History Pockets unit provides a design for children to trace if they choose not to create their own.) Cut a 3x3-inch cardboard square and cover it with aluminum foil. Tape the foil at the back of the necklace. Using scissors or a pencil, punch two holes through the top of the square. Place your paper square with the design over the front of the foil-covered cardboard square and trace the design with your pencil, pressing hard. Gently lift away the design once you've finished tracing: The design will be etched into the foil. Decorate your foil square with tiny beads if desired. To make the necklace, put the ends of the string through the holes in your foil-covered square so that the ends hang out the back of the square. String beads (macaroni or otherwise) onto the string if desired. Tie the ends together at the top, leaving room to slip the necklace over your head.

Animal Masks
You need:
Animal stories or imagination activity (optional)
Mask-making materials such as paper mache or Rigid Wrap
Paint
Feathers, fur and other decorations

We made up our own mask study two years ago. (In two parts: Masking the Masks and Designing the Masks). This fall's History Pockets study included a mask project, but it involved coloring and cutting a paper drawing of a mask. We decided to make the real thing.

We'd been reading about Native American vision quests and totems and the kinds of animals living in proximity with Native American people, so to choose mask subjects, we used a guided imagination activity from Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children, by Joseph Bruchac. As I read out loud, the fine young gents imagined themselves running, leaping, flying through the forest, and when each gent opened his eyes he chose the animal he'd been imagining. We had a racoon, a deer and a black-capped chickadee. The deer changed his mind and decided he'd rather be a chickadee too, so that he could make a beak instead of antlers. The fine young chickadees were quite focused for this lengthy project, concerned with painting the bird colors just so, and begging for black feathers to glue onto the bird masks. The littlest racoon gent just loved the mess, and happily dabbed and globbed and painted and glued. The reulst was far more satisfying than a paper-and-marker project.

Native American masks as art at snowowl.com

Memory Poem Books

2009-01-28T13:56:00.000-08:00

What is Pink?

by Christina Rossetti

What is pink? A rose is pink
By the fountain's brink.
What is red? A poppy's red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? The sky is blue
Where the clouds float through.
What is white? A swan is white
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow? Pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? The grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? Clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? Why, an orange,
Just an orange!

Make a memory poem book

You need:
A poem
Blank papers
Colored pencils or crayons

Fold your papers in half to create your book. Copy one line or stanza of your poem on each page. Illustrate that page. The next day, read what you've written in your book before you move on to write and illustrate the next line. By the end of the poem, you'll have it memorized! Once your book is finished, punch holes in the fold and tie your book together with yarn or string. Voila!

Kindergarten gent memorizes his poems quickly and easily, and he ends up with a beautiful book that he's proud to share with others. Try What is Pink? by Christina Rossetti, A Apple Pie by Kate Greenway, 1, 2 Buckle My Shoe or choose another poem that you love!

Classic Poems for Children

Poetry Foundation

Explorations 4 kids: Poetry

Happy Birthday!

2009-01-25T17:47:00.000-08:00

Paint Prints

2009-01-23T14:53:00.001-08:00

Cookie sheet paint prints

You need:
Newspaper
Paint
Paper
Paintbrushes
A large cookie sheet for each child

Spread newspaper over your work surface. Set out the paints and brushes, paper, and a cookie sheet for each person.

Paint a picture onto the cookie sheet. Use a moderate amount of paint. Too little and the picture doesn't quite come out clearly, too much and the paint smears and blurs as you make the print.

Press your paper gently onto the sheet without wiggling the paper. It works best if you lift your hands to press all over the paper rather than smoothing the paper over the paint. Peel away your paper carefully.

Bright colors and simple strokes make a vivid interesting print.

If there's enough paint left on the sheet, you can make a second print. Once you've finished printing, you can add more paint to your existing cookie sheet picture to create a series of similar prints, or wash and dry the sheet and start over.

Variations:
Use plenty of paint, and use your print from the cookie sheet to transfer your print painting to a canvas or another piece of paper--a print of a print.
Paint large blocks of color onto the cookie sheet. Fingerpaint shapes, lines, squiggles, or a picture into your paint and print.
Use a paintbrush to paint fine details into your print once it's dried.
Paint your brother instead of the cookie sheet. (Not recommended. But fun.)

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. I forgot I'd promised an art project this afternoon. Making cookie sheet prints took five minutes to set up. The fine young gents spent nearly an hour painting and printing this afternoon, experimenting with shapes and colors, ways to paint and the process of making prints. We used an entire sketch pad and more.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-01-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

Balance

2009-01-14T15:06:00.000-08:00

I am driving myself crazy.

I see the value in structure, so I try to create a family routine and structure...And I see the value in flexibility and spontaneity, so I try to go with the flow.

I value music education and physical fitness, so my children are involved in choir and piano and sports...And I value downtime, time to rest and relax and play and daydream.

I value structured formal academics...And I value time spent pursuing our interests and learning what suits us in the moment.

I value exploring interests deeply and fully...And I value exposure to many different ideas, concepts, languages, experiences.

I value free spirits and light hearts and strong wills...and I value good manners and behavior.

I value school time, family time, work time, time to play with friends, time to read, time to talk, time to rest, time to daydream.

I want to devote my time to developing real friendships, to raising my children, to nurturing my marriage, to creating a comfortable home, to studying new ideas, to having new experiences and making wonderful memories.

I want it all. I want to have it all. I want to do it all.

The problem is that there simply isn't time for it all. We cannot spend hours watching the clouds, and still get in a good piano practice. It doesn't make sense to pay for scheduled activities like gymnastics and swimming and piano and choir, then take off for a week camping in the spring. A day spent playing with friends means a day of missed schoolwork. Creating a family routine that helps us measure the flow of our days is impossible if we drop everything at the spur of every moment in the name of spontaneity.

Living a thoughtful life, one in which we take responsibility for our choices and experiences, requires careful consideration not only of what we want to do, but of what we're giving up in order to do those things. In a sense this is the crux of our lives, for all of us who live a life that allows us these kinds of choices anyway. This is what life is all about. We create our lives through the choices that we make and the ways that we use our time, whether we choose to swing in the hammock or dig up the garden or go to a movie or drive to the beach.

I know we'll find the balance we need, and that once we do our lives will shift and shift and shift again. I am immensely grateful for the choices we've been given. Someday we'll miss these busy days.

Life is good.

True Story

2009-01-09T21:04:00.000-08:00

I got an email from a dear friend: "I sent you chocolate chip cookies!" it said, but no link. It made me smile that she'd been thinking of me and was sending me virtual cookies. I meant to email her to tell her she forgot to include the link, but I got sidetracked and forgot.

Fast forward a few days. I suddenly wanted chocolate chip cookies. I didn't want to make them all by myself. I went upstairs to beg my darling daughter to make cookies with her mother. Alas, she said no, and I slouched back down the stairs.

The fine young gents had finished bedtime stories on the couch. One gent opened the front door to let in the cat...."A package!" he cried. "We got a package!"

Guess what was inside?

The cookies were shortly followed by dear friend herself. We hung out this afternoon, sipping tea. Not very exciting, but a much-needed balm to the soul. I met my dear friends for dinner this evening. (Minus one, we missed you and ate an extra dessert in your name.)

It's been a rough few weeks, particularly with my lovely lady with autism, and I needed that time more than even I knew. Chocolate chip cookies for the tummy and chocolate chip cookies for the spirit.

Life is good.

Last Week's (Nearly) Wordless Wednesday: 2008

2009-01-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Wordless Wednesday: Paperwhites

2009-01-07T13:02:00.000-08:00

We must be doing something right

2008-12-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

For four days, my boys have been sharing their toys. Without a word from loving husband or me.

When these fine fine young gentlemen have opened multi-piece packs, say a track with several Hot Wheels, they chose which parts--cars, guys, swords--to give to their brothers. Not to play-with-for-now, or give-and-take-back. Give.

"That's mine," has almost always been followed by, "But you can try it when I'm done," or "Do you want a turn?"

I hear a fine young gent reply "Sure, you can have a turn!" or "In a minute I'll be done, then you can try" to a request of "Can I have a turn?"

They're generous with their time, too. "Want to play a game?" or "Will you help me?" has been followed by "Sure!"

Not every single time. After all, they're not perfect. Sometimes they're loud, or naughty, or cross. Sometimes they're even selfish. No one wants to share every thing, always, nor should they be expected to do so. But they're working it out peacefully together.

The desire of my heart for my young gents is that they grow up to love and treasure one another, to share good things and to speak words of peace and kindness. I am raising them not to be perfect in this moment, but to be fine gentle men who speak and live peace. I can see them growing loving hearts. Life is good.

'Twas the night after Christmas...

2008-12-26T20:58:00.000-08:00

...and all through the house...

wafts the smell of turkey broth, remnants of Christmas dinner, waiting to cool and go into the freezer. There's half a tin of fudge on the buffet, and there was leftover ham and turkey and sweet potatoes for lunch.

A Hot Wheels track runs across the middle of the living room floor, and Lego creations of all ships and sizes have been gathered from around the house to perch patiently at the ends of the fine young gents' beds, waiting to find out where they'll fly and what they'll be tomorrow. There's a large playground ball on the landing, resting after a day of getting bounced down the stairs and hauled back to the top to go again. A board game and a coloring book and a puzzle neatly stacked on the table, waiting for new homes on the shelf.

A brand-new dictionary (with modern words like email and internet) sits on the bookshelf, next to a new book. And yesterday I discovered that there were indeed a few things, chosen by people who know me and love me, that I needed (garden gloves) and wanted (a handmade ceramic bowl) and would love (a fat chicken for my mantel).

The fine young gents have been bathed and tucked into bed, reading books with crisp pages and that clean new-book smell.

The closets have been cleaned, and neatly labelled boxes and bags--Goodwill, The Relief Nursery, Friends--sit in the hallway. The tree is still blinking, but not for long. Boxes and ribbons and bags have piled up next to the upstairs closet to be organized and put away until next year. Soon Christmas will be packed away into the basement, up in the attic, out at the curb until we do it all again next year.

Love and peace to all, dear friends, to those of you we know and cherish, and to those we've never met.

Life is good.

I can't think of a single thing....

2008-12-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

I love this season. The stockings, the lights, the tree. Making cards and decorating cookies and putting together paper bag gifts for our young friends. Christmas carols. Candles and poinsettias and hot chocolate and letters to Santa.

Loving husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas. We've already had snow, and the only other thing I could think of is a new dictionary. Nothing else? he asked. Really, nothing else. I got shoes and books for my birthday, and I can't think of anything else that I want or need.

I already have everything I could want or need: Health, happiness, loving friends and family, a warm home, good food to eat. And books to read. Gifts under the tree are icing on the cake.

Life is good.

...in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

2008-12-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

Think: Rocks, rocks, rocks

2008-12-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

Think! Challenge: Rocks.
Choose 7 rocks of different shapes and sizes, all two inches or larger. Build the tallest tower you can build.

We're a little behind on the Think! challenges, what with snow, and holiday projects and outings, and tummyaches. But this challenge was fabulous, well worth doing just for fun. We weren't able to go outside to choose our rocks. Rocks over two inches in size are in short supply around here, and it's too cold outside to go digging around for rocks anyway. As luck would have it, we'd collected rocks on our last outing to the beach, and the boys had a rock collection in a small box, so we were able to track down nine large rocks. The fine young gents started out measuring all of the rocks to make sure the rocks were larger than two inches, which led to a discussion of how to measure sizes: Does it have to be taller than two inches when sitting on the table? Or does it just have to have a surface longer or taller than two inches? They decided that if they could find two inches of rock, it didn't matter if it was a long flat rock or a round rock. Lovely problem-solving there.

We had some challenging shapes. Knowing nothing about rock-building, it took me quite some time to build the structure above. I didn't measure it, so I have no idea how tall it is, but I dealt with quite a few tumbles before I was able to get a tower that stayed up.

Calvin's first completed structure was about 6-1/2 inches. He continued building, but wasn't interested in measuring his other structures.

The challenge he was most interested in was self-imposed: How to make a rock bridge. The two gents worked together on that puzzle for quite a while.
Lovely learning opportunities in this challenge:
Vocabulary--balance, stability, convex, concave, wedge
Engineering--how surfaces fit together, finding ways to stabilize a structure, building different structures with the same materials
Persistence--how to maintain a positive attitude when your structure keeps tumbling
Teamwork--working together, listening to the ideas of others and incorporating them into your own
Fun!
Look at that smile! Tolly built a 4-1/2 inch structure. He was just interested in building something that would stay up. He also spent a long time building new towers and bridges once he'd measured his first structure.

The challenge for me: Knowing that if only he'd try this or that, he could make his structure taller. But, as with his brother, getting the tallest structure possible wasn't as important to him as it was to his rule-following momma. He enjoyed the building and the measuring. He was happy with his final structure.

A good challenge inspires thought, fun, and variation. We only had one set of large rocks, so while his brother built with rocks larger than one inch, Tolly built with the rejected smaller rocks. He had a grand time measuring and knocking down his small towers.

While these fine young gents worked on their rock structures, their youngest brother built block towers and knocked them down. I'd intended the Think! activity as our morning warm-up, thinking fifteen, twenty minutes. By the time we were all done building, more than an hour had passed, and the rocks were left out for three more days so that the boys had a chance to build and rebuild and rebuild again. Lovely!

Consider trying this week's Holiday Challenge: Build a tree! It looks like fun.

2008-12-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

Correggio, Nativity (Holy Night) - 1528-1530

Whom have we, Lord, like you?

The great one who became small,

the wakeful one who slept,

the living one who died,

the king who abased himself to ensure honor for all,

blessed is your honor.

It is right that heavenly beings worship your humanity.

It is right that earthly beings worship your divinity.

The heavenly beings were amazed to see how small you became,

and earthly ones to see how exalted.

(4th century prayer, Ephrem the Syrian)

A late Wordless Wednesday

2008-12-18T10:26:00.001-08:00

Think!: Paper Hats

2008-12-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Think! challenge, Thanksgiving week: Using only three sheets of newspaper, and masking tape, create a hat.

On Thanksgiving Day, I set aside newspaper and tape, thinking that the fine young gents and even the lovely ladies, along with their eight Busy Farm cousins, might enjoy a challenge. Alas, the children disappeared down the stairs to the basement and weren't much seen or heard from until the turkey was served.

Last week, the fine young gents and I finally made hats.
Tolly decorated his hat with masking tape designs.

He was presented with quite a dilemma: How to hold his hat and tape it at the same time, when Mom is saying, "I can't help you right now. How will you solve that problem?" The solution? Ask his brother for help:
I couldn't help because I was trying to make a hat brim, and paper flowers, neither successfully. Levi loved the hat, however, and wore it off and on for the rest of the afternoon.

Cal spent a frustrating fifteen minutes trying to make something, not sure what. He crumpled the paper in disgust, calmed himself down, and started over. I was quite strict about the directions, which stated only masking tape and paper, so he put his scissors away and tore out shapes for decorations (which you can't see well in the picture, bummer) to tape all the way around his hat. Here he is with the final product:

The shape reminds us both of the hats that Grandpa Dick brought back from Morocco.

His newspaper hat is a treasured possession, still hanging on his bedpost.

We're hoping to get back into the swing of Think!ing after the holidays. For now, we'll have to squeeze our Think!ing between making cookies, gingerbread houses, decorating, singing and enjoying this season of lights and music.

Brothers

2008-12-10T17:43:00.001-08:00

Tuesday Ten: Blast from the past

2008-12-09T10:47:00.000-08:00

Killing two birds with one stone today. Today's Tuesday Ten brought to you courtesy of an open blogger "tag": Link to seven past posts with the same theme. But it's Tuesday, and "Tuesday Seven" just doesn't have the same ring.

Tuesday Ten: This Good Life Re-Runs

1. Blueberry Cobbler

Choosing perfect days.

Just lately I've realized how quickly the time flies by. The baby I rocked yesterday is tall and beautiful, dancing her way out of girlhood. Tomorrow I'll be rocking my grandbabies thinking "Where did my life go?" I wish I'd learned sooner to choose happiness over regrets, and to choose contentment over resentment. Today I will choose to remember the blueberries and sunshine. I will give the people I value the grace and love they deserve instead of grumping about their faults, and I will extend that grace to myself. I will treasure the wonderful moments of my life and theirs so that when I rock the babies of my babies my stories will be of picking blueberries and running through the sprinkler and reading good books and laughing in the hammock.

That's what this blog is partly about: It allows me to remember and record the sweetness that is my life, to remember just how blessed I really am.

There's a darn good cobbler recipe at the end of that post. Mmmmmmmmmm. Cobbler.

2. Boobies

Nudity in art.

Today's work was this painting, Nude with Hexagonal Quilt, George Bellows...Seven-year-old gent, giggling and pointing: "Look, boobies."

His middle brother immediately covered his mouth and started giggling. "Boobies. Hehehehe."

Sigh. Really?

I have to decide how to handle nudity in art before I've had my coffee?

Never a dull moment here.

3. Grandpa's Store

The lovely ladies and fine young gents in front of Grandpa's store, 2004-2008.

4. Tuesday Ten: Who'd-a Thunk It? and a companion post, Road Map

Ten Things I Never Thought I'd Be...at Forty.

Well logically, of course, I knew in my head that someday I'd turn forty years old. Duh. But do we really believe it in our hearts before we get there? Suddenly thirty-nine rolled around and I panicked: "Oh my gosh, I'm really going to be forty! I still feel twenty-five!" When I was in my twenties, I thought that once I reached my forties my life was pretty much over. I had my whole life mapped out, but somehow the road disappeared into the mists somewhere around my thirty-ninth birthday.

...and am I where I wanted to be at forty? Hell no.

I haven't overcome my many faults. I am still impatient, cross, hasty, impulsive, sentimental, lazy, shy, and not very serious or ambitious. But now I like myself anyway. I've come to terms with the fact that my hair is never going to be glossy and thick and straight. I've decided to take up the guitar just so that I can learn something new. I'd still like to move to the country but it's not going to ruin my life if it never happens. At 40, I wake up grateful for the blessings I've been given instead of feeling unhappy about the things that I don't have.

5. Peace, Peace, Peace
...on earth, Goodwill to men. Music can bring me to tears, as can innocence, and sweetness and beautiful young voices.

...something magical happened. They forgot they were performing and they just sang together. Beautifully. Sweetly. Simply. "Peace, peace, peace on earth...."
The elderly woman next to me stopped talking. The staff stopped to listen. I had tears in my eyes. A woman sitting in the front row quavered "Beautiful. Beautiful," when the girls finished their song...in that moment they sang of peace on earth and meant it. When these children sing "Let us all sing together of peace on earth," they still believe that peace is possible.

More posts about peace and music.

6. Hangin'

Feet in the hammock.

7. What We Need

This child, her presence in my life, our life together and the challenges we face, has given me gifts that cannot be measured. Compassion and patience. A challenging life that requires my active participation every single day. Appreciation of even the smallest steps. Grace. Boundless love. Knowledge that when I get to the very edge, to my limit, I can stretch just a little further. Friendships. Knowing that even when I stumble and fall-- when I yell, when I cry, when I whine-- I will eventually pick myself up and keep walking.

Faith.

I am in tears. I needed to read this today. Every day. Living with, parenting a teen with autism has been a bit like living atop a live volcano and trying to keep it from erupting.

8. And to think that I saw it.....

My life is like this. Really. It is.

More A Day in the Life posts.

9. You can fart in front of your friends...

Friends love you, farts and all.

They'll laugh at you. They'll remember and poke fun at you for the next twenty years. You may hear for the rest of your life about the weekend we all discovered you were lactose-intolerant, or the time when.... But there's no need to feel awkward, to be embarrassed, to wish to fall through the floor. You can just apologize, or not, and move on because your friends already know you fart. It's not a secret.

10. Fishing with Grandpa.

Pictures and posts from our summer fishing trips.

This is how we create memories for our children. My children will remember Grandpa Ed hooking fish and hollering, "C'mon now! Come and get this one! Reel it in!" They'll remember learning to cast by themselves for the first time. They'll remember holding a slippery fish in their hands.

Life is good.