October 2008

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birthday gift

October 29, 2008 in celebrations and traditions, wondering | 4 comments

I know I said I’d write more about teaching school and homeschooling, but it’s birthday week around here, so that post will have to wait.

My little man turned seven yesterday.

Birthday bliss: a crown made by your sister, some new checkers and Ricky Ricotta books, and eating cheese and crackers from the birthday bunny plate with your feet on the table.

I always get sentimental on my kids’ birthdays, but especially with this guy. He’s my baby. We waited such a long time for him: six years after his sister, and almost ten after his brother. I remember crying on the phone to my mom, worrying that it was taking so long to get a third pregnancy to hold, worrying that a child born so long after his or her siblings would be lonely. My mom reassured me, told me that all of her friends who’d had “later” babies found those babies to be a particular joy.

And that’s what Mr. T has been. Chris and I loved the name Theodore (and it didn’t hurt that it was also Dr. Seuss’ real name–which now seems especially apt for our little boy with the big imagination). But when we learned that Theodore means “gift from God” we knew that if we had a boy, after waiting so long, that Theodore would be his name.

He’s always been a joy and a gift to the other four of us. He entertains us daily with his kooky personality and his laid-back look on life. My parents gave him a card last night that said, “Happy birthday to our weirdest grandchild”, which they meant in the most loving way, really. At his Willy Wonka birthday party the other day, he dressed like Willy–top hat, goggles and all–and insisted that we start the party with the welcome song from the newer movie–you know, the one that goes, “Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka, the amazing chocolatier” about 360 times–so he could do a little welcome dance for each of his friends as they arrived. He’s that kind of a nut. Just the sort of kid who’d choose Willy Wonka as a hero.

It’s funny, parents always say that they grow up so fast. And I’ve felt that with the older two. But with Theo it’s been different. Slower. With the other two, I never knew what to expect next, so I think I’ve spent a lot of time looking forward, in both anticipation and worry. But having Mr. T so many years later, I had a pretty good idea what was coming next–and I knew things were bound to turn out okay. (Yes, he’d sleep through the night eventually, and he wouldn’t still be wearing diapers at ten.) So I haven’t spent much time looking forward with him; I know how fast it goes, and I’ve tried to savor every moment of his little boy-ness. Every street crossed holding his hand, every bedtime story read with his head in my lap, every smile with that mouthful of tiny baby teeth, already outgrown. (He just lost his first upper front tooth last week, and holding that tooth in my hand punctured my heart a bit. It felt like I was holding his smile.)

I’ve started reading The Seven-Year-Old Wonder Book to him at night, as I did when each of his siblings turned seven. And I’m grateful that it took so long for him to arrive, because while I now have (almost!) two teenagers skulking around the house, I also have a little boy to snuggle with, who wants to hear fairy stories, who still thinks a wonder book is a wonderous thing.

I’ll leave you with a few more of Mr. T’s wonderings from the Wonder Farm so you too can enjoy the mind of a nutty seven-year-old:

  • What if twins ran for president, which one would the parents vote for?
  • What does God do all day?
  • What if the dentist’s office was a swimming pool?
  • What if Barack Obama wanted Sarah Palin and John McCain wanted Joe Biden? Who would you vote for then? (To which I replied, “Hoo, Buddy, you’re making this tough on me!”)

on homeschooling and teaching credentials

October 23, 2008 in homeschooling, learning | 4 comments

I’ve had a lovely correspondence with a new blog-friend, Melissa of WhatKnot. (Do stop by her blog and take in her beautiful photos of her kids and her crafts, and her charming way with words.) In an exchange of emails about homeschooling, Melissa pointed out that many people who homeschool (including me) seem to have a background in teaching. She wondered about homeschooling without such a background.

I’ve often said that my background as a teacher has been as much a hindrance as a help to me as a homeschooler. And I mean that.

As a former teacher, I came into homeschooling confident that I could do it. But I also had a whole slew of preconceptions.

Consider just a sampling of what teaching taught me:

  • Students do whatever you ask them to do. (And if they don’t, they’re a discipline problem that you’ll need to attend to.)
  • Teachers do the lesson planning.
  • You should plan lessons carefully ahead of time, and stick to the plan on the page, or you’ll get behind.
  • Students should cover most subjects most days.
  • Students should have written records of what they’re learning, otherwise you can’t be sure they’re learning.
  • Kids learn how to read in first grade, they work on spelling in second grade, learn cursive and multiplication in third grade…

I could go on. Now reread that list and consider how it might work in a homeschool environment. It might work fine if you have a very obedient child who follows your every instruction. I, however, did not. My first child has always had a very strong sense of self and a very strong voice to proclaim it. He would never do anything simply because I told him to; instead he’s questioned everything. Why do we have to read this book if I don’t like it? Why do I have to stop drawing to do science? Why should I write down my thinking on that math problem if I can just tell you how I did it?

Chris and I like to say that Henry’s motto should be “What’s the point of that?”

Why indeed? I had to give him answers, which made me think through his whys. Often I realized I was asking him to do things simply because it was how I’d done it in the classroom. I wanted him to be able to do what I knew school kids did. That seemed reason enough for me, but it wasn’t good enough for Henry. Why, why, why he argued. Oh, we had battles, I can tell you that. He argued; I was stubborn. I was a professional after all! But slowly (very slowly!) I saw that when I forced Henry to do something, he didn’t learn much. Except to despise whatever I was trying to teach.

Slowly I learned to listen, to consider, to shake off many of my teacher-ish beliefs. I learned to focus on helping Henry learn in ways that were meaningful to him.

Disobedient kids can be a blessing. (And I got three of them!) Sometimes I wonder which of us has learned more.

Of course, any parent who has spent time in a classroom may share many of my preconceptions about learning and education. But I’d argue that it’s probably harder for those of us with a background in education to shake those notions. After all, we’ve been trained to believe them.

If you don’t have that training you’ll probably have an easier time easing into homeschooling, just continuing what you’ve done with your kids since birth: pay attention to their needs and do your best to meet them.

Being a teacher did have some positive effects on my role as a homeschooling parent. More on that in my next post…

(Yes, I do still keep a teacher’s plan book. But rather than using it to plan lessons ahead of time, I record instead what the kids have done after the fact. Including all the wonderful learning they do on their own. Being able to look through the book is always encouraging when I start to worry that we’re not doing enough. Plus, record-keeping is one teacher-y part of me that I just can’t shake.)

button box

October 21, 2008 in learning | 4 comments

Somewhere along the way, I inherited my grandmother’s button box. I don’t think I originally appreciated it as much as I do now. My grandmother (I assume) made it from an old cigar box. She covered it with lots of beautiful buttons, and painted it in matte black paint.

There are buttons missing in spots now, and the cover doesn’t stay on. And there are a couple of buttons on the top with metal trim that have tarnished green through the black paint. (Could they be made with copper?)

It’s not in the best shape, but I love it. 

When each of the kids has been about five, six or seven, we’ve done math with the buttons in the box. Last week the box came to mind, and I realized it was Theo’s turn.

We had fun just admiring and playing with the buttons inside. And then he naturally began sorting them, without any prompting from me: buttons with words, buttons that are tiny, buttons in yellow, buttons in shapes other than round.

Today we made Venn diagrams with the buttons. I made two intersecting circles with yarn, and put buttons sharing a particular attribute in one, buttons with another attribute in the other. In the intersection I placed buttons that shared both attributes. Then I asked Theo to guess the rule that sorted them. After he figured it out, he made labels for each section.

 

Check out that pencil grip. Yes, yes, yes I've tried to get him to change it and no, no, no he doesn't want to.

Check out that pencil grip. Yes, yes, yes I've tried to get him to change it and no, no, no he doesn't want to.

 

Then it was his turn.

Don’t you love how kids personify everything? They’re not matching buttons, they’re twins.

When we’re finished playing with the buttons, I’m displaying the box beside my desk, rather than sticking it back in Lily’s closet. Because not only is it full of my grandmother’s history, now it also overflows with memories of playing with buttons with each of my kids.

And because, despite its dilapidated appearance, it’s a beautiful box.

(edited to add: Oops! Mr. T labeled that first diagram wrong. It should say two holes, not four. We were having so much fun that neither of us noticed.)

rejection

October 15, 2008 in writing | 5 comments

Or: How about a post on writing?

One of my essays has now been rejected four times. It’s a piece about a trip we took to Spain a few years back, a piece about how travel abroad can bring out the most beastly behavior in children–with actual examples of my children’s beastliness. It’s also about how it’s worth putting up with that beastliness–from adults as well as kids–for the shift in perspective that travel can offer.

It’s a long essay, one I’ve worked at and am especially proud of. Which probably guarantees its likelihood of being rejected.

Years ago, when I first started writing, I sent a few pieces out to magazines. When they were sent back to me, I realized that my writing just wasn’t ready yet. It wasn’t good enough. So I wrote for a long time, for over a decade, before submitting anything again.

Once my writing began hinting at being publication-worthy, there was the challenge of finding the right publications. My first published essay, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece which I called “How To Homeschool” (and which Mothering later retitled) was rejected twice before Mothering took it. I’m guessing that the homeschooling magazine I sent it to first found its form too “literary” and strange. On the other hand, the literary parenting magazine I sent it to next found it too homeschool-ish. I know this because one of the editors kindly took the time to tell me how much she liked it, but that her senior editors found its tone too “smug”. Which I suppose it was. I’d written it for people who might be considering homeschooling, not for more general readers.

It finally occurred to me that Mothering was a nice balance between the other two publications: they publish literary essays; they also publish on alternative topics like homeschooling. Bingo! They took the piece, which thrills me still.

The Spain essay hasn’t been so easy. The second rejection, in fact, arrived in my email inbox the very same day in which I submitted the essay. And while I appreciate a speedy response, a same-day response was, well, disheartening. That editor wrote: “The “telling” in this essay seems to cover a great deal of ground, and the essay might be better served by trying a series of scenes that capture these observations within each scene and in dialogue between characters.” Well! Can I tell you how hard I wanted to slam the delete button on that email? But I didn’t. I filed the email away. Later I opened it. And reworked the essay. Found a scene from page three and pulled it up front. How could I not have considered that before? Now the essay’s introduction tied directly to the ending! It was just what the essay needed! I submitted it again.

 It got rejected twice more.

There are only so many markets for longer parenting essays. With each submission I’ve scaled down, sent the essay to a smaller publication. At this point I’m looking at the essay and wondering if it’s too flawed. Too few scenes? Too long? Too much Veruca Salt-like behavior from the kids? Or maybe it just hasn’t reached the right publication at the right time. I could just file it away for a while, but instead I’m sending it off to an even bigger publication, one with an even stronger repertoire of excellent writers, a pie-in-the-sky publication for me.  Why not? What the heck?

Last year, my friend Melissa was applying to MFA programs in poetry. She had doubts about whether she’d be accepted—she didn’t know if her background was right, if her poetry was good enough. But still she was excited with the possibility. She told me one night as we were driving to our writing group, “It’s fun making waves in your own life.”

I wrote that line down, and every time I submit an essay, I think of it. Because although the essay may get rejected, there’s always that time in the interim when the possibility of publication is there, when hope hovers in the air. It’s fun making waves in your own life.

 P.S. Melissa started her MFA program in September. 

wonderings from the wonder farm

October 13, 2008 in wondering | 2 comments

Today’s wonderings brought to you courtesy of Mr. T.

  • Is being an ice cream man a good job?
  • Is Theodore Roosevelt dead?
  • How did John McCain fight big tobacco?
  • Do ants have pupils?
  • Is George Bush a Democrat or a Republican? 
  • I wonder what it would be like to turn your skin inside out. It would probably hurt your ankles.

species #3

October 9, 2008 in 100-species-challenge, books | 1 comment

Well, we are just ripping along with the 100-Species Challenge. At this rate, we’ll get to our 100th species about 75 months from now, which puts us at the beginning of 2015. That’s actual statistics, not hyperbole.

I’ll try to do better.

This was a fun one though, so I thought I’d share it here. Usually I’ll just post them on the 100-Species-Challenge page in the sidebar.

3. Sunflower ”Mammoth Grey Stripe”

 

Latin name: Helianthus annuus

meaning: annual sunflower

Our sunflower house never quite grew a roof. Probably due to my neglectful watering of the morning glories. (Oh, how I hate to water by hand.) But the sunflowers thrived, and are now a sad cluster of heavy-headed, hump-backed old men.

This photo was taken a month ago. They are much more droopy and pathetic-looking these days.

Interesting facts: Mr. T and I had a fun time dissecting a head, and looking at it under a microscope using Anna Botsford Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study .*  We learned that the large flowers are actually “heads” made up of many florets–one for each eventual sunflower seed. There are special ray or banner florets at the edges of the head, each providing a single petal for the large flower-head. The florets open and ripen from the outside of the head first, then toward the middle, in concentric rings.

It’s fascinating to examine how the florets are arranged in groovy radiating spirals, which have something to do with fibonacci numbers. Also how each single floret has all the flower parts–stigma, anther, corolla… There are hundreds of them on each sunflower! No wonder the bees love them!

We also found some cool little unidentified metallic beetle-ish creatures in the heads. And then we discovered a virtual nursery of ladybug larvae on several of the leaves! Tiny ones, huge ones, discarded exoskeletons, as well as spanking new ladybugs. Wish I had a camera with a nice macro lens.

Lots of fun from one packet of sunflower seeds–even if we didn’t get a house in the deal.  And we’ve got a whole lot of seeds to roast.

* This is a popular book among Charlotte Mason fans. (Can I call them Masonites? Or does that make them sound like wooden boards?) I just found a used copy this summer, and I’m impressed. There are thousands of entries of animals, plants and “earth and sky”. Each gives a thorough description of the item, as well as a series of questions to consider as one studies it. Such as, “Describe the shape of the open corolla. Look at the brown tube with a lens. How many little points projecting at the top and bottom on each side of the tube?” There are even poems included for many species! The book, however, was published in 1911, so you should balance your research with other sources. For example, Comstock writes that the sunflower is part of the family Compositae–it’s since been shifted to the Asteraceae family. There’s so much good stuff here, though, that it’s still a fabulous resource, even after almost 100 years.

six weeks

October 1, 2008 in learning, wondering | 5 comments

At the homeschool conference, I went to several sessions with Catherine Levinson, a Charlotte Mason speaker. She had a lot to say about cultivating habits in kids. Apparently Charlotte was a big believer in cultivating habit.

The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.—Charlotte Mason

Levinson thinks we should work on one habit at a time with our kids, gently reminding them to do something just once–no nagging. If we do so, she says, the habit will take within about six weeks.

I have no idea where she gets the six weeks figure. Something Charlotte Mason wrote a century ago? Some scientific study? Personal experience? A random time frame that sounds good?

No matter, I decided to try it.  After all, I could use a smooth and easy day every now and again. I decided to see if I could eventually get Mr. T to put his plate next to the sink after a meal, without being reminded. This seemed like a reasonable habit to attempt–it isn’t something that really drives me nuts, so I figured I could restrain my usual nagging. 

So I reminded. Gently and only once per meal. (Don’t chalk this up to patience; I was just trying to carry out the experiment scientifically.) Mr. T usually put the plate on the counter after one reminder, but never on his own.

Yesterday morning, when I came downstairs after showering, look what I found:

I calculated. It had been six weeks and one day since I started trying to fix this habit. (Mr. T is not a kid known for obedience–I guess he needed that extra day.) Of course, it might have been nice to have the yogurt container and lid placed in the garbage, just a few feet away… 

But I guess that will take another six weeks.