Mom & Pop Home School

This evening Sunshine was helping me unload the dishwasher by putting away the silverware. I saw her struggling with some tangled up forks, and went and helped her sort the big ones (dinner forks) from the little ones (salad/desert forks). Usually there are a few utensils left in the silverware caddy in the drawer so it’s easy to tell where each kind goes, but this time the drawer was mostly empty, so she was a little confused. I helped her find the right sections of the caddy for the forks. A few minutes later, she was on tippy toes peering over the edge of the drawer again with a fistful of spoons looking slightly mystified. “Mom,” she said, frowning a little and pointing, “is this the biome where the spoons go?”

Two days of school left. One is today. The other may be tomorrow, may be Friday, heck I may wait a week and count next Wednesday when we go for our last Speech and Psych sessions. We’ve definitely been a bit lax around here the last little bit, but that’s “normal” for school, isn’t it? We’ve finished the math program up to the allotted goal, finished the history, we have a couple more things to do for science, but if we don’t get them done for school they’ll make fun summer day boredom-beating projects. So it’s all good.

I’m feeling really good about our first year of homeschool. I think a lot of progress was made for Cricket, and for all of us as a family. Good stuff! So now I’m thinking ahead to next year, and envisioning what’s next. Discussions with school personnel sound as though next year we’ll be able to incorporate some more social training, perhaps with a “friendship group” or something. Could be good. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to hash it out until after school starts in the fall. Why don’t they pay the key personnel to stay there, or come in part time during the summer and do the IEP meetings and whatnot BEFORE school starts so that it can all be in place when it’s time to get going instead of waiting until school is in session and problems are already occurring in classrooms because nobody’s bothering with the IEP until after the IEP meeting, and then take however many weeks at the beginning to get it all hashed out, just in time for winter break and….sigh. What a mess. Fortunately, we do have good, caring people to work with. And honestly I feel that I have been getting a lot more feedback from the people working with him since I pulled him out of school than I ever did while he was in school. They used to just expect him to tell me what they were working on (yeah, right–kid with a communication disorder will tell mother all about it…har). Now they come down to the school office when they’re done and give me a verbal report after each session. Maybe I’m just a control freak, but I think that it works a lot better when I know what they’re working on.

Anyway, Denise over at Let’s Play Math has posted about an online tool that I feel will be of tremendous help in preparing for next year’s meetings with the professional educators. The educational jargon generator will allow me to speak to them in their own language–whether anyone at the table will actually know what on earth anyone else is talking about is a whole other question. But we will all be able to smile and nod wisely while expounding sentences such as the following:

“As an IEP team, let us collaborate to envision site-based schemas to streamline process-based learning and target strategic curriculum integration while leveraging Cricket’s brain-compatible competencies. We must empower critical stakeholders to target dynamic strategies, empower peer-based paradigms and integrate strategic assessment.”

See? Fun and easy thanks to the jargon generator….ROFL!! Thanks Denise!

Today was busy and fun. And different, which was much needed, I think.

We started out this morning with a field trip to a dairy with our homeschool group. It was a small family dairy that sells raw milk. We got to see the facilities where the milk is bottled, and we saw some cows getting milked. Then we went outside and got to see more farm animals. They had a lot of goats, as they sell both cow and goat milk, and the children got to hold and pet some baby goats. They also got to hold young chickens, and chase a poor free range turkey around a bit, and see some calves and piglets. A good time was had by all. Cricket did have a little bit of trouble with the smell, especially in the milking room which had a number of cows in a pretty enclosed sort of space, and that combined with the crowd of parents and children and a few flies buzzing around was a lot for him to handle. But he was able to verbalize his troubles and find a solution (”Can I wait for you outside that door?”) even under stress, which is SOOO much better than a meltdown. Hooray for age, experience, practice, and maturity! Woo hoo! Sunshine was particularly enamored of the chickens, and Cricket wants a goat. They are both disgusted with the city for not zoning our house agricultural. (Whew!)

After the dairy trip we picked up some nibbles, including some goat milk cheddar cheese from the dairy and some bannanas and rolls from a grocery, and had a picnic lunch at a nearby park with some of the other homeschoolers. Social time galore. Those park days are hard for Cricket. He has trouble recognizing a person from a previous encounter, and the kids are all strangers every week to him. I’ve been trying to identify some potential friends for him, but it’s not been easy. Sunshine, on the other hand, views all people as friends. Strangers are just friends she hasn’t met yet. But she does have one particular little girl with whom she has become buddies at park day, and she’s always happy when that little girl comes. They’re very cute together, though the other little girl does seem to have a little trouble with asking to use other people’s things rather than just taking them when nobody is looking. At any rate, it’s a good time to practice social skills and coping mechanisms.

On the way home from our outing we stopped by the homeschool store. I wanted to pick up some HWT workbooks because I’ve started both of the kids on the kindergarted pre-writing stuff (I don’t have the blocks, I made the shapes out of craft foam and they work fine for us) and I think they’re about ready to start with the pencil and paper in the workbooks. I’m really glad they don’t put grade levels on the workbooks. Sunshine is LOVING learning to write, though I’m not sure her Kindergarten teacher will thank me in the fall, since I’m fairly certain they use a different program with different strokes for the letters, but she’s just so darn HUNGRY for it that I can’t say no and make her have to just watch while Cricket gets to do something she could be doing too. Cricket is finally starting to make the letters using the same sequence of strokes each time, rather than remembering the letter as a shape, and “drawing” the symbol a different way each time. If we can get the letters to be more automatic I think we may see more willingness to do writing assignments. Also increased legibility. When I hold up the children’s slates for daddy to see, he can’t tell which letter was drawn by the 10 year old, and which by the 4 year old beginning writer. Argh! But progress is occurring, and for that hooray!

Anyway, so we stopped at the homeschool store, which didn’t have the right level of workbooks anyhow so I’ll either have to wait for them to get them back in stock, or just order them myself. While we were there, Cricket found a computer program about inventors that he HAD to have, and since it was not terribly expensive I said ok, as long as he put the inventors on the timeline as he learned about them. Sunshine found a LOT of things she HAD to have, including Sculpey clay, a ballerina music box, a flocked plastic unicorn, and a Noah’s ark book. But she settled for a set of four hand puppets–a pig, a penguin, a panda, and a shark. I was not sure exactly what sort of story might include that particular cast, but they have been a big hit all afternoon and evening, and the kids have made a puppet stage, scenery, and a script which included a wedding (panda and penguin–the penguin was the bride in case you wondered) and an intermission with a dance troupe entertainment. Pop and I sat on the couch and watched, wide-eyed, applauding at the appropriate times–which were mostly discernable because Cricket would say, “Now clap!” in an encouraging sort of way, not because the script made any really discernable sense. So, it wasn’t great theatre, but they were working together and having a good time, so I call it a good purchase. The software, on the other hand, didn’t work. Cricket and I went and returned it, and he picked out a book about ancient Greece that came with a little plastic Parthenon model to assemble. He put it together after we got back, and is contemplating starting a “collection of famous building models” now that he’s got the Parthenon from Greece and the Colosseum from Rome. Could be fun. We’ll see if it goes anywhere (like maybe it could replace all those bug containers!!!)

After supper we went out to look at some real estate. Pop thinks maybe he wants to buy a little office somewhere outside the house. He sometimes gets frustrated with kid noise in the background of business calls (we do TRY to be quiet), and interruptions, and he thinks it might be easier to focus if he had to get up and GO to work instead of meandering in whenever in his jammies, knowing the TV is just around the corner, just in case he gets “blocked” on his work. He may have a point. On the other hand, with gas prices what they are, you can’t beat the current commute. But in this area I’m not sure we’ll find something suitable that we can actually afford. We looked at 2 places, the first of which would need some fixing up and serious redecorating, and the second of which was built in 1920 and was really cute inside, but needed a new roof and possibly a little structural shoring-up in one corner of a small addition. That second one was built on a hill and had a cellar space downstairs that was accessed by an exterior door from the back “yard”. It spooked Sunshine and Cricket so bad that they had to go sit in the car, and on the way home Cricket wanted to know whether we were “a mile from that creepy place yet”—which we were, much to his relief. It took a while to get Sunshine settled down for bed when we got home.

But all in all, it was a fairly educational day, and we didn’t even have to crack a book. Sometimes we need days like that.

I’m back from a few days out of town to attendy my sister-in-law’s graduation. We’re all so proud of her accomplishment. With two (very cute!) small children, I’m sure it has not been easy, but she made it! Yay for J.!

It was a good visit, partly because I got to go all by myself. I had two eight-hour drives all to myself to relax and reflect and listen to some CD books from the library. I stopped and looked at the scenery. I stopped and shopped a little. Nobody was bored. Nobody wanted to know how much further we had to go or when we’d be there. Everyone who needed a potty waited patiently for the next rest stop. Siiiigh!

And then while I was there, staying with my sister in the next town over from the graduation, I got to see my parents and four of my six siblings with their families. There were toddlers EVERYWHERE, but you know what? Everytime I heard a wail of “MMMMOOOOooooommmm!” I knew it didn’t mean me! And when they smelled funny, I could pass them back to mom or dad–neither of which was me either. (It was a little odd to reflect on the fact that those little boys whose diapers I changed growing up now have little boys of their own to change. It’s enough to make a body feel old–as if all the white hairs weren’t enough.)

I had a room all to myself the first night, and then a surprise little roommate for the other two nights I was there, as my sister got a late-night call to pick up a short term foster baby and the room I was in was really the only place left with space. She was adorable, and only woke me up once each night. The second night I knew where her bottle was so I got up and fed her so my sister could sleep (she had such a houseful with me, my parents, and two of my brothers’ families–what a good manager!) It was kind of nice. I was commenting to my mother just the other day that I’m getting a little nostalgic for those 2 a.m. feedings when the whole world is asleep except me and a little soul with wise eyes, so fresh from God. (So do I sign up for foster care, adopt, or just get a puppy? Or do I just admit that I’ve got all I can manage and get on with life? If someone handed me a baby and said I could keep it, I sure wouldn’t give it back, that’s for sure.)

At any rate, I’m now pleasantly tired, and working back into the swing of things at home. Pop and the kids did a good job holding down the fort while I was gone, but there’s still a lot to dig out from under from my being sick. I want to go through the whole house a little at a time, and just get back on track. But today my brain is officially fuzzy, and it might be a while before I can post anything very interesting. If you’d like a good read, I highly recommend Elisheva’s latest post over at Ragamuffin Studies, “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle”. Or check out the latest carnival. But come back in a week or two and hopefully the ol’ noggin will be back online again.

There’s a stage children go through, when they’re still learning that thoughts can be formed into words, but their language has not yet been confined to concrete boots, to go plodding along in the grey world of absolute, definitional meaning; while they still see the world as a place of constant, astounding discovery, not yet having discovered the “grown-up” notion of ordinariness; there’s a time when children see the world as it truly is, and can almost tell the rest of us stodgy, busy people, how enchanting it all is. If you listen carefully to the magic-talk of these little souls, you can just tell that these glorious little beings actually THINK—in poetry!!!

Today, I took my tiger for a walk in her stroller while my daughter, invisible, danced along behind, blowing with the wind, and urging us on. ** We stopped at the park and my tiger ate a tiger cookie that she got from my daughter’s backpack. As we sat there in the shady gazebo, looking at the world all around us, she whispered:

“Mama, there are leaves
on the flower trees today,
and the wind is windying around
in all the leaves.
Mama, when the wind
wishes in the leaves,
it makes the trees
sing pluthory music.
Can you hear it too, Mama?”

And I thought, “pluthory”—what a perfectly marvellous word! Of course I hear it, now that my bewitching little tiger-child has shown it to me!

_________________ 

**Translation for adults: Sunshine has a tiger costume she likes to wear. When she wears it, she IS a tiger. Mom’s tiger. And she is no longer “Sunshine”. Therefore, my daughter, who is a girl and not a tiger, becomes “invisible” and is referred to in the third person. “Mom, your daughter loves your tiger. She’s petting it.” When she’s NOT wearing the costume, she’s my daughter, and the tiger becomes “invisible”. She is toying with swapping roles, and having quite the little adventure. And hey, I never said we were all “normal” around here…lol. Both the cookie and the backpack in the story are real. “Flower trees” are the flowering crabapples at the park, which were all pink and white last month with blossoms, and this month are changing into their more sober summer attire. Yes, I do realize that my daughter is getting a bit big for a stroller, but my tiger is not, and it didn’t want to put on shoes…lol.

This week the carnival is over at Dewey’s Treehouse, and Mama Squirrel has done a great job of organizing it as “The Yes, No, Yes! Edition.” My little blurb about Sunshine’s multiplication quiz is in there, but there are a lot of really good reads this go-’round as well.