pi-RIT sale

We did the RIT Math Club fundraising sale on Friday. The name of the math club is "Pi-RIT" so the girls dressed up as pirates.

We got cider from Wegmans, made a great chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cooks Illustrated, and some great pumpkin bread that I've made since forever (and which is a terrific way to get both pumpkin and stone ground whole wheat flour into the kids).

I thought it would be neat to get some funky cellophane paper, a ribbon, and some cheap silk flowers that were three-to-a-bunch for 50 cents from Michael's. So for about an extra 35-40 cents, we were able to price the breads at $5 instead of $3.50. Yay, capitalism.



Here they are selling.



Unfortunately, the nice RIT kids, being, well, kids, didn't think about whether we'd have actual traffic, so the receipts didn't quite cover costs. Ah well, that just meant that they didn't have to give any to the math club, and I let them split what they made after giving me back some of the cost.

They also did a cider taste test, which was a big hit. We got cider from three different farm markets around, and had people choose which one they liked best:



They like each other. Really. Despite snarking at each other sometimes.

Clarence Thomas

Yesterday, David gave me the gift of a luxury almost unimaginable these days -- a few hours by myself to read Clarence Thomas's new book, My Grandfather's Son. Actually, he gave me the weekend so that I could catch up on some work that desperately needs catching up on, but I was at the top of the list for this book at the Penfield library and so I took some time for myself and read. (Can't think when I've done that recently, other than in snatches here and there of David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing, through which I am slowly making my way in between all of the important stuff in life.)

I was disappointed with the book.

I thought perhaps Thomas was going to give us some insight into his intellectual journey from early-70s-angry-young-socialism to originalist jurisprudence. Nope. It was a personal journey from birth to Anita Hill, which some people might find inspiring in the sense that it does a pretty good job at laying out how badly white liberal guilt has served blacks, and how noninterference by government is far better than interference. Other than that, it was pretty much strict-upbringing-by-grandfather-blah-blah-blah-Anita-Hill-blah-blah-blah-God.

The book wasn't badly written, but it was not in the least interestingly written. I had hoped that Thomas's laying out of his life story might be wrapped up in penetrating commentary and perspective from his current position in life. Nope. Just pretty much a bare-bones laying out of the facts. And lots of God's will thrown in for kicks.

Ho-hum.

George and Martha

James Marshall's birthday was yesterday.

Adrienne, children's librarian extraordinaire, reminds us in this lovely post.

How could I have forgotten? We celebrated Thelonius Monk's birthday yesterday. I will have to do justice to Marshall next year.

Today's birthday is Henry Heinz, a man who looms equally important in Ella's life, in terms of influence.

Piano!

Here is Ella playing the piano in the ultimate piano-playing outfit:


It's Thelonius Monk's birthday, by the way.

Fall Fun Fotos

Yesterday, we went to Holiday Hollow, the country's only venue of its kind dedicated to celebrating Halloween. They "put the happy back in Happy Halloween," as I wrote in my review of Holiday Hollow a few years ago.

I missed Holiday Hollow when we were in Virginia. (OK, I missed ALL of Rochester.) I'm feeling particularly happy to be back here, because it's fall, which is Rochester's greatest time of year. And, I confess, I dearly love getting free tickets to all of the great places and performances around here (perhaps out of proportion to how much I should like it--maybe it's the Jersey Girl coming out in me). Organizations want the visibility, so they want me to go and review them and write about how much my kids liked the experience. Who am I to refuse?

So here are some photos from yesterday (you can click on them to make them bigger). I'll be updating my review soon, although Holiday Hollow hasn't changed all that much.







Today, it was Columbus Day and all of the local kids had off school. We did school this morning, but then in the afternoon, we went to Gro-Moore Farms which is not far from RIT. It's a typical local farm market that puts in some activities for kids on weekends in the fall. In my opinion, my kids were a little old for it, and I'm glad we didn't pay the $9 pay-one-price fee that would have let them do everything for free. I let them do the big slide and the pumpkin painting, and bought them some doughnuts and a slushie, and then let them do the free stuff. They had a good time, and I got some good photos:





Unusual for Madison, she's photographed very well the last few days. Don't you think?

22 down, 178 to go!

It's Girl Scout Cookie Time!

The girls had their big Cookie Kick-Off party last night for the Penfield Brownies/Girl Scouts. Today at 10am they were officially allowed to go out and sell.

Allowed.

There is a goal of 100 boxes per child. I have two children.

Madison wants to sell 1000 boxes. If we sell 1000 boxes, the prize is a video camera.

We went out this afternoon for an hour. We went around the block. They were happy, smiling, cute little Brownies. Only one house at which people were home refused them. We got nine people at home. 22 boxes.

And I am wiped out.

There is a new idea that Troop 835 will be doing this year, which is to offer to let them add on boxes for soldiers overseas. Boy, did that work -- half of the people decided to buy a box or two for the soldiers, too.

Let's see...we get to keep 55 cents for every box we sell. That's an hour of work I did, and Madison and Ella did, for the $12.10 our troop will get to keep. If we keep it up at 22 boxes per hour, that's only...nine more hours of this before we meet our quota.

When are we, as a culture, going to give up on all of this and just admit that it's a better use of our time to just, say, pay our own way? Heck, I'd even pay the way of other people's little Brownies if I could just opt out. Everyone knows we all hate doing this, but no one will admit it. And the girls love it. At least for the first hour. Then they start arguing about who is going to ring the doorbell and when are we going to go home because they're thirsty. And I, hungry for any excuse, am happy to hightail it home.

But, I should be grateful. David's cousin Connie was the Cookie Mom for her daughter's Brownie troop last year. And their cookie season was January! They tramped around for 30 days in January, and because they were probably the only ones brave enough to go out in the cold and snow, little Jessie sold over 500 boxes.

Anyway, if anyone wants to buy cookies (or, even better, add on one for the troops!), you can check them out at http://www.girlscoutcookies.org/meet_cookies.asp. And then email me at ross(at)axton.com. They're $3.50 per box. I will pay for shipping.

I know, I'm wimping out here.

Maybe someone has a bright entrepreneurial idea for how to sell them in bulk. If so, let me know!

One month into the 2007-2008 year

Well, this education thing seems to be working.

Math-U-See Beta is too slow for Ella. We're speeding it up by doing only 1-2 workbook pages per lesson right now. We're also starting to teach her the multiplication tables. She understands the concept of multiplication; now it's time to start the memorization.

Ella is reading much better than she was one month ago. The slope on the learning curve seems to be getting a little steeper. (And, as posted below from the other day, she's started to make the effort to read on her own.)

She's started to tell time much better. Still needs practice.

Aside from math, Madison is more in the process of learning stuff, rather than learning skills. She's pretty much nailed multi-digit multiplication, it's just a matter of getting a little more accurate (I'd say 80% of the problems she does are totally right, then 20% have arithmetic errors.) We did area/perimeter of rectangles and triangles. She liked that. Now for a review of fractions.

I'd say Madison has come farthest in the past month in music, both theory and in her ability to read notes both for piano and for singing. I thank the very rigorous demands of the Bach Children's Chorus for this, mostly. We have to practice hard, every day...I say "we" because she's still too young to do this all on her own, and it REALLY helps to have me play the piano and help her get the notes and words right, rather than only have her listening to the CD. She has her first concert on Oct 27, and they're singing Ode to Joy (she still needs to get down the German words), Simple Gifts (my favorite, FAVORITE hymn), and All Things Bright and Beautiful. I'm really grateful for this group; the girls will get to sing all of that wonderful sacred music that they would miss in school or in church. She's singing alto.

Also, the girls started piano lessons just last week with their new teacher, and already they're starting to get the sense of reading music. Their last teacher wrote out the note-letters on the page, and we had little stickers on the keyboard that showed the different key names. Now, they're being made to learn the notes, and they're doing just fine.

Ella is displaying the same learning method that Madison did about piano, although actually about six months earlier than Madison:

At first, she played by this method: Look at note. Look at note letter under note. Find note on piano. Strike it. Ignore time value of note. Look at next note. Et cetera.

Now, you can tell that Ella is actually listening to the music that she's creating, and relating the notes on the page *to the melody*, and letting the anticipation of the next note *by ear* play a large role in identifying the next key to strike, checking to see that it corresponds to the note on the page. It's an entirely different approach, and I watched Madison do this at about the time she turned 7.

I'm discovering that Madison has an uncanny ability to memorize. She's had a lot of memorization in the past month: Lots of words for the Chorus, a play for drama, and poetry for school. She's great. It's one of those effortless things for her. Cool. That should serve her well.

It's serving her well as we're writing our book, too. We've picked that back up, on Wednesdays. We're now deep into the research for the nitty gritty of it. A group of home-schooled kids find a treasure chest containing clues in the form of a list of pages and paragraphs from popular children's (mostly) mystery literature up through 1976 (Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, The Great Brain, Encyclopedia Brown, etc). They have to hunt down the references, which turn out to be a list of Rules for Being Good Detectives. Then, once they have the list compiled, they use the rules to figure out where the treasure chest came from. So, Madison and I are now in the process of going through lots and lots of books to find good places that describe rules for detecting. We're even using My Side of the Mountain and The Swiss Family Robinson, because these guys really have to use their minds to figure out what's going on. (In our book, the kids discuss the books and what the passages mean...my theory being that this unique romp through classic kid lit will inspire contemporary readers to pick up those books.) So Madison is doing a lot of reading, which for her is simply a pleasure (hey! I'm doing this for school), and she's also able to recall specific passages from books with relative ease.

Spelling is better. Ella is good, Madison is getting better. They're liking the WRTR annotation method, it especially seems to anchor spelling in Madison's mind. We only started that this week. I'm looking forward to getting the WRTR book I ordered Sunday.

They're both liking grammar a lot, Madison particularly. They both love logic. I must get new age-appropriate logic workbooks, they're almost at the end of theirs but neither is really ready to move up a level, they just want more.

We do Spanish twice per week, and we should be doing sign language twice per week except it keeps going by the wayside.

Haven't made too much progress on history or science. Too busy doing other things. History is ancient history (literally). Science WAS the human body for the week before we went on the cruise, now it's just talking about things as they come up in the world. May try to get going on this more.

They have a cooking class on Mondays, and horseback riding on Mondays, too. Every day, they figure out how many more days until the next horseback riding class. (Wah for Columbus Day next week! No class!)

Girl Scout Cookie sales start on Saturday. Anyone who wants a box or three or ten mailed to them should let me know. Click here to meet the cookies.

Cheers for Cheerios

Today, Ella spontaneously picked up and worked her way through reading a book, alone.

It was Things That Are Most In the World by Judi Barrett, and it came as a little paperback pamphlet in our new box of Cheerios that we opened this morning.

It was laborious, but the pictures are great, and they helped. And she did it for PLEASURE. Holy cow.

She came to me with a word:

"Mommy, what does P - O - U - N - D spell?"

"Well, we know from our Writing Road to Reading cards that the OU sound has four sounds. What are they?"

She needed a little prompting, but then once she had the four sounds, she went back and applied them to the word and figured it out. And then kept reading.

I'm trying to be conservative, so maybe it's not time for serious YIPPEES, but I'm thinking this First at least deserves a toast at dinner.

Food

What took me so long to try tacos with my picky eaters?

They're fun to make, and...wonder of wonders...the girls like them. Madison loved the beef, although Ella prefers meatless tacos (tortilla, sauce, and lots of cheese).

Excuse me while I go worship at the altar of the Food Gods.

Chalk math

I have to rest up from the weekend! On Saturday, we went to Conklin's Gully in Naples, NY (at the south end of Canandaigua Lake) and by a slight mistake missed the path that was near where we parked our car; instead we climbed the *actual waterfall* up to the gulch. Good thing we've had no rain this summer, or we wouldn't have been able to do it. As it was, climbing the rocks was very slippery (both Madison and I fell in the creek) and somewhat hazardous, and quite strenuous and nerve-wracking. It started off fine:



Then got a bit harder...


And harder...



But then you found yourself in this magnificent gully where you know few people have been, and which can't be accessed from the actual path, which we didn't know existed until the way back.


It wasn't really dangerous in that if you slipped and fell, you landed about four feet below in the water with some cuts and bumps, rather than actually, say, dying. But the payoff was great, to find yourself in this awesome enclosed area with cliffs all around you. I kept telling the girls, "If you start to fall, CLOSE YOUR MOUTH," especially Madison, who is both more likely to talk on the way down, and has more to lose, in the form of actual adult teeth.

Of course, when I made my own undignified slide down the side of the rock into the water, I ignored my own advice. They promptly informed me that they wouldn't let me forget it. "Hey," I said, "They're your teeth. Do what you think best." (Maybe they can think faster than I on the way down.)

And then, yesterday, I took 2 hours to scrub the kitchen floor. It's a small-stone floor that has a lot of grout. It hides the dirt well in its crevices, but it hides a LOT of dirt well and it's hard to get out. I got fed up with all of our feet getting blacker as time went on. I kept thinking, "I'm meant for better things than to spend this time scrubbing the floor," as I was damning the previous owners. I actually didn't feel the same as I was cleaning out the entire storage room (after all, it's all OUR stuff), put in shelves, and reorganied everything. It looks fantastic, actually. But it took me the whole afternoon. And that's all a very long way of saying that in the storage room, I FOUND THE CHALK. Hence the title of this post.

This morning, we really didn't get going on school until 10:30, and we had to leave by 12:30 to get to gym-and-swim, so we didn't get a lot done. (Don't worry, Laura, we didn't skip WRTR.) I let Madison and Ella do "chalk math" instead of actual rigorous math. Madison taught Ella 6 x 4, 6 x 6, and 6 x 7.

Small personal success

It's not exactly bragging, is it, to post a comment I got from a parent who reads my KOA newsletter:

Thanks so much for publishing the link to the Randy Pausch lecture. I watched it and it really affected me. I even had a dream about it last night, complete with brick walls. My October 1 Resolution: To live a good life!

I am still getting your newsletter, even though I moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the end of July. I keep subscribing because you include nuggets of wisdom and links like this one each week. They mean a lot to me. Thank you so much!

This is exactly the kind of effect I was hoping to have.

WRTR Day 2

Can you imagine my happiness (that's happ-short-i-ness) when I walked into the bedroom this afternoon and discovered Madison holding up the WRTR flash cards in her left hand, and the fingers of her right hand, and quizzing Ella about the pronunciations? And they were both having fun.

Area/perimeter of triangles

Madison was so enthused about learning about the area of triangles that she asked after lunch if she could spend the rest of the day writing a report/speech about the area of triangles. Who am I to say no? She's doing that now.

I loved the "click" moment she experienced today. It was when I gave her a triangle of base=3 height=3 and asked her the area ("Oh! It's 4-and-a-half"!). After that, a triangle with base 9 and height 7 was no problem. And everything else was easy.

Before I did triangles, I reviewed rectangle perimeter/area. (After she got that, I split one of the rectangles in half, into two triangles, and asked her what the area of the triangle must be.) Anyway, she was very pleased to figure out (with only me doing examples as guidance) that a 4 x 4 square was "the boundary" (her words) between when perimeter is bigger than area, and when area is bigger than perimeter.

Randy Pausch

Publishing KidsOutAndAbout.com is part of my personal mission to spread reason among parents. My strategy is to say things in such a way that they seem to be uncontroversial, and to say it warmly and cheerfully so that it's easy for them to believe that they *already* believe what I'm writing, and I'm just bringing their attention to it. I'm pleased to say that my Friday morning e-newsletter goes out to 6000 readers right now. This is from this morning's newsletter:

Have you heard of professor Randy Pausch, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh? Carnegie Mellon asks their great professors to think deeply about the important things in life, and to present hypothetical "Last Lectures." Pausch's Last Lecture had a profundity that some of the others hadn't, because Pausch has terminal pancreatic cancer. Pausch, who is a computer science professor and developer of virtual reality technology, has three children, ages 5, 2, and 1. His Last Lecture, entitled "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams," became a sensation around the world in the past week and a half, and thousands of people have already contacted him to tell him what a difference his talk made in their lives.

Jeffrey Zaslow reported on his talk in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Zazlow's article (which really got me thinking last week) can be found here:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119024238402033039.html

I found a link to the video presentation of Pausch's talk here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362421849901825950&hl=en

Randy Pausch's web site says it will have an online link to the typed article soon.

Why was the talk so affecting? Professor Pausch only has a few months left of life, but he is happy with how he is using it. His Last Lecture reminds us how easy it is to put aside what is really important in life for "later"--which rarely comes. Pausch says that he has made sure to fulfill all of his childhood dreams, which in his case include winning giant stuffed animals at carnivals, walking in zero gravity, designing Disney rides, and writing a World Book entry.

He reminds us that even though it's so easy to say no to things our children want to do that are slightly inconvenient, he was profoundly affected by his parents' permission to decorate the walls of his bedroom any way he wanted; in his case, it was with etchings of mathematical equations.

Reading about Professor Pausch helped me reorient my own priorities as a parent: If (God forbid) my own child were dying of cancer in 40 years, what would I want *her* to say about her childhood in her Last Lecture? And how does that affect my day-to-day decisions and actions with the girls? It occurred to me that every action that we take, at root, is either good for us or bad for us: Even if only in a small way, it is either life-sustaining, or life-destroying. Professor Pausch reminds us that in even the smallest actions, we should choose life, for ourselves and our children. I have been finding it an interesting, and useful, filter with which to view the world this week. Think about it.

William of Ockham

Yesterday's Birthday of the Day was William of Ockham (well, it wasn't, really, it was Meatloaf's birthday, but when there's no one particularly worthy of the Birthday of the Day from a cultural literacy perspective, we substitute someone whose birthday we don't know). Then, at the end of the day, we give nickels for every correct answer.

"What was William of Ockham, Ella?"

"He was an inventor? The inventor of the Razor?"

Dumb mommy moment

As editor of KOA, I often get invited to opening nights or dress rehearsals of shows so that I can see them in advance and review them for my readers. I don't always have the time to write formal reviews, especially of performances that aren't stellar. I don't have time to write bad reviews!

One group that I've reviewed before is A Magical Journey Through Stages, which is a terrific Broadway-revue type performing group that consists of the very best performers from community theater from around Rochester. I wrote a review in the spring about their Times Square performance.

Last night, I took the girls to see their dress rehearsal for Grease, which opens this weekend. Now, for pity's sake, I was IN Grease in high school. So there is no excuse for the fact that I took them last night, I just simply DIDN'T THINK. If I had thought about it, I might have remembered:

It's about kind of ratty kids who are romanticized as they struggle with growing up.

It's all about peer pressure. ("Do real teenagers act like that, Mommy, or is it just in the show? Is it just in the 50's?")

They smoke and drink on stage (although these kids just held the cigarettes rather than lighting them).

They use the word "crap" and other slang a LOT, plus sometimes make lewd gestures.

Stealing hubcaps and gang fighting is romanticized.

Danny is a bit aggressive in the car at the drive-in movie with Sandy. ("Mommy, what's he trying to get her to do? She already kissed him.")

Rizzo thinks she's pregnant toward the end ("Mommy, what does "knocked up" mean?).

The play (written in the 70s, I think) doesn't in any way come to any good resolution about what kids are supposed to do to sort through the issues that they all encounter. Danny joins the track team, although he leaves it in the end after making a rude gesture to the coach, and comes to treat Sandy a little bit better in front of his friends Toward the end, Sandy throws off her "good little girl" image and her poodle skirts after seeing what Rizzo is going through, sings "Goodbye To Sandra D" and starts dressing like a slut.

So, okay, I screwed up here. What was I thinking, taking them?

Ella is happy to listen to the music, generally follow the story ("how it's hard for teenagers to figure out how to act with each other when they're becoming boyfriend and girlfriend") and see the dancing and the costumes, and, as in all things, without needing to penetrate too deeply. Madison, of course, insists on figuring out *exactly* what is going on at every moment, which made it particularly difficult last night.

I will admit to (temporarily) taking the coward's way out when Madison tugged hard at my arm after the whole "don't tell anyone I think I'm pregnant" scene. "What's going on? What just happened? What's Rizzo singing about? Why is Kinicki upset?" "I'll tell you later," I whispered back. I confess that I was kind of hoping it would fade from her mind during the rest of the play. But as I was driving home, I realized that this can't be the way I deal with things. She's eight, I'm sure I'm smart enough to find some age-appropriate way to describe the things she wants to know. So as a matter of principle, I asked in the car:

"So, ok, anyone have any questions about the show?"

"YES," she said. "What was that, toward the end, before the song Rizzo sang that I didn't understand, before her conversation with Sandy? What was the thing with the secret?"

Sigh.

"Well," I replied. "Rizzo thought she might be pregnant. And she was really upset about that."

"Why?"

"Because she's a teenage girl, and it's bad for a teenage girl to be pregnant. People aren't old enough to be parents when they're teenagers. So she was very upset."

"Why was it a secret?"

"When you're really upset and you want to talk to one person, it can help. But you don't necessarily want everyone to know that you're upset, so you ask that person not to tell others. But her friend went and did that right away so everyone knew, and that made Rizzo even more upset." (Oh please oh please don't have her ask about why Kinicki was mad, and what Rizzo's comment, 'Don't worry, you don't know the guy' meant.) (She didn't.)

So...I should have known better. Of course, none of this is a disaster, but I'd prefer for them to experience these issues when they're a little older and actually interested in them.

Day 1 of Writing Road to Reading

I talked with Laura pretty extensively yesterday, FINALLY getting my bottom in gear to do a more formal investigation of The Writing Road to Reading method.

Ella has not been struggling with reading, but there has been no "magic" moment where she just reads, yet. Madison had a magic moment right before she was six, where she just decided she was damned well going to read the Boxcar Children books, and so she sat down and just forged ahead, ignoring the words she didn't know. Ella is 5 months past six and I know if she just decided to focus a lot and just try it on her own all the time, like when she encounters signs, then I know something would click. Don't get me wrong, she's a fairly competent reader and speller for six, but I know it could be better.

And for Madison, well of course she reads as well and as fast many adults, but I've written before about how she has not been focusing on spelling. When you give her something just out of context to spell, she's terrible. Even though our AVKO spelling has been working quite well and she's getting better, things haven't really "clicked" where she's spelling lots of words that she hasn't memorized. That kid needs a method and a theory for everything, and so that's why English spelling hasn't really progressed for her.

Well, I think this method will really work, for both of them. It's a combination of memorizing all of the possible sounds (in order!) for letters and letter combinations, and then writing words with their representational symbols to make it clear which letters make which sounds.

I already had the phonogram cards from way back when Laura first recommended this to me (YEARS ago), and so I started today just flashing them to the girls and getting them to say the various sounds for each in order. They actually liked this. Ella went up to Card 42 before I could see it was a little much, and Madison went through the whole stack of 70. They like it. I went online and bought The Writing Road to Reading : The Spalding Method of Phonics for Teaching Speech, Writing and Reading, volume 4 for 6 whole dollars today, including shipping. Eventually, we'll be writing words with the notation for the various sounds, which is a kind of method Madison should really like, and which should really cement the spelling in her head.

Laura, did I mention that you're right? You're right. As it says in the little blurb in the upper right-hand corner of the blog, I'm grateful for your expertise.

I don't often quote from other mom blogs

This, though, is from a post by Moreena, who writes "The Wait and the Wonder." This post from her blog is entitled "Pompeii":

Later, back at home with two advils dissolving in my stomach and Frankie stretched on top of my chest, I remembered this story I heard one time, who knows where, about a mother found in the remains of Pompeii. She was curled up, her back an arch, and under the sheltering bridge of her body was found her child, as if she hoped to hold back the unstoppable tide of destruction with just her body alone. As if love might be the protection, the miracle, or at least the easing of inevitable.

The urge to protect is so strong. Even when the volcano is hidden inside your very own body. Even when bending over your child in a sheltering embrace brings the volcano closer. When the goodnight hug leaves only the fragile border of your own skin between your child and that lurking disaster.

And rather than running from the horror, we bend and shelter and protect.

How clever I was to buy this

I'm feeling very clever to have bought these place mats of the periodic table:

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Posters/index.html.



We have them on our kitchen table, and the girls can't get enough of perusing them. They have great descriptions on the back. You can get it as a poster if you want, too. And they take PayPal so it was like not paying anything at all for them. (Right? Isn't that the way it works?)

Hug O' War

It's Shel Silverstein's birthday. He was born in Chicago on September 25, 1930. He died of a heart attack in 1999. I was actually not aware he was dead. Where have I been.

Here is the poem we're memorizing today:

Hug O’ War
By Shel Silverstein

I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war.
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs.
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug.
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

My favorite book of his is The Missing Piece, although I don't think it's as profound as people seem to think.

My least favorite book is The Giving Tree.

Brownies

We had the annual Parent Meeting for Brownies today.

Have I mentioned that I hate Brownies?

Oh, yes, I have.

The girls have no idea. I kind of hope Madison doesn't want to do it next year, so that I don't have to have girls in two different troops. Double the fun.

The Cookie Mom is a dad this year, the husband of the troop leader. He is taking it very seriously.

Anyone want cookies? That's in October and November. Can I use my 6000-family KidsOutAndAbout.com email newsletter to sell cookies? No, I can't. Against the rules.

No gluten-free cookies.

We have a quota of 100 boxes per girl, or 130 boxes per family. Let's see, if I buy them all myself, that's...about $520, I think. They'd all be Thin Mints.

Piano arrives!

On the local homeschooling list a few weeks ago, a woman named Amy who is trying to declutter offered her old upright piano to a good home. I was skeptical, but went over and fell in love -- it's a 1913 piano that has *always* been in her house (a cool c. 1910 arts-and-crafts in Rochester near Writers & Books). I knew that piano had to be in our house.

David got three young RIT math guys (two of whom, fortunately, had muscles, because that piano is HEAVY). I was cooking a delicious dinner for them and their girlfriends as a thank-you. They got to the house and discovered that the U-Haul van was too small, so David called me, and I did some quick thinking and sweet-talked the local Home Depot into renting me their flatbed truck for a few hours. You know that everything always takes longer and is more difficult than you thought it was going to be, but at the end of the evening we had our piano and the kids had a nice (if late) pork dinner.

I will be having it tuned and the beginnings of repairs starting Oct 2. It needs new keys (ivories chipped away on half the keys), and some internal repairs, but I am so excited. I can't believe we got it for NOTHING. It's in the dining room now, we'll see if it remains there. The girls had been outwardly skeptical about our getting it, telling me over and over how they prefer their keyboard, but once it gone in the house they couldn't help going over and playing it, I had to drag them away this morning.

And, piano lessons with their new teacher start next Wednesday!

I will get photos up as soon as I find the darned connector wire for my camera to the computer. Still haven't downloaded the Bermuda photos.

New drama class

I found a (cheap!) drama class for Madison on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next five weeks at Penfield Recreation. She started Tuesday, and she LOVES it. There are about 9 kids age 8-12, and they're doing some crazy fractured fairy tale as a play. Quite involved, 60 pages of script. Each kid is doing two roles; Madison got cast today as Splenda, the good witch (and the mother of the star of the show, Brenda, a tall 12-year-old) and the Fairy Godmother. They'll do a show on a stage in late October, with costumes and everything. The director is a calm, lovely woman named (like her last theater arts teacher) Pam, who seems to know what she's doing, and the other kids (I think 3-4 boys, 4 other girls) seem enthusiastic and nice.

Did I mention Madison loves this? She already has some of her part memorized, and given how great she's been at poem memorization lately, I think she's found one of her niches.

I wouldn't mind spending the next 10 years as a theater mom, either. The kids who get involved tend to be nice, and focused, and mature. A good group for the girls to associate with.

I think I'll take them to the dress rehearsal of Grease next Wednesday night, to which I've been invited as publisher of KOA. There have to be some perks, after all.

AAARRRR

It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

http://www.talklikeapirate.com

I'm looking for some Pirate Poems for the girls to memorize.

Poem memorization

Another day of school under our belt, except for Gym & Swim at 1pm, karate at 4:30. We have an hour and a half in between G&S and karate, so we're going to celebrate a good day by going to the corn maze at the farm that's right next to the Y.

I realized today that the girls, especially Madison, are astonishingly good at poem memorization. Last week, Madison heard Ella working on memorizing a poem, The Caterpillar, by Christina Rossetti, from the grammar book we're using. She wanted to memorize, too. We did it two days, Wed and Thurs, two weeks ago. This morning, Madison absolutely remembered the poem she'd worked on, The Goops, without any intervening work on it.

The Goops they lick their fingers,
The Goops they lick their knifes,
They spill their broth on the tablecloth,
Oh, they lead disgusting lives.

The Goops they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew.
And that is why I'm glad that I
Am not a Goop - are you?

Ella, with just two minutes of work to remember, could remember her poem,

The Caterpillar

Brown and furry,
Caterpillar in a hurry.
Take your walk
To the shady leaf or stalk.

May no toad spy you,
May the little birds pass buy you.
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

Madison also knew that poem, just having listened to Ella do it almost two weeks ago. One wishes she could apply the same method to remembering how things are spelled.

Our Body: The Universe Within review

I wrote a review of the traveling exhibit, Our Body: The Universe Within and figured I'd post it here.

The review is at http://rochester.kidsoutandabout.com/main-reviews/OurBody.html.

After seeing the exhibit, I have a new resolution to drop about 20 pounds. Want to keep that machine inside me in top condition! It really helped me not go nuts with food on the cruise.

Settling down to normal life

We had a great time on the cruise. I have day-by-day notes, but I won't bore you with those.

The beginning part of the academics was taught by the director of the HotS (Homeschool on the Seas) program, a homeschool mom from Connecticut. To adults, it was clear that she'd done about 15 minutes of internet research on the history and culture of Bermuda, but the kids couldn't really tell. Later on, there were some actual experts from the University of Miami who had an oceanographic/atmospheric research lab right on board, and they were fantastic. I even went to the adult lecture by Hans Graber, a U Miami researcher who is an expert in using radar imaging with hurricanes, which was great.

We had lots of stuff to do. The ship had an ice rink and a mini-golf course, pools, an arcade (where games cost $1.50, so FORGET IT), and shows. We all tried to have an astronomy lesson but we couldn't find anywhere on board that was dark enough, and I didn't ask but assumed that they didn't even try to get the Royal Caribbean folks to dampen the lights on top of the ship for a little while.

Bermuda was really interesting. We were there two days; I opted for science over history, although there are tons of cool forts and things like that, and we took a ferry and then a bus to the Crystal Cave and Fantasy Cave, and then back. I'll be uploading some photos soon. (I had gotten Madison a digital camera for her birthday, a decent one, and so she took about 100 photos.) The second day, we stayed near the ship because it took so long to get around, and we had to be back on the ship at 4pm, so we went to Snorkel Park, to which you could walk from the ship. The girls learned to snorkel, and we saw some great fish, especially in the morning. We did that in the morning, went back to the ship for lunch, went back in the afternoon, and Madison and I got sunburns on our backs (lesson: don't trust little girls to put the sunscreen on your, or their own, back). We also saw a glass blowing demonstration at a place nearby.

The folks on board were wonderful about making Madison feel special on her birthday. They scattered rose petals on the table, put balloons on the table with Happy Birthday Madison, and then the whole room (hundreds of people) sang to her while she blew out the candles. Mike, the guy from Alumni Cruises (which sponsored HotS), sent her chocolate-covered strawberries.

Throughout the trip, both girls (especially Madison) would wander over to a window, or to our balcony from our room, or to the railing, and gaze out over the water for a while, and THINK. I think it was worth it just for that.

Another thing, about which I can brag because about 3 people read this, is that the girls were no question the *best behaved* kids in the group. People even commented on it. The director was putting together groups of kids for an educational scavenger hunt on board, and she was talking to me afterward about why she put which kids with which, based on maturity, and ability to behave with decorum. "...and yours are just angels, so it didn't matter which group they were in, no one needed to look after them." True. I was really proud of them. They were as roudy as the others when time called for it, and sat there and listened when it was time for that, too. Never gave anyone trouble. Madison was very concerned when two of the big brothers (on opposite teams) called each other "losers" and thought that her team ought to give up its winning status because the brother on her team had started it.

I discovered, by the way, that Ella has an excellent sense of direction. This was a huge ship, with 14 floors, starboard and port, fore and aft...and by the second or third day, she was navigating around it with no difficulty. She knew where she was, and she knew where she needed to go and how to get there. Our dining room was third floor starboard, and if she got cold and wanted her sweatshirt, she could take the room key and go up to sixth floor port, where our room was.

All in all, this was a good thing to do.

And now I must go and write a long, detailed article about it, as I told the HotS people I was going to do, which gave me my discount.

Oh, wait, first I must educate my children. Then take them to Gym & Swim. Then take them to karate.

Feeling pretty murderous, here

This afternoon, some bastards hijacked the weekly KidsOutAndAbout.com email newsletter I sent out this morning, and then changed the title to something filthy and sent it out to Hotmail addresses all over the place. At the bottom, masquerading as the thing you click on to unsubscribe, is a link to porn sites. So I'm getting tons of emails ever since 6pm tonight, with recriminations for MY having sent out something like this, with stuff for kids on it.

What seems to have happened is that some kind of virus/trojan on one of my recipients' emails did this, sent the email along to somewhere in Brazil, where it was modified and sent out again to Hotmail addresses, which are probably programmed to send it along to still more. My web site hosts say that it looks like it was manually manipulated to have that title and some of the links before being re-sent out. So this probably is something deliberate, rather than just some computer reassigning a title and then sending it out. Makes it worse.

I panicked when I first started receiving the TAKE ME OFF YOUR EMAIL LIST demands. But then I realized that all of the people requesting to be taken off *weren't on my list in the first place*. This is good, because I was picturing the public humiliation here in Rochester that would arise from my sending porn out to a significant subset of my 6000 readers. Excellus would, I'm sure, have demanded the site come down instantly. But fortunately, there was no breach of our email server, and none of my readers were emailed. I literally felt sick to my stomach for a while, and couldn't eat much dinner, and here it is 1am and I still can't sleep.

Gross, totally gross. The bastards. If anything, David was more angry than I...I was mostly upset and horrified, whereas he was psychologically ready for actual violence. It's that absolute impossibility of even finding out who did this, much less punish them, that is so very frustrating.

I desperately hope this doesn't snowball through Hotmail. Having my newsletter circulating around the globe, with my email address above some disgusting contents, is really...unappetizing.

At least we're going on the cruise on Sunday.

Of course, Tropical Storm Gabrielle is currently meandering off the East Coast...here's hoping that we miss it on our way from New York to Bermuda.

Notes on the Second Day

This often happens, I fall asleep by mistake with the kids and wake up 7 hours later, unable to go back to sleep. So here it is 4 in the morning and I'm at the computer. Why not make some notes on Day 2.

Madison claims that she likes this year of homeschooling much better than last year. I can't get her to pinpoint why. She says it's more fun. I have this sneaking, guilty suspicion that it's more fun because I've been able to devote much more uninterrupted time to school time. (No clients called on Labor Day, only one called on Tuesday.)

Hmmmm. Will have to think more about that.

As for Ella, the summer gap in formal learning has made noticeable two new strides:

1) In logic: Ella is able to manipulate abstract ideas much more readily. I have a Mind Benders Warmup logic book for K-2 which went nowhere last year. But this year, she is having fun solving problems like:

Mrs. Jones is Henrietta's mother.
Mrs. Pembroke is Mrs. Jones's mother.
What is Mrs. Pembroke's relation to Henrietta?

and

Jane and Henry have two professions: Bricklayer and skycap.
The man is not the bricklayer.
Who has what profession?

For that last one, I showed her how to use charts, with Xs and Os. Madison has been using this since late first grade, and it happened she heard me doing Ella's first one with her while she was working on logic, too. She came over and showed Ella the complicated chart *she* was using. Ella was impressed.

Also with Ella:

In terms of reading, I kind of take back what I said in a recent post about her having regressed. She's gotten right back into the swing of things with much more enthusiasm than she had last year. In terms of skill, not only is she reading faster and, with two days of practice, recognizing words much more than before (not just deriving them from first letter and context), but she's also learning new words a lot faster. Last year, she would have had to re-sound-out a word that she had already sounded out at the top of the same page, but now she just recognizes it from the work she had done. That seems mundane, but I think it's a pretty big step.

Second, she actually *wants* to read. I did what I did this spring, I had her start again WAAAAY at the beginning of the EPS Phonics books series, at Set 2. (Each storybook set has 10 books of 16 pages each. I love this series.) She had read, painstakingly, up through Set 5 last fall/winter/early spring, then I made her start again in the mid-spring and she progessed through them much faster. I'm doing the same thing now, to build up her confidence. The first day she read five books. Yesterday, she wanted to start really early in the morning, while we were still snuggling in bed, and so she actually read the last five books in Set 2 before setting foot on the floor. Then she wanted to bring more of the books with her to the lawyer's office (David and I had to sign some will documents yesterday morning), which she did. So maybe she is in a period of actually wanting to do this reading stuff. Fingers crossed.

Note to self: Stop feeling frustrated when we're out in the world and she doesn't try to read signs and other things that she could actually read if she put just a grain of effort into it. Patience, Grasshopper.

First day of school, 2007-2008

I decided to use Labor Day as our first day of school, mostly because we're going on the homeschooling cruise all next week, and I thought it would be a good idea to get a week of routine in beforehand.

We're in the middle of the morning, and all has gone swimmingly. The girls were excited to start school; Madison didn't even want to take a shower and do breakfast first. But the fact of the checklist routines that I've printed out really motivated her to get it done and checked off. I like crossing things off lists, myself.

The thing that has excited them most, to my surprise, has been the fact that I gave them each their own little journals. They even want to bring them on the cruise next week. "I'm going to write in it every single day!" said Ella. They've finished karate practice, decorating their folders, and handwriting so far (it's 10:30), and they were so wild to write in their journals that I'm letting them do it now. Madison just came up to me.

"Mom, can I write crazy nonsense words in my journal and spell them any way I want?"

"Yes, of course. You can do anything you want in a journal. No one is even going to look at it."

"OK, good. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't breaking any Journal Rules."

Despite how pleased she was to get the journal and adamant that no one should ever look in it, Madison just read to me the first part of her first entry.

Update: Those journals were the best 50-cents-apiece that I've ever spent. (Yay Michael's Crafts!) We went to the last Red Wings game of the season this afternoon as a celebration of a successful first day, and both girls brought their journals. We got back at 5pm and Madison has been outside the whole time, writing her story in her journal and stopping to play on her own to "get inspired."

Ella did some writing as well, but after cooking with me for a while is now exploring the model of the human body I got this summer. She can't wait until tomorrow, so I let her do it on her own. It has a stethoscope that you can really use.

C.S. Lewis

How bad is it to be very impressed with a Bad Guy? I feel that way about C.S. Lewis, even though he's a regular Ellsworth Toohey.

What a storyteller this guy is. Moreover, even though I know what is behind all of it is religious, I don't object to my kids listening to it. I thought I would, but I don't.

We're making our way through the audio Chronicles of Narnia, and we're almost done with Book 6, The Silver Chair.

Knowing the outlines of Lewis's apologia arguments in Mere Christianity, which I really should read one of these days, I've been having a fun time making the cultural literacy connections where his stories are retellings of Biblical stories.

Even though Lewis was the most famous Christian apologist of the 20th century, I find it fascinating that none of the books are heavy-handed with a Christian sense of ethics. (That, alone, would make it as unappealing as Rainbow Fish.) No, the characters just do what the situation objectively calls for. Lewis sets it up so that obedience to the will of Aslan (a lion, who represents God or Jesus depending on the context) is what is required for success in the world of Narnia. But see, that's ok, because in these books, there really is an Aslan and he really did create Narnia, with creatures with free will, and he really knows what's best for it.

That Lewis is a crafty guy. I kept looking for Biblical references in The Silver Chair and finding hardly any, until Chapter 12. The Lady of the Green Kirtle is very annoyed to discover that the our three heroes have freed Prince Rilian from her 10-year enchantment, and sets out to convince them that there was never such a thing as Narnia, after all. Other sources have said that this is a parallel to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, but I see it more as a twisting of arguments people have made against the existence of a God. I transcribed this:

"It is all a dream," the witch said, thrumming [on an instrument]. "There never was such a world... There never was any world but mine."

...

Puddleglum was still fighting hard. "I don't know rightly what you all mean by a world," he said, talking like a man who hasn't enough air. "But you can play that fiddle till your fingers drop off, and still you won't make me forget Narnia, and the whole Overworld, too....but I know, I was there once, I've seen the sky filled with stars, I saw the Sun coming out of the sea of a morning...I've seen Him up in the midday sky, when I couldn't look at Him for brightness."

,..


"Why, there it is!" cried the prince. "Of course! ...How could we have forgotten it? Of course, we've all seen the Sun!"...

Then came the witch's voice, cooing softly like the voice of a wood pigeon..."What is this Sun that you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?"

"Yes, we jolly well do!" said Scrub.

"Can you tell me what it's like?" asked the witch...

"Please it your Grace," said the prince very coldly and politely. "You see that lamp. It is round, and yellow, and giveth light to the whole room, and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing that we call the Sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole overworld and hangeth in the sky."

"Hangeth from what, my lord?" asked the witch. And then while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added with one of her silvery laughs, "You see, when you try to think out clearly what this Sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your Sun is a dream. There is nothing in that dream which is not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing. The Sun is but a tale, a children's story."

"Yes, I see now, "said Jill in a heavy, hopeless tone. "It must be so." And while she said this, it seemed to her to be very good sense.

Slowly and gravely, the witch repeated, "There is no Sun."

After a pause, and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together, "You are right. There is no Sun." It was such a relief to give in and say it. "There never was a Sun."

[Jill brings up the subject of the lion, Aslan. The witch replies:]

"I see that we should do no better with your lion, as you call it, than we did with your Sun. You have seen lamps, so you imagined a bigger and better lamp, and called it the Sun. You have seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it's to be called a lion. Well, 'tis a pretty make-believe, though to say truth it would suit you all a bit better if you were younger. And look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world of mine, which is the only world. Come, all of you, put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world....To bed, all, and let us begin a wiser life tomorrow."

[Shortly thereafter, Puddleglum comes to himself, and proclaims:]

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up all those things...suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's the funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game if you're right, but four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn't any Narnia. ... We're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think. But that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

If there really were some objective, demonstrifiable God as there is (in the story) a Narnia, then the argument parallel that Lewis is cleverly trying to draw would hold some water. But that's one awfully fraudulent straw man that he's setting up there.

I don't object to the girls listening to this, because in the story it really is true: We have all the evidence that Narnia is real. So, given the fact that there really is a Narnia, the witch is an evil deceiver in the story. Her arguments are all just tricks to make you think that what is real is not. (Like those atheists must be doing, Lewis is implying, when they argue against the existence of God.)

Of course, Puddleglum's proclamation in that last passage is pretty bad; I certainly wouldn't want the girls to take anything positive away from it. But it really is all the Christians have. They decide to live their lives as if there were some supernatural, because they think it's better than what they've been convinced is a dull old terrible empty lonely existence here on the Third Rock.

Then again, none of them have lived with Madison and Ella.

Rience Reasoning

Ella suddenly came up to me this afternoon and said,

"I think it's true that if I were able to run at the speed of light, I could run across a lake and not sink."

What instigated this chain of reasoning? I'm glad I asked.

Scooby-Doo.

Picture Shaggy being so scared and running so fast that he could run across water. That's what got her thinking.

I'll take it where I can get it.



(Of course Tony pointed out to me later that if she really were to run across the lake at the speed of light, if she touched the water at all it would probably kill her.)

(And then later, David pointed out that the air friction alone would kill her.)

Great.

I think -- I hope -- I have the schedule set

Extracurricular schedule:

Mondays: Homeschool Gym and Swim at the Y 1-3, Madison cooking 4:30-5:30, horseback riding 6:30-8. Monday is busy!

Tuesdays: Drama for Madison 4-5, karate 6-6:45.

Wednesdays: Piano lessons at our house 11-12.

Thursdays: Drama for Madison 4-5, karate 6:30-7:15.

Fridays: Irish Dancing (hs class) 10-11.

Saturdays: Bach Children's Chorus for Madison, Mozart Children's Chorus for Ella

Brownies are every other Tuesday evening at 6:30 (those weeks they'll do the 3:45 Wed karate class). Cooking, drama, and horseback riding are 5-week programs ending the last week of October. When that ends, we'll switch to Monday & Wednesday karate instead of Tuesday-Thursday, which will leave Tuesdays and Thursdays completely free.

Am I ever glad they have similar interests, and that everything is on the East side of Rochester. Otherwise I'd be running all over creation.

I've been using Airset.com to manage my schedule, since spring. That has worked out extremely well. I truly recommend it.

------------------------------------------
Daily Schedule:

We're going to try not to linger over breakfast (the earlier David gets out, the more we get done...the school day never seems to begin while he's still there). We'll end breakfast with the Birthday of the Day and getting the Birthday's photo up on the timeline downstairs.

Each morning after breakfast, we'll start with a 15-minute karate practice. That was an effective invention of mine this spring; it gets their blood running and also focuses them, plus gives them what they need to get their red stripes (every 3 practices, a red stripe) on their karate belt.

Then, one will practice piano while the other does work that needs to be done focused, with me. For Ella, this will be reading.

Three subjects will be done every day: Handwriting, spelling, and math. For Ella, also reading.

Man, Madison needs help on handwriting. I've decided to have her use graph paper for her math this year to help her keep things neater and in columns -- it was so hard for her to do multiple-digit multiplication and long division because she couldn't keep numbers the same size and in columns. We'll be using Handwriting Without Tears and also a handwriting book Laura gave us. For spelling, Madison will use AVKO and Ella will use...some other first-grade spelling book I have, I forget the name.

I'm seriously considering (and I think Laura will really cheer me on here) using Writing Road to Reading with both of them, even though Madison just already reads. She's bad at spelling and writing, though, and I think that this will really help, and I'm going to want something for Ella if reading doesn't just click in naturally soon. The unschoolers would tell me just to leave it be and read, read, read to her. I'll read, read, read...but leaving things be just isn't in my nature, when if she works at it, it's something she could get. The child can read, she just needs practice so that she reads automatically, and damn it, the more practice she gets, the sooner she'll be able to experience the joy that is reading.

For math, Ella will use Math-U-See Beta level and Madison will use the Deb Ross curriculum. Among the goals for Madison are to have her absolutely rock-solid in the mechanics of multiplication, long division, fractions by year's end. We'll do as much "really interesting" math as she can handle this year (applications in geometry, among them), and sail on with that next year. Among the goals for Ella will be to have her rock-solid in multiple-digit addition and subtraction, and much of the multiplication tables memorized, by next spring.

We're using History Odyssey as a general history curriculum this year, which includes a book that the girls have come to love this summer, the Usborne Internet-linked Book of World History. I got some great supplemental project books on ancient history: Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, and Romans.

For science, I got the R.E.A.L. science curriculum in May, and this still looks pretty good. But for September (the weeks we'll be there, anyway), we'll be focusing on the human body because the RMSC is starting a whole exhibit on it, plus the planetarium will be showing a big-screen movie on it. And this summer I got one of those models where you can take out the organs and put them back in again. Madison had gotten a chemistry set at her birthday party that she used with David all last week, and she wants to keep on with chemistry. So right after the human body, I'll do atomic and molecular structure with them, and then a chemistry unit, before going into REAL science. They both really love science.

I got a really interesting grammar book from Jessie Wise, one of the ladies who brought us The Well-Trained Mind, First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind. It will do for both of them, as it's level 1 and 2. We'll start Madison on level 1, though, and let her move ahead if she goes fast.

We'll keep on with logic, of course. Probably not every day.

I will also review Spanish words with them a few times per week, which I didn't do last year (I just let their little Spanish group with Monica take care of that), and on the days we don't do Spanish words, we'll do sign language. This will be only a little 10-minute exercise each day.

I plan to have Poetry Friday on Friday mornings before Irish dancing, which is at 10am so there's not much time for something beforehand. I figure that reading a poem, talking about it, and then either making artwork to go along with it or creating a short poem of one's own would be a good, time-limited, thing to do before dancing.

For writing, we are definitely going to pick up where we left off with the Frontier Team book with Madison. And Ella and I are going to start writing, as well...we have a book plot scoped out. We'll start off low-key with this; I think we'll do it while the other child has piano lessons, and we'll see where it takes us.

I've abandoned my desire to start Latin this year. We have too much going, and I think maybe I'll start next year, after Ella has mastered reading.

I am going to organize as much of this into lessons ahead of time as I can, so that the subjects can have the lists of lessons spelled out, each on their own sheet. Then we'll put a sticker and date of when each was completed, and every so often we'll celebrate the completion of a set or milestone in spelling, history, science, reading, etc. My girls are definitely motivated by stickers. I plan to do the same for each day their rooms are organized.

-------------------------------

Obviously, we'll weave in nature hikes, maps (I realized last week that the girls are NOT good at knowing where they live in the country, in the world, etc), general cultural literacy in with all of this. We'll be filling in the timeline in our basement (Western culture, 1450-present) with the Birthday of the Day and also with some invention history and art history.

Stepping back and looking at this, I'm pretty satisfied. We're heavy on music (piano, choir, dance) and phys ed (gym & swim, karate, dance, horseback riding). It seems we have a gap in arts-and-crafts, but History Odyssey includes a number of projects, so it's not so bad.

My own work: There will be some mornings I'll need to work while they're working, but I'm going to do my best to reserve this for afternoons.

Timeline link

I have been using the time while Tatiana is teaching and I have Madison, Ella, and Dario with me to coordinate our curriculum for the fall. Of course, I keep getting led down lovely pathways of investigation, and here is one: A user-created timeline called Timeline Index.

Off to Doylestown PA

The girls and I are driving to Doylestown, PA (near Philadelphia) to stay with los Americanos for five days. Dario's school doesn't start until next week while Tatiana starts this week (she's teaching at Villanova and two community colleges while also taking classes toward her Masters degree at Villanova), so we're going to fill in some child care gaps. Also, I'll be able to do some business in DC Monday evening and Tuesday while Tatiana has the girls. We'll speak a lot of Spanish. I'll get a bunch of homeschool planning done while the kids play. We'll miss David.

Philosophy for kids

I checked out John Enright's philosophy suggestions (actually, the White book, Philosophy for Kids, wasn't a suggestion, just a pointer) and have been talking the matter over with David.

There really isn't much out there. I guess I was looking for a history of philosophy for kids. White's book approaches it by organizing the subject around these kinds of open-ended questions that contemporary philosophers seem to love, with the goal of helping kids think about these "big questions" so that they get interested in philosophy. David took a more detailed look at the book and really hated it.

David's point is: When we teach science or math, we don't teach kids the bad, wrong ideas that people have come up with over the ages, except occasionally (e.g., Lamarck) as a means to show what the right answers are. But philosophy, which should be approached this way as well, never is; it's always questions like "When a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?" "Can computers think?" These questions make kids think that somehow everyone's answer is valid...it's just philosophy. He thinks we need to actually teach the right ideas, and then when they're older start exposing them to the wrong formulations, as a means of solidifying the right ideas.

I think I disagree, slightly. I mean, we're already actively teaching logic. Whenever we're presented with an idea, we analyze it from a rational perspective, and discuss it in a way that Madison can understand and participate in. She has already really enjoyed some of the history of philosophy that I've presented her with (i.e., Aristotle and Plato...we did a little overview of The School of Athens). I'm thinking that it would be possible to present her with a kids' version of a history of philosophy that would be appropriate and interesting.

Except one doesn't seem to exist.

What I think I really need is an Objectivist approach to a history of philosophy, for kids.

Maybe one could be created. Takers?

Girl Scouts baseball campout

We've had a lot of fun this summer, but one event Madison and Ella had been looking forward to since May or so was last night's Girl Scout Baseball Campout at Frontier Field. The idea is to watch the Red Wings (our local AAA team, minor league team for the Minnesota Twins) play a night game, then watch the weekly Friday night fireworks display, then vacate the field while they clean, then come back onto the field and pitch tents in the outfield, watch a movie on the big screen, eat snacks, and go to sleep (and get kicked out at 7am). I mentioned in my weekly email to my Rochester KOA list (now about 6000 parents) that we were going to do this and whoever else was going to be there should stop by and say hi. I got responses to the effect that I should "take a nap, because it's going to be a late night!"

We already owned a 2-man tent; Ella and I went to Gander Mountain on Thursday to gear up with another 2-man tent (looks like a bright yellow sarcophagus), sleeping bags for David and me, and some foam pads. Yesterday, we baked brownies (of course, we couldn't actually bake Brownies) and cookies, and packed up grapes and cheese balls.

We got to the game with the back of the car all packed. Unfortunately, the game didn't start until 7:40 because of some AAA Hall of Fame ceremony, then got over at 11pm. And at the moment it got over (Red Wings beat the Scranton-Wilkes Barre PA team 6-2), the sky opened up. It was a brief shower and didn't impede the fireworks, but the announcer said that there was an air mass that was at that point over Buffalo, heading our way, with lightning and hail...so the campout would have to be postponed.

I thought I was the only one relieved, because all of the parents put on appropriate disappointed faces, but David murmured to me that he was just as happy to be going home. A nice cool house, a soft bed, a good night's sleep in advance of a 9:30am belt-testing ceremony at the girls' karate dojo...vs. a 2am humid, hot night with a bunch of giggling preteens, cranky 6-year-olds, and sugary snacks...I'd say we lucked out. Plus Ella was already wilting in my arms and it was going to be another hour before we could even set up.

Of course, I'm feeling like an old fogey for even thinking this. What kind of wet blanket am I going to be in 10 years?

Golden Age

Ella is 6 and Madison is almost 8. And I feel, this summer, as though we've entered a Golden Age.


Madison seems to have left behind the edgy, hair-trigger, hyper-sensitive, perfectionistic, prickly phase that started at 4 and had its peak from 5-6. (One wonders if it had not a little to do with being in school.) She is still somewhat more sensitive than the average child, but overall she is relaxed, warm, and go-with-the-flow. She's so incredibly willing to be intimate without reservations, now. She has confidence in herself and her abilities, and accepts her limitations (and things she needs to work on, like spelling and handwriting) with good humor.

She told me yesterday (out of the blue) that at 12 she envisions herself confident, well-spoken, and able to cook a full-course meal easily. Yesterday when I was making blueberry scones from my Cook's Illustrated magazine, Madison started reading the article and analysis that always accompanies the recipe. She loved reading all about the various ways the author had varied the recipe to see what the effect would be, and the author's impression of what caused the various effects. I mentioned that this is why Cook's Illustrated is the only cooking magazine I'd ever want to read. "I love the theory," I said.

And she replied, "Yes! The THEORY! That's why I like about it, too. Can I just sit down and read your Cook's Illustrated any time? I want to find some good meat recipes. You know, just plain meat. But fancy."

"Plain, but fancy? At the same time? Can something be plain and fancy at the same time?" I asked.

After a short pause, she replied, "Well, sure. Like, take the furniture that you like. You like plain lines, not fancy with curlicues or gargoyles carved into it or wild colors. You like beautiful wood, nice leather, something comfortable and plain and clean. But that's fancy furniture, see?"

Who knew she was paying such close attention to our arts-and-crafts style?

Last night after Ella went to bed a little early, Madison wanted to talk with me and David about philosophy. So we talked about the different schools of thought regarding the concept "soul" -- how the various religions regard it, and how nonreligious folks can define it validly. She said that she wanted to use it to mean the "unconsious ideas and habits that a person has." David talked about how he sees it as the aspect of the person that values, and I offered that it's the aspect of the person that encompasses his likes and dislikes. I ended up privately agreeing with David, but didn't talk about it because I wanted her to see that each person must define her own concepts herself, and I didn't want to muddy that up with switching my definition to be closer to David's, right then.

If anyone knows of a good intro to philosophy, or intro to the history of philosophy book, either specifically for children or one that Madison could read, PLEASE let me know.

And Ella, well, Ella is even more of the eager, active, good-natured person that she has always been. She's a bit more eager to have a good time than to work at getting better at things she needs to work at, and she's still apt to put up a little bit of a fuss when she's made so much of a mess that cleaning it up seems overwhelming. But that's not different from any other 6-year-old. She's so happy to see the good in everything, the fun in everything. She's definitely a glass-half-full kind of person. She has always liked the Magic School Bus series and other science kind of nonfiction, but she's really getting into that with zeal lately. She loved the nature camp, and noticing lots of small details about things and filing them away. She loves beautiful things, she'd fill the house with flowers if she could. She'd cook all day. She learned really well to ride a bike this summer, and there's just no stopping her. She'll keep her hair in curlers for hours just to look like Shirley Temple for her dad when he gets home. She's enthustiastic and precise in karate class. There is no problem getting her to practice piano. She'll put on the iPod and listen and listen to the Bach Children's Chorus recording that Madison has been practicing to in preparation for participating this fall -- good thing they also have a Mozart Children's Chorus preparatory program for ages 5-8 so Ella can be in it as well.

I never, ever want this to end. Relaxed, peaceful, enthusiastic, healthy, happy. I try not to think about some future teenaged angst where I'm mourning this time. We're mostly just snuggling in and enjoying it.

Ella reading update

I'd had intentions of having this summer be reading-intensive for Ella -- not necessarily reading herself, but being read to -- in the hopes that there would be a sudden "click" and she'd just be reading on her own.

Well, life was quite busy this summer, what with camps so I could work, and trip to Tamra and William's, and having Dario over for a week and the Maughlins over for a week. So we didn't get to spend hours and hours sitting around reading.

I had Ella read some for me yesterday. I wanted to see whether The Click had happened.

No, in fact she's regressed. Sigh. And her enthusiasm hasn't increased.

But it's not that far of a regression, and I'm sure she'll catch up quickly once we get going again.

I'd really believed in The Click. Damn.

E.T.

We watched E.T. as a family last night. Funny, it didn't hold up quite as well as I thought it would, despite all of the "remastering" or whatever techie stuff Spielberg was able to do to the DVD that wasn't available in the early 80s.

But this line was certainly worth it:

"Did you tell him [E.T.] about school?"

"How would you explain school to higher intelligence?"

The party went great!

The Harry Potter Party for Madison yesterday went great. (Unfortunately, although I had the video camera in my hand, I forgot to record the "surprise" moment.) She was stunned, and happy. She liked "Hagrid's Dinosaur Egg Hunt" the best. She particularly liked an idea that popped into my head literally 5 minutes before the guests arrived: I took a big piece of cardboard and painted "Forbidden Forest" on it in big red letters, and nailed it to a tree at the edge of the forest part of our backyard.

The Pumpkin Potion Punch was a big hit...It was V8 Splash, orange soda, pineapple juice, and ginger ale. I went and got a square chunk of dry ice from a dry ice company (don't you love capitalism?) and put it in a roasting pan in some hot water so that it bubbled and spilled cold steam all over the place, and then set the punch bowl on top of it. Really neat!

One thing I love about my little HP fan is that, unlike me as a kid, she doesn't get all hyped up about presents (and neither does Ella). We don't open presents at our parties, because we want them to be about having fun and not everyone comparing what they gave with what other people gave. But Madison was actually perfectly happy to sit around and talk about the party for a while, and have a bath, before going over to open her presents. When I was her age, it would have been unbearable to wait, and then it would have been a gift-wrap-tearing frenzy.

Actually, I'm not positive why opening presents and getting stuff isn't that important or exciting to Madison and Ella. And the stuff they have is important to them; they never want me to get rid of anything. They pretty much have what they need. They rarely pester me for anything new, not really, and they know if they really want something they can save up for it. But I guess we mostly do rather than buy (thank you, Cindy's Porch!). So they tend to have a good time without excess baggage. I don't know, really, it's hard to say. But I was happy that it was the case.

I think the most creative present she was given was a kids' cookbook, plus measuring spoons and a big stirring spoon and a spatula, with a bunch (like 7!) of boxes of mixes: cookies, brownies, muffins, etc. I'm definitely going to copy that for someone else. I emailed the mom to thank her specially and she told me that you can find all except the cookbook at the Dollar Store.

Photos of the party are coming soon. Today is house cleaning day, after a week of house guests and a party with 11 kids. (David has taken the girls for a bike ride on the Erie Canal for a couple of hours.) And laundry! Lots and lots of laundry in my new laundry room that Alan built this week to my specs and with me hanging by as the Lovely Assistant. I learned a lot, too. I feel great about the new vent system we put in for the dryer, and the insulation around it. Photos of my New Favorite Room coming soon, too.

I'd say this is pretty blatant racism

Apropos of nothing in particular except that I was posting it to the KidsOutAndAbout.com online calendar, the New York State Fair, which runs from Aug 23 - Sept 3, has, on August 31, free admission for Native Americans.

Don't believe me? It's here.

I wonder if that's actually legal. Imagine replacing "Native Americans" with "Whites."

I am feeling so smart

This has nothing to do with the girls' education per se, but I am feeling so smart for signing up for the Windy Meadow Farms weekly produce delivery. Not only is it fun to pick up my produce on Friday afternoons at Mona's house in Brighton, but the deal is unbelievable. And it's like my birthday, to open up these three full grocery bags and see what I got. Today, $10 bought me a LARGE head of romaine lettuce, EIGHT beefsteak tomatoes (six ripe and two green, to ripen), eleven Roma tomatoes for sauce, a bag of 30 cherry tomatoes, six ears of corn, about 2.5 pounds of potatoes, a big eggplant, a summer squash, three cucumbers, four green peppers, a red pepper, and three sweet peppers. Better than a partridge in a pear tree!

I have to figure out how to cook eggplant.

She has no idea

The Harry Potter surprise birthday party is tomorrow, and Madison has no clue!

She'll be going with Mateo, Maria, Ella, and Alan and David to a picnic for their karate dojo from 10-1:30, then she'll arrive back here at 1:45 and if all goes well, the kids will jump up on the deck (not off the deck) and yell Surprise! I will put a Harry Potter Gryffindor robe on Madison, hand her a wand and the glasses, and get the party started.

Then they will all:

Make HP wizard hats out of construction paper and put sticky stars on them

Make HP wands

Hunt for Hagrid's dinosaur eggs (Easter eggs, some with baby dinosaurs in them -- couldn't get dragons but I figured that Hagrid would like dinosaurs equally well) in the backyard

Play pin the tail on the unicorn if I get my act together and draw a big unicorn

Whack at a wizard hat pinata

Drink potion punch (orange soda, V8 splash, pineapple juice, and gingerale with a big ol' chunk of dry ice bubbling in the middle)

Eat an HP cake

And then, if weather permits, put on swim suits to play on the slip-n-slide which is on sale for $85 at Toys-backwards-R-Us, or at least WAS last week when I saw it there. If weather does not permit, they'll just play.

Think that can use up 2 hours?

Giving the girls these experiences

Yesterday, with our friends from Virginia who are up for the week, we went to the Strong Museum. Of course, we'd bring them to Strong -- there are so few experiences for a 4-year-old and an 8-year-old that are like going to Strong, it's one of those things you show off about Rochester, along with Wegmans and the lack of traffic.

But yesterday, we went for a special reason: SteveSongs was there for two concerts. Steve is out of the Boston area, and he is TERRIFIC. One of these nice side benefits of publishing KidsOutAndAbout.com is that I get sent stuff for review in the hopes that I'll publish something about it. About two weeks ago, the SteveSongs publicist sent me his latest album as a means of getting the concert publicized. I was happy to oblige with an enthusiastic review in our newsletter, and in the middle of last week, the publicist offered a special experience for Madison and Ella: If the girls wanted to, Steve would have them up on stage to sing the last song, On A Flying Guitar. That was on an album we didn't have, so she emailed me the iTunes file, and we got it just fine. Madison and Ella learned it in a couple of days, and indeed, they were invited up on stage:



They sang on a Flying Guitar with Steve and the Sillies, Linnea and Mariel Ross (no relation!) who are 9 and 12 years old. Mariel Ross is incredible; I spent some time talking with their mom, Diane, and found out that Mariel is a very minor singing celebrity in Boston, singing the National Anthem for the Celtics once, in a lot of productions, that kind of thing:


Madison and Ella's respective personalities totally were evident when they were on stage. Madison took the whole thing seriously, had that Focused Ross look on her face and made sure she sang the right words at the right time. Ella knew the words, and just had a great time up on stage, smiling and singing and dancing and glancing up at the Sillies to see if they were doing hand motions she could copy.

I would not be surprised if SteveSongs makes it fairly big some day soon. Right now they're mostly doing East Coast places because that's where they can drive to.

So the thing I've been thinking is: I feel as though my job as a parent is to engineer the girls to have a childhood that they look back on like this: I want them to remember working hard and learning in a relaxed and interesting environment, to have this as a routine, interspersed with moments on their own where they're devising their own entertainment (you know, plenty of time for playing outside or getting lost in a book), and punctuated by these special experiences that I can arrange. I want them to think, "Hey, wow, Mom arranged for us to get up on stage for SteveSongs"...or "We went on a homeschool learning cruise to Bermuda"...or "We visited our forest land in Mississippi"...or "The whole family danced up on stage in this community theater production in Charlottesville."

David and I realized the other day that even just one of the girls has done more cool stuff, been to more cultural events, been "out and about" more than either of us was for our entire childhood.

Summer dreams

We've been away for a while, visiting friends. The girls had their first fishing-with-Uncle-William experience last week, and I got the greatest photo of all:



They each caught fish. They loved it. (No worm-touching for them, though, not even for Madison.)