Ella fine

Ella is fine, now.

But yesterday, she was really sick. So sick that when she was standing at the sink waiting to vomit, she fainted.

I wasn't there. David says it was just about the worst 30 seconds of his life, picking up Ella's limp body after she thunked her head on the stone floor as she collapsed. She came right around, though, thank goodness.

The fainting was just a result of what I'm sure was one of those sudden drops in blood pressure as a result of standing in one place too long when you have a 102 fever, so nothing serious. But still. Ugh. She was really sick the rest of the day yesterday, basically just hanging around in my arms on the couch, not even really wanting to open her eyes to watch a video, dozing sometimes on me, leaning over to vomit into a towel. Words can't describe how heart-wrenching it is for a parent to watch the suffering, so I won't try.

But she started getting better at about dinnertime, kept down some water and popsicles starting then, and was fine (and hungry) when she woke up this morning. One of those 24-hour viruses: miserable, but over quickly, thank goodness. None the worse for wear, aside from a lump on the side of her head from her quick trip to the floor.

The relief is enormous, for all of us.

(What was that, Fates? Oh, shut up.)

Ella sick

Ella is icky-sick, as in fever-started-last-night and throwing-up-started-this-morning sick.

She never gets fevers. I'm positive I could count the number of times she's had one on one hand. Actually, none of us ever gets fevers. I can't remember the last time any of us did.

So, I worry. A worry tempered by reason, because hey, people get fevers. And 101.3 is not much to worry. But still. I Am Mommy. And this 6-year-old is snuggling on my lap as I one-handed type this, with her hot little nose pressed into my neck.

My plants are coming back

I always thought I had kind of a black thumb, when it comes to indoor plants.

I got the idea at the beginning of the month to have watering the plants be part of the girls' morning chores, especially since they both got their very own lemon trees for Christmas.

Now my plants are starting to live again.

You can feel free to smack me in the back of the head.

Ella lost her first tooth yesterday

I took a picture.



Tooth fairy brought $1. Headed to the Dollar Store today.

More on crying

Given as I've written so much about crying lately, I thought I'd include this link to Moreena's very perceptive post yesterday, which included this passage:

In any case, I do know that back when I was at my very saddest, I didn't bother crying over sad melodies. I guess there was too much in real life to cry over, too much effort going into not crying all the damn time. When it comes down to it, crying over a song is really a total luxury. Crying over a song means you have a little sorrow to spare, enough left to spill over at the thought of the travails of True Love.

Moreena's 6-year-old daughter has a liver condition and needs a transplant.

This post of John Enright's had the same effect on me, although of course he didn't mean for it to.

I guess it's the ex-Catholic in me that wants to be actively grateful for the health of my girls, grateful all the time, because somehow that will provide some magic protection against the Fates zapping them.

I am, actually, grateful all the time. And it really does help me not mind the small things.

Taking a Stand in Texas

Laura loaned me the new documentary

Taking a Stand in Texas: The Battle for Home School Freedom

It was produced by the Texas Home School Coalition last year through Laurel Wilson Productions.

Wow, what a fabulous production, and a good education for us to boot. Even we non-Christians were amazed by it. I'm not a group joiner, especially a home school group joiner, but I almost feel compelled to gather a bunch of Rochester-area home schoolers to watch it together, all 76 minutes of it. It's really compelling. I hadn't realized how recently it was that home schoolers were so harassed, and it's so inspiring to hear how the government was fought against successfully in Texas in 1986. We surely benefit from their effort, no doubt about it.

Even the girls were spellbound by it. Madison, especially.

And David and I are still weeping over the NASA woman who testified at that trial how she gave up the opportunity to be the first woman -- the first black woman at that -- in space, in order to home school her kids.

Adrienne, the homeschool section of the Webster Library should DEFINITELY get this on the shelf. It's only $20.

Laura, I'm going to keep this for a very little while to show it to a couple of people, and then I'll send it back, I promise.

Ella crying

Ella is in a crying phase lately. I can't quite figure it out. I'm wondering if maybe it's this in-between-ness that is 6 1/2.

She loves listening to the Nancy Drew books on CD, follows their logic perfectly, remembers details...but she says they've been making her nervous to go upstairs by herself, or go to sleep in her own room, and indeed she bursts into tears sometimes when she's asked to do this. So we're not having any more Nancys for a while.

My cheerful little I'll-try-anything-academic girl has been crying instead of settling down to do her math -- it's multiplication tables, nowadays, using the Math-U-See blocks to do the problem, and then putting little note cards (old business cards of mine written on the back) next to them, and saying the skip counts.

If there is something new for school, instead of figuring it out for herself or even trying to, she cries.

And, most dramatic, the other week when she started a new ballet class, she burst into tears 2/3 of the way in and couldn't go on. I had thought that was done, that she wouldn't go back, but the following week (last Friday) she decided to try again. And, apparently, she started crying right away in class, but told the teacher she just wanted to dance anyway, that she couldn't help it but she was fine. So strange.

She can basically read, now, but I got a sense of just how much she must have skipped in that Fairy book the other day because yesterday when she was reading the book Just Like a Baby that we love, she really struggled and it upset her.

She's still mostly cheerful, though. So I don't know.

Ancient Israelites

We've been proceeding not-very-systematically through Ancient History this year. We're reading a book on the ancient Israelites and we're at the section on writing.

The book, The Ancient Israelites and their Neighbors, has a chart of the ancient Hebrew alphabet, the modern Hebrew alphabet, and the sounds made by each letter, although some are untranslatable ("sound deep in the throat"). Madison, my little code lover, thought the whole section was cool, and was intrigued at the idea of there not being any vowels in the written language. What about words like pat, pet, pit, put, and put?

They are right now working with clay and little knives to carve their own names in ancient and modern Hebrew.

Ella's first chapter book

Last week after spending her own $4 on a pair of cute doggy socks, Ella got it in her head that she wanted doggy pajamas. "Is there anything I could do that would get me doggy pajamas as a prize?" she asked.

I said she could read, on her own, a chapter book. She chose the first book in a popular series she likes and I hate: The Rainbow Fairies: The Ruby fairy.

I told her that the way Madison had gotten going on the Boxcar Children series was that she was so determined to read them on her own that she picked up the first one and read it through, skipping any words she didn't know. And Ella could do the same thing? Yes. But you have to actually read the book, not skip all of the words and just look at the pictures. OK.

Sunday, the child got going. She read, she whined, she wept, but she wanted those doggy PJ's so badly that she kept going. (I wasn't making her do anything, of course, this was all up to her.)

By Sunday evening, she'd read 17 of 65 pages. And then yesterday, she finished it. By noon. She was so happy.

She was even happier when we went to Target and found a terrific pair of pajamas with a dog on it. Here she is with the book, wearing the cute PJs:



I still hate those books, though. No literary value whatsoever.

On a higher-quality literary note, though, we finished reading The Trumpet of the Swan out loud yesterday. God, I love that book. It is one of my favorite books of all time. There is so much from that that chokes me up. I have to swallow hard before I can read certain things, such as where Louis says to the Zoo director, "Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom."

Madison had to read the last page for me because I just couldn't do it without my throat closing:

As Louis relaxed and prepared for sleep, all his thoughts were of how lucky he was to inhabit such a beautiful earth, how lucky he had been to solve his problems with music, and how pleasant it was to look forward to another night of sleep and another day tomorrow, and the fresh morning, and the light that returns with the day.

Ron Paul controversy

I don't know enough about Ron Paul or the current controversy over the racist comments in one of his newsletters from some years ago to provide my own thoughts. But Peter Saint-Andre has a really nice essay about it over at his blog "one small voice":

https://stpeter.im/?p=2132

Please pinch your pencil

I say it all day long to Madison: "Please pinch your pencil." I say it calmly, pleasantly, reasonably, even the 40th time.

One of the things that had gotten in the way of Madison's handwriting for so long was that she was holding it wrong, in a more fist-like grip. She hated to write.

I realized it, and switched her grip, and her handwriting became much better, easier, and more legible.

But she still usually grabs the pencil and starts writing the wrong way. I have to remind her constantly. I mean, SHE sees that her handwriting is bad when she does it the wrong way, why doesn't she adjust on her own?

And while we're at it, why don't they get GET that you're always supposed to say Please and Thank-you automatically? When does THAT happen? :-)

Multiplication - My goodness, my kids are so different

I'm teaching Ella the multiplication tables, and I can't believe what a difference it is from teaching Madison hers. I thought it was worth outlining.

It's fascinating to observe the difference in their approach to memorization, for instance. Madison memorizes something almost instantly -- IF it makes conceptual sense and is either words expressing whole thoughts, or set to music. She memorizes poetry almost effortlessly, and can practically quote passages from books she's read a few times. Memorizing her lines for drama took almost no effort.

But putting the answers to the equations for the multiplication tables, boy was that a struggle for her. She was her own worst enemy about it. I had to try method after method before we finally finished those tables.

In contrast, Ella seems to be decent but not startling at her ability to memorize poems and songs, but has picked up the memorization of the multiplication tables so fast she almost takes my breath away.

I didn't start either of them out memorizing until they both had a conceptual grasp of what multiplication is. They learned this approximately the same way, "4 rows of 3 block" or "7 groups of 5 M&Ms." Ella, now, thinks of it as "Four 3's" or "Seven 5's" and often says the equations that way.

Then, once they had the method, I set them about memorizing the tables, which Ella has just started. And they both use approximately the same method for that, too. I ask Ella what is 7 x 3. Well, she has memorized 7 x 2, so she counts up 7 from 14. Madison did about the same thing, I recall.

However, Ella has now realized that memorizing the numbers in the skip counting sequence makes it much, much easier. Madison was never one for skip counting, she prefered the more conceptual method, and regarded the skip counts (which we didn't focus on so much) as just one more memorization issue. But Ella, well, I had her derive the answers for the 4-times table yesterday by using the Math-U-See blocks and writing down the equations and answers on little note cards. And then, she simply proceeded (at a suggestion of mine) to memorize, in not even 10 minutes, the skip counting sequence of 4, 8, 12... up to 40. All day yesterday, at completely her own initiative, every so often she'd come out with "4, 8, 12, 16..." So now she has a method that is even EASIER for her, and if I ask her 4 x 6 she'll either know it because she knows 4 x 5 and that the next one, which is 24, must be 4 x 6, or she'll just use her fingers and count up the sequence of skip counting. This morning (she's been sleeping with us the last few days, the Nancy Drews have "freaked her out,") she snuggled over to me and the first thing she said was a triumphant whisper in my ear, "4, 8, 12, 16..."

If it is this easy, I'll thank my lucky stars.

Later on in the process, by the way, the fact of not knowing the answer would get in Madison's way terribly, because she takes a trip down the road of what the implications are of the fact that she doesn't know it, and ruminates about THAT, instead of putting her energy to solving it. So, I'd ask her:

What's 4 x 6?

She'd realize that she had forgotten the answer. And to my dramatic little girl, this became akin to disaster. I could almost hear the internal dialogue:

"What's 4 x 6? Okay, let's give this the fraction of a second of thought that this usually requires. Oh no! I don't know it! I can't believe I don't know this! I knew it the other day. Come on, Madison. You're blowing it, here! You SHOULD know this, Madison. You're supposed to be good at math, this is a big deal that you don't know 4 x 6. How are you going to do real math if you don't know 4 x 6? Maybe you're not as smart as you thought."

Whereas, I have this feeling that down the road if Ella doesn't know 4 x 6, she'll repeat to herself inside, "4...8...12...16...20...24!"

The Oddest Effect of Nancy Drew

We're in a phase of listening obsessively to Nancy Drew on CD (read by Laura Linney).

It is having the most unexpected effect on me: I feel the urge to dress better. More...precisely. Crisply, cleanly. As if there is a precise way to dress for each occasion. There is something so attractive about the way the books describe the trim '50s-era sports dresses, and polo shirts with jeans. It makes me want to go get some skirts with matching sweaters.

Really am not kidding. I want to go shopping.

Lovely weather

The last two days have seen record-high temperatures here in Rochester, in the mid-60s. I have never seen it this warm in January. Everyone was rejoicing, everyone was outside, everyone was talking about it. There was a sense that we were all on furlough for a little while.

The fact is, the winter here really is something that must be endured. I've felt better about having to do so since returning from Virginia, which never felt like home to me, despite the mild winter we enjoyed there from 2005-2006. I really did enjoy that.

The wind is blowing hard from the northwest this morning, which means we're returning to "seasonal" temperatures. On the other hand, it's still not going to be much worse than the 30s for the next several days. "Endurance" doesn't really enter into the psyche here until we're only topping out at 20, or if it's snowing hard.

And, I shouldn't talk. I get to educate my kids at home. I get to work at home. Sure, we go out to a lot of classes, but the parking lots are always close to the door. And while the driving can be bad, it's never too far. I don't have to struggle in the bitter wind tunnels of a snowy campus on a long walk from parking lot U. David never complains, though, never.

Odd people can be good with kids

Madison started going to a science club today for 8-to-11-year-olds, which is run for free by some homeschooling parents near here. They're strange people, though not fundies or anything. When they're talking to you, whether on the phone or in person, they talk and talk and talk and talk, with no sense of YOU being there as another human being with thoughts or ideas, until you want to run. They're like verbal quicksand.

BUT...

They seem to be really good with the kids. When Madison asked a science question when we first met them, they were great at drawing the answer out of her, with "What do you think?" and "What evidence is there for your hypothesis?" kinds of questions.

They take it seriously; they're going to send around a little email each week describing what they did and what scientific principles were involved so that we can follow up.

And, apparently, she had a good time today. I'm guessing that somehow they have a different section of their brains switched on so they don't just bury the kids in a pile of words.

And did I mention it's free?

I wouldn't have predicted, at first blush, that this could work well with those particular folks. But there it is. Just goes to show that you really can't necessarily judge the value of something at first glance.

School goes so much more smoothly when you're organized

Last night, I took the time to make the girls each a personal schedule for today, with subjects and activities to be accomplished where and when.

I must keep in mind how much they like this, how easy and smooth it makes life.

It's not even 10, they're done with what they needed to accomplish before 10, and now we're just about to be off to science club.

Madison is happy that this afternoon at the library we're having a little "mom and me" math lesson, not her doing it, just me showing her some stuff. We'll do that each Monday between Gym & Swim and karate.

They love them lists. They love them check marks. They love seeing concrete renderings of their accomplishments. And now that Ella can read her own list, she's happy and much more self-sufficient.


Yesterday, instead of spending the afternoon organizing as I'd intended, I took Madison to the Nature Center for a bird hike. It was wise. She needed to spend some time alone with me to chill out doing something she loved.

There were about 30 people on the hike (!) with our beloved nature center director, Linda Bender. Madison (who, Linda pointed out, is a regular camper) asked great questions and often answered Linda's general queries so accurately and enthusiastically that another family inquired about their summer camps for their own kids.

Madison's new schedule

Madison has been a cranking crankeroo recently. I'm newly sensitive to it and yesterday was miserable. An automatic negative or aggrieved reaction to situations. (E.g., "Hey! Where's the salt!?" (as if someone has been insulting her by witholding the salt from her immediate surroundings) rather than "Does someone know where the salt is?") It's really getting on my nerves. I hope that today is an easier day for her so that when we get back to school tomorrow, it doesn't affect that. I'm doing a big day of planning, today, so that the kids have their beloved lists of what will get accomplished. That should help.

On the other hand, tomorrow is Monday and Madison doesn't have much formal school because of a new science club for 8-to-11-year-olds (free, from a homeschool dad) that is starting up tomorrow. She'll do karate and piano practicing in the morning, but then will be at science club (fortunately only 1/2 mile away) from 10-12. Then Gym-and-Swim from 1-3, karate from 4:30-5:15. We'll probably be going to the library between Gym-and-Swim and karate, and so she'll do some of her work there with me, one-on-one, probably will be mostly math. And we'll try to work from 8:30-9:30 as well, mostly WRTR and handwriting.

Starting at the end of the month, Tuesdays will look somewhat similar for her, as she'll have a homeschool musical theater group from 10:30-2pm (I think she'll love it) and Spanish from 4-5pm.

I hope this isn't unwise. But I'm pretty sure I can compress what she needs to learn in other subjects into Wednesday-Friday. We'll see.

A new food pyramid

Want to feel guilty? Here is a new alternative to the traditional Food Pyramid for kids.

http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/food/go_slow_whoa.html

Instead of having interesting classifications of food into dairy, grains, meat, etc, they've simplified it for kids, and for we morons who feed them, into just three categories: "Go, Slow, and WHOA!"

It reminds me of the book What to Expect when You're Expecting, wherein they advise that SOMETIMES pregnant women should indulge themselves with something sweet. They suggest a fruit-juice-sweetened whole-grain muffin.

Let me tell you, as a product of approximately 14 years of GO food enforced by the Food Nazi that was my father, I'm in no better health than you are. Except I'm that much more likely to see sugar as a reward for good behavior.

The whole thing makes me want to go and make a big batch of crusciki.

Pediatrician

We visited the pediatrician yesterday for the girls' annual checkup. They hadn't been sick at all in the past year, and last year's checkup was with the PA, so they hadn't seen him in some time.

Our pediatrician isn't scintillatingly bright (he's fine for healthy children, if you know what I mean, but he wasn't able to diagnose Dario's hearing problem for years, it took a specialist to do that), but it turns out he's EXTREMELY homeschool friendly. He was SO impressed with the girls.

"What's your favorite topic in school?" he asked Ella.

"Logic."

His eyebrows flew up with surprise and pleasure. He was interested in how much time academics takes in the morning. He asked about all of the extra classes the girls are able to do. He commented that they get to do all of this stuff because they have the time and the energy from not going to school.

"I'm jealous," he said to the girls. "I wish I could go to your school."

I've heard about people struggling over homeschooling issues with their pediatricians, not that I would tolerate one whiff of that of course, but it certainly is pleasing to have someone so on one's side.

Art School

For this shortened week, we're doing Art School.

That is, yesterday, today, and tomorrow is filled with painting.

I had discovered some Bob Ross episodes being shown on some obscure PBS-like station on our cable network, channel 433. They're Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'm taping them. We have 4 so far. We love Bob Ross. His last name, too. (No relation, though.)

Yesterday the girls and I watched two of them, and today we're going to watch one more and try to paint one of them. We use acryllics, whereas he uses oils, so it will be a little different of a technique and color mixing. We'll see what the girls come up with.

Went to Michael's yesterday and stocked up on some paint, a really nice 1" brush for me, and a couple of painting knifes of which Bob makes such excellent use. We're ready.

Update at 6:30pm: One extremely interesting thing I discovered today is how well they are able to TALK about art, but how far they are from DOING it. I believe it's a hand-eye coordination developmental issue. We watch the shows together. They can comment very intelligently on how Bob does the artwork, how he makes it light on the right slope of all of the mountains in that painting so you can tell that the light is coming from the right, how he puts lots of different colors into one place so you see all of the interesting ways a tree can look. But they are ABSOLUTELY incapable of imitating him once they have the brush in hand.

It's as though what they know cerebrally completely switches off and is irrelevant to the enterprise at hand, which says something to me (though I'm not sure what) about how the brain develops. I'm sure that a conceptual understanding of the technique is important, but this made me see how much more there is to it.

We see how, step by step, Bob builds color into a work. His contention is that anyone can paint if you go step by step, and in fact I am living proof of that. We talk about painting all the time, the girls and I. THEY talk about how when you see a a tree it's not really just green. We talk about the various colors in the sky, the placement of color on the clouds as the sun is shining from different angles. We talk about layer method of painting, how the background goes on first, then it builds forward. But the most that they've been able to manage is that the sky is no longer just a 1-inch strip of bright blue, that it goes behind the mountains. They make uniform brown and green blobs instead of building dabs of color lightly on in layers, although Madison is better at organizing her blobs into a landscape than Ella. It's absolutely fascinating to see the difference between the two of them, and I'm sure that it has something to do with a simple 20-month age difference.

We'll keep at this. I will take photos of what they do and so I'll be able to watch their development on this dimension.