Little rest time

Today, around 1:00pm, Casey just went and set up his own little nest on the couch. 2 pillows, blankie, and our book of optical illusions from the library.

I thought it was a really nice solution to the whole "does he or doesn't he" take a nap thing that has been blowing my mind for weeks now.

And so, pacifer a-blazin', he laid there, on his own terms, for over an hour.

letting down my guard/getting real honest

Hello!

Kinda weird for me, I have been too shy to write anything. I feel like I must make some grand proclamation, which IS my forte, and I do not have one. I am feeling a little reticent at my grandiose plans, and have been stopping to ground myself , mostly in the ofrm of looking into all the little blue and golden and green eyes of all four of the babies and really really REALLY trying to figure out what is really best for THEM.

not for me to look like Homeschool Cooly of the Year

not for me to have The Cleanest House

not for me to Impress bloggers

but for my children.

Sigh sigh and triple sigh. How I have stressed and strained over the YEARS to come out with my stance on unschooling versus all the other kinds of homeschooling, and how I have always held back, in fear of offending people, in fear of my insecurities and confusions and shortcomings showing. In fear (and sometimes shame!)of my own ever rapidly shifting and changing ideas, ideals, moods, oh, it is hard to be a woman anyhow, and even harder to be extremely influenced by what I read, and even harder still to be affected by the weather and the diet and the outside world--how do people possibly just pick a life-stance and stay with it?

Ok. Deep breath. What am I blathering about?

I am blathering about this:

I am a little worried that, in my bloggy fantasy world, I have gotten SO , SO flipped out about how our life is going to be so different on September 4th, that I have gotten myself into a tizzy. As though this were an actual school, and my actual boss was going to actually come and inspect us or something. As if strange pupils were going to blast down my door, and I had an audience of 30 parents judging my school and counting on me and my fabulous schedules and charts to "come through for them"

PHEW!

How do School Teachers actually handle that stress??? Yuck.

John Holt says not to bring the school into your home, not to emulate the public school model in your home, and points out superbly why that is such a foolish idea. I can read and read his stuff all night and day, nodding my head vigorously along, yes, yes, kids don't want worksheets, they want to folow meaningful persuits....yes, yes, sitting in a desk all day is bullcrap, yes, yes, parcelling out little tidbits of unrelated trivia each day for regurgitation in the form of disposable short-term memory a.k.a. quizzes and tests is totally antithetical to human knowledge....yes yes to all those groovy quotes by Albert Einstein about creativity being way more important than the right answer to the problem....yes yes yes!

B U T

I just don't know what to really do about any of it.

I do not want to "burn out" by Friday of the first week, and I am worried that all these high hopes and lofty sounding plans will leave me cross and snappish and us all being play-actors in this completely arbitrary schedule that I have made up for us!

Ok, so why do we homeschool? Us, our family. Was it out of a deep feeling that the schools don't serve the needs of the children? Or was it wanting to not immerse our kids in a culture that we have big problems with, ethically? Was it actionary, reactionary, what is it all about? Letting them persue their own persuits? Do I? Do we? What does that mean?

(I know this blog post is really, really meandering, but it is helping, so bear with me)

We, meaning Steve and I, have come to the conclusion that there are some things that we feel that the children should know. Be accquainted with, comfortable with, etc. We wanted to provide a nice day for our kids, provide them with some food for thought, and leave lots of good open time slots to get excited and "into" anything that came along, whether it was something that I presented one day during schooltime, or something they found out about in a magazine, or on TV, or from a friend, a book, online, what have you.

We never wanted to overbook our kids with a gazillion "activities", because we have seen those families and it all seemed so yucky and unnatural, expensive, and uncool to eat all your meals in the car and be always screaming TIME FOR GYMNASTICS! TIME FOR SOCCER! TIME FOR BALLET! It wasn't for us. That being said, we have dabbled in some classes here and there; Casey played soccer 2 seasons, Greta took a little dance class, Mickey did an indoor soccer thing, we tried Drama and tumbling and it was all--- mediocre and disruptive?... But thats ok. Girl Scouts has been a big hit, and so has Campfire USA. So we stick with it.

I have four kids who are at very different stages developmentally right now. Some need naps, some wont take them. Some need more sleep, less sleep, more alone time, less alone time, supervision, trust, help , dont help....

So what we have gotten VERY committed to is a Rhythm. We must have a rhythm to our days. That is the forefront for us this year, and when my homeschooling mom friends (ooh I love typing that!!!) have been asking me what we have planned for this upcoming school year, I have said this over and over. that we just want a rhythm and a flow. Meaning, peace, stability. I know and I know and I know that children really do thrive when they have consistency.

We have more interesting books and craft supplies and websites than you could shake a stick at. But what good does it do when kids are all festering out in crusty pajamas, the house is a wreck, everything we own is "lost", theres nothing to eat, and who can cook in that nasty kitchen anyhow, some crappy low quality show is blaring out of the television, along with the insideous commercials and despicable commercials, dirty and cross Mommy's on her computer with 3 old coffee cups surrounding her, Daddy is crabby, and even the cat doesn't know which way is up, you know?

That is what happens around here in less than 48 hours (I swear on my life) when we get off track. It is scary, sure, and I have touched upon that whole thing before, but it is what it is. So I have really focused this summer, as promised, on getting the HOME vibe to a better place, which I had realyl hoped, would open up the channels to begin to enjoy and revel in the educational products and opportunities that already surround us!

The only thing is, in the last week, I have gotten a little stressy about everything being perfect and that isnt cool either.

So.

Its looking like the issues of bedtimes and mealtimes and who naps/who doesnt is all getting settled into place. We have our dining room converted into a lovely schoolroom, and have been getting used to eating in a decidedly not eat-in-kitchen just to have the luxury of a cheese-free schoolroom!

We do all our dishes everynight.

I make menus and we have food and meals that are healthy and sound.

I have written out 3 weeks worth of plans for schooltime that I genuinely feel the kids will enjoy and get something out of.

I cleaned our (55 year old, 8 piece, filthy) windows inside and out with vinegar today and stocked up on birdseed so we could observe and enjoy the sweet little birds from our table at their feeder. (It is NOT homeschool without birds at the feeder, that is one thing I will never waiver on! Coffee, too. )

We hung our pocket calendar, our white board, our bulletin board and our posters and map up.

We moved the bunnies and the big frog into the schoolroom, and put in the cassette player.

I still need to move more children's books from the backroom into the schoolroom, and get some of the adult titles out and into our closet (!)

Oh-anotherthing--when I say schoolroom, I thgink it might be a turn off to life-learning/unschooling types. I know that it sounds like I am going to force my kids to sit in a desk, or that I am making some terrible error in implying that "learning" only takes place under my tutiledge, from such and such o'clock to such and such o'clock, Monday to Friday. I hope you knwo that I do NOT think that at all. But again, logistically, we have over the years toyed with MANY, MANY combinations and set-ups when it comes to storage space, workspace, etc, and this is the one that is the most realistic for us.

To have our books and really, most of our products all in one room has been really nice. Of course you can take the book to your bedroom or your fort or your swingset. Of course you can draw in another room, of course we go places and do things outside of our dining room, but with a toddler or two, and no maid, this is the most sane solution for us. To have a Schoolroom, and to call it that.

So.

We start Tuesday, but I am NOT going to get crabby, hyper, or pushy. I know full well that life with 4 kids can be unpredictable, messy, and that the linear plans always end up very curvy. Its ok Its ok Its ok.

Being a wanna-be control freak is probably harder than being an actual one. I am NOT a Type A. I am NOT a big cleaning lady. I am NOT good at organization, and this is a struggle for me. Sometimes I think we should all just COMPLETELY go unhinged, and all sleep together on the floor, live in a teepee, eat from one big bowl with our hands, heck, maybe even be nudists. Sell necklaces on the beach. Live and love all tribal-like.

But do you know what?

I don't think that would be best for my children. As fun as "unhindered living" or what ever you would want to call it sounds, and as much as it might might work with one young baby, for us, stepping up to this world of "running a nice home" feels right, despite how hard it can be.

We have four kids, and love it. We love having a "big" family, but it takes a different approach than anything else we have really known before, anything exampled in our own childhoods, or most of the advice books and websites out there. If you don't have a bucnh of kids who are home all day, you just DO NOT GET IT, cannot get it, and it is sort of a treat to get in contact with others who do live the way we do.

So, its about school and learning and it isnt.

This year, of course we will learn stuff. Of course I have plenty of things I aim to present and surely hope to "teach". But the number one thing I hope we can embrace this year is a sense of peace and happiness and LOVE.

love

love

love

love

I want to love my babies more than any schedule. I want them to feel whole and sound and safe and that their mom is lovely and loveable and approachable and available for them.

I am going to be going to bed early, and I HOPE Steve and I can make adjustments for me getting lots more breaks, because I am seriously increasing my "workload" exponentially.

Panic panic I dont wanna go to bed early! I dont wanna un-connect from Steve, from dumb TV shows, from blogging...wahahahahaha

Ok.

I will be fine.

I am excited. But I am not going to burn out or be a manic fool. This is all I wanted to say.

Baby Blue

Baby Blue is an IMAGINARY entity. I made it up. that being said, let me tell you all about it!

Baby Blue is a festive and merry little bus, painted light blue, with a round happy-faced yellow ball up on top which bobbles back and forth on a big spring to delight the children. Baby Blue is also painted with polka dots and flowers and kitty and bunny faces and lollipops and clouds.

Baby Blue plays twinkly glockenspiel music, like an ice cream truck, or a kaliope. Like a carousel. But pleasing to the ear, not sinister or clownish. NO clowns.

Baby Blue is staffed by the kindest jolly folks imaginable. (Perhaps co-op based, so it is run by the Mommies themselves!)

Baby Blue is so fantastic that even infants clap and cheer when they hear him comin' down the street.

Baby Blue is so cool that even big kids can't resist begging for a visit.

Baby Blue drives very very slowly. There are gorgeous backlit visual effects to mesmorize frazzled children. Even the ceiling of Baby Blue has pretty lights and breathtaking things to look at.

Baby Blue does many things; it takes your child on a super fun mystical bus ride, AND takes your child to a super fun mystical place! (yet unnamed. perhaps cloudysunshineville)

You can send your child or children on one of three types of Baby Blue Trips:
All Day. this includes the fun ride, the day at the place, the lunch (you provide or for a small fee, they do) and the ride home

Half Day. this includes either the fun ride and all morning at Cloudysunshineville OR the ride and all afternoon there.

RIDE ONLY.
This is helpful for crying babies, the late afternoon, emergency doctors visits, or anytime you need 2 hours.
this is a 2 hour roundtrip.

Baby Blue smells like willy wonkas chocolate factory and the vibe is pure sweetness. Children come home relaxed and fulfilled after a lovely excursion on Baby Blue.

Baby Blue comes to your doorstep to get your little ones. They must have name tags on their jackets and little backpacks when they climb aboard. Baby Blue returns your child right back to your house!

Baby Blue is run by the people for the people and the costs are very low. If you have no money, you can help participate by cleaning the happycloudyland after hours, perhaps work on the engine of the bus itself, or something else for work-trade.

Baby Blue runs 365 days a year.

Our Monday

My one hundredth post on Homeschool Is Love! Kewl!

Today miss Greta got to go to CEDAR POINTE! I kid you not! She just got home about an hour ago (it is midnight now) and is fast asleep so I am sure more details will come tomorrow...but today we had some fun with the boys, even if it was a slow, slow day without our Greta angel.

We emptied out the pool and refilled it with water--when it was about 6 inches deep with icy cold hose water, Casey asked if he could go play in it, and then Mickey wanted in, too--they ended up playing in the pool then entire time it filled! Cold water from the hose! Can you imagine?? Brrrr

Charlie and I stayed outside with them, as it was no longer the deathly torturous oven of steam that it has been for the last week, but more like a lovely summer's day. He totted around, he fetched the balls and toys that they threw out of the pool for them by throwing them back in, he played with the bunnies as they hopped and munched in their outdoor enclosure for the frst time in a week (it has been too hot! We have let them play in the hallway instead, indoors) He rode in his baby swing, and we all ate about 20 freezer pops.

One thing we did fun this morning was wash some money. The boys beg me to do this often. Strange! but they really love to.

Mickey has a black eye from his bike handles :(

He has a special technique when washing money, which includes a triple rinsing. He taught us all his elaborate pressing and drying process and was convinced that he could do this for other people, as a service, to make their money look nicer.

Casey has the most money, 12 dollars. He uses baby soap rather than Dawn. Can you stand that his arms are still so babyish and plump? I want to eat him.











Charlie has decided that his high chair is made of burning lava and instead craves sitting in a regular chair. Which puts his little face right at table level. He wanted to eat the shiney pretty "MUM-MEE" so badly but, seeing as I informed him it was indeed, "Blucka", he resisted.

4 o'clock freak out!

I mentioned a few months back that the 4 o'clock hour is a hard one for us, and that we have even resorted to encouraging running and screaming, random baths, and other kinds of stuff to get us from this "afternoon-to-Daddy's -home" weird time.

I don't know about this year. It differs with the seasons, of course. We could go to a park now, or swim or something. But that 4 o'clock is still weird. 4 to 5.

I was thinking maybe we could all do something together, like circle time. But since I have completely obliterated my "mommy time" which used to be during nap (we all did school in the morning in the past, and then I would give littles naps and the bigs could have some free time while I, ummm I dunno, chilled out a little? Folded clothes, used the computer, had a phone call) I don't know if I will be up for circle time after "doing school" from like dawn until 4 or something.

But I am still keeping 4 o'clock in my head.

5 o'clock is evening. It doesn't matter if it is high sun, 90 degrees, or totally dark January. 5 is evening, supper, etc. 4 is just...the witching hour :)

p.s. if I REALLY had my way, this would be when I prepared dinner. But I cant leave the kids and go lock myself in the kitchen when the 4 oclock evils are upon them. It seems like they will do all sorts of bad things, fighting, hurting, wrecking, crying, pouting, and it can set the most hideous tone for the rest of the night. So, even when I most want to run away and scream, I think they need me most at this time.

practicing, remembering stuff we used to do

Friday we had a little practice for the whole thingy of me and the 2 little boys getting up and doing our own thing while everyone else sleeps. It was fine! I had them at the kitchen table and while I made some pancakes, they played with the bucket of cars. I made and drank my coffee, and we all sat in there. They were loud and happy and I was...trying to wake up....and the bigger kids slept.

I am going through our stuff and picking out things that I want to specifically use and play with for schooltime with everyone. We have alot of toys mixed all together and I have a few really good toys that I want to play with that I am going to put on our homeschool shelves. A few specific books, and I am going to be piecing back together our Music Box.

Our Music box is a white toybox which housed our recorders, xylophones, fisher price baby piano, dancing ribbons, colored bean bags, french color circles, and some percussion/shaky maracas and tambourines. We also had masking tape in there for when we would play crazy chasing games and freeze tag and stuff--we would put the tape on the carpeted floor in the old house to mark "boundaries" for various games. One fave was this game that I made up, where one kid was the CAT and the rest of the kids were the MICE (started back when I babysat 2 kids, then progressed...but it is best if you have 3 players minimum). The CAT sits in the circle made out of masking tape --could be a hoola hoop or something else of course---and when I play the crazy mouse running music on the real piano, or the xylophone, the little mice have to RUN past the Cat without getting tagged. Cat cant leave the circle or else it didnt count...sometimes it was a blast, sometimes it was all tears and "you cheated!!" and sometimes we tried to play it too long. Short intervals of this was cool, though!

We used to do what I called Circle Time, which involved us gathering around, doing a few little rituals such as saying what day it was, taking turns moving the calendar, talking about the weather that day, and then playing some singing games. I made up some songs about French colors, and we played some little rhymey games like jumping over the river, which was two different lengths of string that the kids had to LEAP! over, one at a time, before the river got wider! It was all fun. Then we would take turns doing crazy dances for each other and we would clap for each other's dance. Sometimes i would be sitting there with my coffee and the little toy piano in my lap and I would ask each dancer "What kind of song do you need today?" and they would say "A scary one!" or "A gentle one!" or "A super happy one!" and then I would play that. Then they would be like "How do you DO that?" and so I could slip in a little major and minor key talk ;) and ask if they would like to try.

I got some of these poems and ideas from some waldorf-styled books. One is called Seven Times The Sun, the other I will have to look into again, but it is where we got the "Stepping Over Stepping Stones" song.

We used to study one flower fairy a week at a time and Greta did memorize the Song of the Daisy Fairy. Sigh. We lost our Flower Fairy book and we need to buy a new one.

We also did "Car Wash" which was this elaborate silly thing where I would shake the dancing ribbons and they would all go through the ribbons and we would pretend it was WASH! RINSE! HOT WAX! RINSE! BLOW DRY!!!

Alot of this was when we were all much littler...but now Greta is to the point where she will play with us just to be a sweet big sis, and the rest of them still really like it, so I want to revive circle time, even if it isnt until 4pm (it used to be our morning thing, right after breakfast)

Bikin' guy now!

Last Wednesday night, as I was on my way out the door for my Mom's birthday dinner get-together, Mickey said to me, "Mama! I can ride my bike for like 2 minutes!"

I must admit, that I thought maybe he didn't quite grasp how long two minutes was, but of course, I came out to see him...HE WAS NOT KIDDING! HE CAN TOTALLY RIDE A 2 WHEELER NOW!

He got his new bike with his birthday money and it had training wheels on it, and he wanted them off and I thought that it was going to equal one thing: no more biking. Or me running him up and down the sidewalk while bent over in the 90+ degree heat (every parent's FAVORITE, right?)

But I was wrong!

He totally rides now. His best friend is a super biking guy and he wanted to be like him! And he did it!

We brought his bike to Homeschool park day and he barrelled all over the place, in the grass, on the baseball diamond, over rocks and sticks and sand.

Good Job, Mickey!!!! You're awesome!

The big announcements you've all been waiting for

Good afternoon! Love this weather? It is 94 degrees and about as humid. Hard to imagine the crisp apples and golden leaves that will be scattered at our woolen feet in only a few weeks....it will be like that on September 4th, right?

Well, we might have to run the air conditioner and suspend our imaginations a bit, but September 4th is the first day of the new school year for the Maplelawn City and Country Home Academy (rolls right off the tongue!) and we are working our bums off getting ready.

I have quite a list of new plans and new ideas and I am going to list them out here:
____________________________________________
We are going to take things Month by Month and reassess at month's end. So some of this is September plans, really.

I am going to wake up early and get myself together. Those who know me know this is a huge step, massive, indescribably huge and I might even cry. But thats ok.

I am going to get the littles** (Charlie and Casey) up early, if they do not so so of their own accord. We will have little kid breakfast together, it might even be so early that we hang out with Dada, who has to be to work at 7 am somedays.

Me and the littles will spend the early and mid morning time doing sweet and precious nursery school types of things.
Mother Goose book and record

Play Doh

ABC's

123's

Colors

Shapes

Finger Puppets

Watercolors

Crayon drawing

Dancing and playing circle games

Playing music with instruments/dancing ribbons

Hide N Seek

Little action poems and rhymes

Reader Rabbit Toddler CD-ROM (an old classic fave of Greta and Mickey's)

Simple crafts such as beading and gluing and construction paper type of stuff

Magnet letters

Puzzles

Lots of repeating and daily rhythms like Calendar Time and counting down to events

"Tea party" types of manners games

Playing with and enjoying our cool toys that we hardly ever play with! Blocks and push-poppers and stuffed animals and just all that Fisher price stuff we have all in baskets getting ignored!

Going outside for short intervals to "pick flowers/find special rocks", sort of mini nature study for tots

Little kid playing kind of stuff, like crawling down the hallways with scarves on our heads and growling and pretending we are tigers and all the stuff I did with Greta and Mickey and completely ditched Casey on.

and mostly,
Reading and reading and reading from our vast library of sweet and vintage and much beloved children's books and Poems.


All of this will be in the morning. Greta and Mickey have really changed over the past year, and have both changed into children who, instead of bouncing up and down on Mommy's bed in the morning, are more like to sleep in, be very grumbly and quiet in the mornings, not super hungry, and both seem to be quite interested in making their own food. So, we had a long talk about me "doing nursery school" in the mornings with Charlie and Casey and letting them kind of come around at their own pace, and they seemed really honored and very happy and relieved, which was cool. I set a few rules, though:
No watching TV. It would be too distracting for me and the littles.

You are welcome to join us in anything, and sometimes I might need you to (watch Charlie with that paint for a sec, while I go get paper towels!!)

Clean up your breakfast mess and do your morning chores list before anything else.

You can read, hang around, play outside (or in the "gym" we hope to build soon) play video games or Cd-Roms quietly, play with pets, or just do whatever. You are more than welcome to do some of your assigned schoolwork or work ahead in your workbooks, but just know that you do not "have to " do any "schoolwork" until after lunch.

Really different from anything we have ever done before!

Steve gets home for lunch around 11:10 am. So I am thinking that about 10:30 I will be done with the littles and I will brush myself off from all that floor playing time and go work on lunch. Greta and Mickey will be helping me keep the littles together during lunch prep, and once our pool is down, they are safe in the backyard, too and I do hope for lots of outdoor swingset fun this fall!

So we all have lunch with Daddy, and he goes back to work at 11:50.

At this time, I will be getting Charlie ready for his nap. We just have no idea what to decide about Casey napping yet. I feel with all my heart that he needs one, and yet, it can be quite a debaucle. Part of it is poor discipline on my part, but he may be outgrowing the need for a rest, although I find this difficult to believe. Greta and Mickey took naps until they were 6 even if they were just trained to stay in their beds and read. So, more updates on this before 9-4-07

but anyhow
So lets say Casey naps or watches a little video or soemthing, and Charlie goes down for a good nap, 2 or 3 hours has been typical. Then Greta and Mickey and I will have our schooltime. We aim to start by 12:30. in years past I have laid out rhythms without times because that seemed more realistic, but now that we have Daddy coming home for an 11 o'clock lunch everyday, saying actual times is ok and good.

So 12:30 we will begin our schoolwork. We will be working on lost of different things, but let me lay out the Core here and then I will go into all the extra curricular stuff we have too.

Five In A Row is a book in which you read a story (we are going to get the books from the library. they are mostly older "classic" stories) to your children and then you explore different topics and areas related to that story. It is considered a "Literature Based Education" which is close to my heart and to the Charlotte Mason philosophy which is my favorite thing to ponder on this Earth. even thinking about Charlotte Mason makes me glow with happiness, and I will never give up on this methodology even if I have wandered away from it, we will try try again.

We will be using Singapore Math and have yet to order these books, but they are cheap. Steve has already volunteered to do any math I am having trouble with in the evenings with the children. The frequency is yet to be determined, but I have had difficulty in the past with Greta getting frustrated with certain concepts that I know she is capable of, and Steve is having better luck with her. I may be the one to play more math "games" with the kids and he do the hardcore arithmetic. We will see. But we are memorizing the times table this year, if I have to bust out my sing a long cassette, I will! (it is SO weird and funny that it actually works and sticks in your head. Its rediculous, from the 80's, and we have laughed long and hard over the tunes.)

We will be using all sorts of things as copywork, such as passages from vintage children's readers, selected articles from the New York Times, poetry, even cookbooks and other things. This will serve to help the kids with their handwriting, their spelling, and hopefully their habit of attention. Greta will be given longer passages than Mickey, and when they finish, they are encouraged to embellish their work with pretty decorations in the margins, or to make it look really nice, to earn a coveted place on the Bulletin Board. (Only super wonderful work gets to go on there, to show Daddy or any other understanding visitor) So sweet that they still care about this. I go on and on about how this is SO GORGOEUS YOU COULDNT HAVE POSSIBLY HAND WRITTEN THIS! and I lament how bad my handwriting is and how I wish I had been made to appreciate good handwriting (true). I will be reading aloud to them alot, outside of the books for the Five In A Row. I have lots of stuff I could read to them right here at home, and they both have expressed an interest in Re-Starting Harry Potter book one as a read aloud. I would be honored and might have to buy a big bag of tea for my throat! We also are going to try to re start our Little House on the Prairie series and we own a fabulous book called A Literary Education by Catherine Levison which is chock full of excelent recommendations of literature classics, most of which I have never read, I am ashamed to say--but this makes me even more excited to dive in with the kids.

We will be exploring History in a new way this year, through reading lively biographies of great historical figures, playing historical board games, and working on our Timeline notebooks. I cringe when i hear them say stuff like "Its from the olden times, like the 1940's" in reference to something that is really more like the 1700's and so we will be doing ALOT of discussing and figuring out all about inventions and wars and I really feel a need to focus on the WHEN this year. I was so into Hellen Keller and Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and Abe Lincoln as a child, so maybe we can start with those folks. I know many books start with ancient times but for my kids this has gone over like a lead sleeping pill and we are not doing that again for a while.
I am hoping Daddy and some family freinds will be able to get all into wars and monarchies and military type of stuff because thay have the capacity to make it all come alive unlike myself.

Now here are my ideas that we are going to be definately doing, but that I have yet to make definate time slots and frequencies for, but must by Spetember 3rd:

Art study
Art creation

Music appreciation (classical and current)
Playing an instrument or being in a choir. Want to enroll them in local homeschool music class but cannot afford. Will beg grandma for money or do ourselves.

Cooking for real, not just holiday cookies

Health Class/Sex Ed. Germs, organs, puberty, disease, nutrition, social morals, etc

Library trips for pleasure. Meaning, pick your own books. Outside of something completely innapropriate, I do not care if it is Spongebob Goes to Camp, just read to yourself, for pleasure, each night before bed.

Still on the fence about French.

Extracurricular plans:
Girls Scouts 2 Thursdays a month
Campfire Scouts once a week, I think it is going to be Monday afternoons
Waldorf art class, Greta only, Tuesday afternoons in a local home
Real Gym Class, I dont know who or when yet, at a local fitness center, with other local homeschoolers. Cannot afford yet but trying.

Workshop class. We will be doing hammering. nails, screws, glues, and building of all sorts. Saturdays, I am thinking.

Learning to play Magic the Gathering well, and possibly starting up a small league.

Learning to play Dungeons and Dragons, as an ongoing campaign, with Daddy and the gaming pals.

Having literary symposiums with our friend, P, and Steve and I. We would like to run this as a book club, with us all reading one book at the same time, and then having weekly (?) discussions about it and hopefully offshooting crafts, games and maybe even field trips. We have dreams that this will grow over the years to include other friends and their kids once they get a few years older. We will be starting with the book A Wrinkle In Time.

Field trips to use our awesome museum pass.

Playdates, kid-swaps and the like with our favorite friends. This might even branch into some full fledged babysitting so Steve and I can go on a date! My reward for upping my workload by about 2000% in the next four weeks!
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For myself, inspired by my husband's astonishing transformation from couch potato to true athlete, i will be taking last year's emotional and fashion transformations that I accomplished and take it to the next level in the form of--GULP!--exercise. I am going to speedwalk until I can afford a lady bike. I have already joined him morning and night in some crunches/push ups type of stuff. Wwe both have zero interest in starving but have been drinking much less pop and are working on eliminating all the junk food.
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That is all for now, but to say that I am excited is an understatement. I am shaking and honored and thrilled by it all. WOOHOO!!!!!!

Passive consumer/Active participant

"Look! Look! I almost got it to open! Mickey helped me!"
"Where do I go in this labrynth?"
"Wow, look what I did to my car!"
"Is there really a Fuji Speedway in Japan, Mama?"
"Why is it called a "360" when my girl does a spin?"
"The gold is higher than the silver, just like the Olympics, Daddy, right?"
"I added up all my coins in my head and I knew I was going to end up in third place!"

I would like to address the topic of VIDEO GAMES as compared to watching television, as it pertains to children, homeschooled or otherwise. My stance is that they are really quite fantastic. Contrary to the extreme passivity that is television viewing, playing video games, especially together, is a highly interactive, conversational, active, social and yes, educational activity around here. I might be a bit biased in my rave reviews, as both Greta and Mickey went from Cuh-ah-Tuh--CAT! to real actual readers from their video gaming, but I think that what I am seeing and experiencing with this oft maligned activity warrants a listen.

I think the generation older than myself are the ones more likely to really hate the idea of video games. Though these folks might have gathered 'round the TV at every "quality family mealtime", watching who kows what kind of shoot 'em up western or mindless laff tracked sitcom and thought nothing of it, they seem particularily keen on hating the video games. Some of my guesses as to why (with rebuttal of course ;))

Kids in my day went outside and played real baseball, not MLB 2007 on playstation/It will make them lazy
Totally awesome. We never use video games as a substitute for real outdoor time. Children these days are enrolled in team sports at record numbers, at younger ages than ever before, girls' enrollment in team sports has risen exponentially.

Kids don't need to be sittin' there on their behinds, starin' and goin' blind.
In our house, playing video games seems to be almost a sport in itself! My kids jump, shout, wiggle, cheer, press "pause" over and over to go check something out online such as "cheat codes", or maps. They go get their stuffed animals and set up big scenarios involving the dinosaurs and the cars and the kitties--often time blocks and legos become involved. They rarely veg-out, and when they do, I will announce that it is time to turn it off in 5 minutes and get my little bell timer.

Kids need to be playing with natural fibers, like wool and wood, beeswax and hemp.
I couldn't agree more that natural toys and art supplies are far more pleasing, aesthetic and lovely (and expensive!) than garish, plastic, low quality crap. I had idyllic dreams of a purist home, too, when my firstborn was age one and under. Then came birthday, holiday, and exposure to the real world aka other people's houses, nursery school, and voila! Magic markers, Kool-aid, sparkle stickers, and yes, nintendo were all as much a part of life as were our nature-catalog playthings.

All those flashing lights and wild music will overstimulate them.
As in all things, moderation is the key. Know your child, and the signs they exhibit when and if they are "overstimulated" and act accordingly.

I am not about to get into the societal implications of kids walking around this Earth with their faces plunged into various handheld electronic devices to the exclusion of human interaction, and the hows and whys of all of that. I think the rate at which kids-these-days are drowning in text messages and escapism and it is both understandable and upsetting all at the same time for me, to both think about what it must be like to be a harried (school) kid in 2007. But as far as playing video games versus watching tv shows, I think it is a BETTER thing to be doing.

Are there things I would rather have my kids be playing with than video games? Yes. Toys and board games. But we do not substitute video gaming time for anything other than TV time, so it truly is not an issue.

Avoiding commercials and subtle and blatant negativity and consumerism in tv and commercials is a big plus, as well.

Hooray for my county,the internet and kindred friendship

I hate to JINX anything, but I think I might have a little precious real and living tribe and village now.

Homeschool Park Day was an overwhelming success yesterday. SO many beautiful families showed up, so many new faces/but familiar names from our Yahoo group. Chills! Thrills!

I arrived 15 minutes "late" for the 12 noon start time (usually we go around 1130), and immediately saw a large cluster of women and kids and babies with blankets and strollers all set up in the shade. My heart lept as I thought to myself, calm down, that can't be them--but it was them! I saw a little boy we know and I asked him where his mom was and he pointed over to the large group. AWESOME!

I got over to them, and spread out my own blanket. I was worried about the location they chose, as it was not really near either of the large play structures that Charlie wants to go on. I was worried that I would miss all the cool conversations while I was gone with Charlie, but he was really subdued for a while. He sat in his stroller (I am not kidding) and ate his little cheese and cheerios while I got introduced all 'round as "This is Tall Joy! The one who started the Roll Call!" and everyone was so nice and gracious and funny.

(I started a huge string of responses on our list as a result of me making an embarassing mistake and not remembering who the nice lady was that I hung out with for over an hour last week...I asked for a roll call which was a request for everyone to say their name and kids' names and where they harken from and we got SO many responses! Yay me and my feeble memory!)

A few of the women were so cool/nice/normal that I would have had them over to the house right then and there. there was such a distinct LACK of attitudes, such a niceness...and believe me, it is rare rare rare.

I have to back up a bit and tell you something about myself that I knew but did not acknowledge until this summer. I have not had a circle of women friends who were raising young children since Greta was little and in preschool, in 2000 and 2001, in Grosse Pointe.

From summer 2001 to Last August, I was a completely depressed lonely island of a woman. As a result, I clung desperately to my husband, and not in a good way. More in a "no you cant go out, not ever cuz' I am neeeeeeedy kind of way" Living in a city and county that made me feel like I was a circus leper for living the life I live, I pulled out of life, in a way. I pulled out of the world of meeting new friends, of having and keeping Mom pals, for sure. I convinced myself that I was too busy, that with three/four children my plate was full, stuff like that. the truth was, I didnt like anyone I met! I felt so snobby, so out of touch. I didnt like any kids I met. I didnt like what people seemed to be into where I lived, and I just stayed home. I blamed homeschooling, and thought often about what a hard decision it was to choose homeschooling at the expense of me ever having daytime friends again. I thought all the mommies and kids were now in school-world. I contemplated enrolling one of my kids in some kind of daycare just to meet people, but then the idea of starting a new friendship, and dealing with the attitudes and ideas and philosophies of the local families just overwhelmed me, exhausted me, and so I just didnt bother. I felt an immense kindred in the idea of the Feminist Mystique and of the isolation of motherhood. I became vaguely obsessed with the idea that "cool" cities such as Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Austin were where I belonged. I would have settled for Ann Arbor. Anything. Anywhere.

I had cool pals whom I saw in the evenings. Mostly childless, we watched TV and movies, played games, had a beer. But when morning came, I was WAY alone again. I resigned myself to the thought that this was how it was now. So sad!

I was on a few homeschool lists, but again, I knew that I didnt want to bother meeting the people. I didnt like what they had to say on the yahoo lists, I didnt like their philosophies, their attitudes, or anything about any of it, really. Again, the guilt. I talked a good game about socialization, but my kids really didnt play with hardly any other kids. I dont think they suffered any damage from it, but I did want something different, more.

So
we moved to a new city, in a new county last summer. everything is different here. Lest you think this is about climbing a social ladder, it is and it isnt. The county I was in has plenty of money, and there are many small modest homes in the county I live in now. But its so, so different. Anything else I type will verge on being offensive or misconstrued as snobbery or something that it is not. Areas have different attitudes. This is not something I invented, nor am I going to feel badly about getting to a place where some kindred are.

And now, after about a year, we really really have got some real life progressive families who are awesome to begin to forge ties with. Families where I would not cringe at the thought of Steve meeting the dad. Families where the kid is as loveable as the mom. Women (and men!) who have not only heard of midwives, but have used one and might even want to become one. Rainbow bumper stickers (and porch flags, and tattoos, and shirts....) not even garnering a second glance. Homeschooling commonplace, and not even because the schools "suck".

Its different here. And I have friends now. The change is palpable and the results are contagious. So, so glad.

field trip

Yesterday we went to the Detroit Science Center. It was fun! We needed a way to pass the hot hot day with Steve working until 8pm. It seemed like everyone else in the world had the same idea, it was kind of crowded--but fun!

Like so many places we go to, there is a big rush of school busses and they all leave by 1:30 or so and then we have the place(s) to ourselves. Ahhh...

This year steve got some birthday money, and he was going to get us all a zoo pass. But then I pointed out the facts that the zoo is very limited---weather, weather, weather mainly--and the museum passes you can go to so many more places, any day, any time, and is much more likely to be a place I will take the four kids by myself than the zoo, even though I LOVE the zoo!

We had a really great time. We left at 10:30 and got home at 5pm. I wish I had taken some pictures.

Today we had a huge turnout at Homeschool park day which was fantastic. There are tons of ideas swirling around about us as a group taking some classes at various local places. Nature centers, art institutes, stores, foreing language centers, even a gym class to be taught by someone at a local workout place.

Greta might be taking a Waldorf-styled art class taught by one of the mothers in our group. This seems right up her alley.

I have to stop worrying so much about if I can afford something Times Three, and grasp that it is normal and ok for just one child to get to take a class here and there, if there is a strong interest, you know?

Have a great weekend! Keep cool!

Baby turns four!!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY CASEY!!!!!

How can it be possible that you are FOUR? such a big boy you are becoming, and such a twinkling, sparkley angel you are in our lives!

I love you more than you will ever know. You changed my life forever, little star.

more death

Pippi, our littlest bunny has died this morning.
No I am not kidding.
Greta and I played with them for an hour and a half last night out in the grass, returning them to their freshly cleaned cage with Timothy Hay, pellets, fresh cold water, and an apple.

Dead
no warning

The rabbits shared greens with the lizard, so I threw those greens away just now, wondering if somehow there was a connection. They look fresh and fine, but I threw them away. The 2 living rabbits are in the living room with me, and I am staring them down all day. They seem hippety hop cheerful, if they miss their brother, I cannot tell. Iwill sleep with them tonight next to my bed. No one else is droppin dead on my watch.

Saddest rediculousness.