Winding up for the year - rambling post

I've discovered myself infected by the same end-of-the-school-year lassitude that always affected me when I was at school. Who wants to do lessons now that winter's over, our brief spring is waning, and summer is upon us? On the other hand, now we can move back into the basement, because it's no longer too cold down there to work (have to get a portable heater for next year), in fact it's downright wonderful when the rest of the house is steaming. (Speaking of which, I'm getting quotes today and tomorrow for central air installation...David is fairly determined to go a summer without it, we'll see.)

I've taken some of this wanting-to-be-out-of-doors restlessness and channeled it into school: I decided we should build a map of the neighborhood, so most mornings for the past two weeks we start the day with a walk. Sometimes we put on landmarks, sometimes we count steps with our pedometer, sometimes we time how long it is from here to there with our stopwatch, sometimes we put the houses with numbers on and color them in to match the color of the house.

We also are volunteering at the Nature Center in Mumford, once per week in June. Last week we (ok, mostly I) pulled garlic mustard, that invasive weed, that was cluttering up the main yard at the Nature Center. Today is our second day, we'll see what that brings.

On my birthday (May 5) we had gone for a walk down in Penn Yan, and along the trail Madison found a large bone, very old, quite clean. We decided to bring it with us. Madison dubbed it a Mammoth Bone and she persists in calling it that, although I thought it was horse. We brought it to the Nature Center last week for a diagnosis, and Liz thinks it's a cow bone -- either the tibia or the fibrula, whichever is the one that goes from the hip socket to the knee (note to self: for pity's sake, look this up!). We donated it to the Nature Center for their Touch Table. Surprisingly, Ella was a lot more reluctant than Madison to leave it there, couldn't figure out why, usually it's Madison who panics at the idea of being separated from something that's hers.

The other thing getting in the way of getting work done is MY work, which seems to have picked up lately. I keep having to talk with clients, or do actual work, or whatnot. Let me confess that school goes MUCH better when I forget about work and give the girls my full, planned attention for a couple of hours, rather than have them work and me intermittently check it while I'm doing my own.

So I long for the last week of June, when they start camp, and when I can REALLY get things done. They're going to drama camp the first week, off the second week when Tatiana and Dario will be here, then morning ballet (Ella)/ history (Madison), then history (both, though Ella only in the afternoons), then horseback riding (morning), then nature, then off to Chicago, then YMCA camp with the Maughlins, then down to Tata's for a few days so that I can look after the kids while she gets ready for the school year, then a couple weeks off, then off to the 5-day Homeschooling Cruise to the Bahamas over Madison's birthday, which is Sept 10. And the summer is over.

Have I officially signed them up for any of this? Of course not. Have to light a fire under me own arse.

I keep realizing how miserable Madison is at spelling, so we're focusing on that more lately. God, she's clueless. She does, though, remember some of the rules, so I'm seizing on that. Yesterday I did spelling for a long time with both her and Ella. We chose words from Harry Potter. Would you believe that this kid, who has been obsessed with Harry Potter for at least nine months, who can discuss the most intricate little logical details from the books, initially spelled his name HAARE POTTR yesterday morning? I find this absolutely fascinating. We spent a lot of time yesterday, after school at various times, discussing words that are like "POTTER" and "MUGGLE." We'll keep plugging away at it.

It's actually good for her to have things she's not good at. There's no pretending that she's good at spelling right now, and by not mincing words about this, it lets her know that when she's good at something, she REALLY IS, there is no artificial praise going on, she can take genuine pride in it. There's no shame in her not being good at spelling right now. She'll get better. She's getting better at handwriting, she really is, although she's still not good at that, either. (I think getting better at spelling will help her get better at handwriting, she hates writing things that are so badly spelled she can't read her own thoughts.)