We went up to visit our friends the Porterfields who had the shocking audacity to move North without us. So, this must have been Phi Bensa Zoe gym class? Indeed. Veronica had the awesome idea that we should drive up to Pennsylvania and go snow tubing at Liberty Mountain. There are not a lot of children for whom driving 3 hours only to drive another 2 hours to spend 2 hours tubing and then another 2 hours in the car would be worth it. For these children, it was TOTALLY worth it. Here they are waiting for the shuttle:
When we arrived at the tubing hill, my heart sank. It looked huge, fast, and we were immediately told that we couldn't go with our younger ones -- they had to go on their own. I was so proud and amazed that *all* the kids tried the hill, no one freaked out or hung back, and while Phillip declined to repeat his run after bravely giving it a shot, the rest of them went up and down the hill about a million times.
Benny, having looked over the situation, asked for "self responsibility," which I gave him with the understanding that he and Zoe (both now nine years old) would stick together. They did, and they did great having self responsibility. That alone was worth the effort of getting up there. But then there was Sadie Grace. She was a MANIAC. She loved tubing -- here's a video of one of her runs:
Did you hear her report that she said, "Woo hoo!" I can attest that she did. She said "Woo hoo!" Crammed into that tube with only her little head and her Dora boots sticking out, she woo-hooed her way down that big old hill. And Veronica and I had our moments too -- me going down face first and her circumspectly sitting upright in her tube, hair flying in the wind.
The children definitely experienced total happiness.
1. Sadie started karate classes! She has been waiting to start for a while, but I told her she had to be 5 years old and 30 pounds. Well, she hit those marks at about the same time, so with trembling, fear, and much trust in Mr. Odom at Norfolk Karate Academy, I let her start. She loves it -- from the first moment she put on the gi she has been completely ecstatic. I had these illogical fantasies that she would have no contact with anything other than air for like two years at which point she would be allowed to maybe gently kick a pillow or something. Of course, she started kicking and punching things on the first night. GREAT. Here are a few photos from her first day:
Sadie started on the same night as her friend Keric. Here are the two new white belts with big brother Benny. As it turned out that night was Benny's last as a green belt -- he tested for blue that very same night!
2. Benny's blue belt test! Benny got his green belt in November of 2006. Taking over two years to go from green to blue is not normal. Benny has never been on the fast track in karate, and for all he deeply and totally loves the sport, he has never been particularly good at it. What I appreciate about Mr. Odom is his willingness to take as long as is necessary for each individual child. Some kids will go quickly through the levels. Others will take longer. Benny has never been promoted when he didn't deserve it, and has also never been made to feel less than the other children because he takes longer between tests. This is why I was so proud that Mr. Odom felt he was really ready for blue, and even prouder when he told me after the test, "Benny deserved every bit of that." Some schools will put the kids up in groups, or promote them when their friends get promoted. At Norfolk Karate Academy, I know that my kids will be treated as individuals, with patience and dedication to the long term result. That means a lot.
Sparring:
Form:
A great night for the fighting Netzers. Here's a link to all the pictures and video from that night. Long may they punch and kick. I have this to say about what karate is doing for my children: After one week in karate, Sadie told me she was done with ballet. She says she's strong, she says she's tough, she quickly learned to count to ten in Korean, and she's working on her first form. She practices constantly, and she *loves* the way karate is making her feel. I'm proud of my girly-girl and her desire to line up her sparkly slippers on the side of the mat and get out there and punch and kick with the boys.
BEACH is a homeschool group that organizes sport for homeschoolers. They do soccer and basketball and cheerleading and right now they're doing T-ball. Our friends Zoe and Phillip are each on a BEACH team, and they had games today, so we went to watch. The games were held at Woodstock City Park, right by where Providence crosses 64. A very cute little park, if you can tolerate the electromagnetic radiation from the power plant right next door (just kidding -- that was for Veronica). Don't worry, your eye will stop twitching after a few hours. HEH.
There's a very junior league that practices while the older kids are having their games. Here's Phillip at the bat (and the power plant, or whatever that is!):
Here's Zoe's team going over to play their game:
And here are Zoe, Benny, and Phillip after the game at the little adjacent playground:
All the children were very loving to each other, very mannered, and the parents were enthusiastic but mellow. I forgot how much I like to scream and holler at sporting events when I know the people involved. Back in my horse show days, we used to raise the roof. I'm glad I can go cheer for Zoe and Phillip now, and look forward to Benny and Sadie being in a "team" situation so Mommy can go show spirit and noisiness. Maybe swim team. Maybe karate tournaments. Do ballet competitions allow screaming? Probably not... hmm....
I am not a skiier. Turns out my son is, though. So throw another log on the fireplace, because it's time for our ski week at Massanutten, VA.
Benny is seven and his favorite Playstation game is SSX3. The SSX stands for "Completely Insane Death-Defying Snowboarding Game That Thumbs Its Nose at Physics." It is, I have to say, a really great game. But it gives the child a false sense of power over gravity, knee joints, and mountains. When we got a chance to go to Massanutten VA for a week, we knew that Benny would be eager to hit the slopes. We just weren't sure the reality would measure up to the fantasy, as he was determined to be sliding down rails, spinning 360s, flipping, ripping, and raging down the hill on his first day.
He was not, however, at all disappointed.
On the first day, Dan and Benny skiied for six hours. Benny took a couple of little classes, and then he and Dan just went up and down the beginner slope. He fell, and fell, and fell. And by the end of the day, he could stop, and kind of navigate around a little bit. It was absolutely fantastic to watch him persevering without complaint through all that hard work, all that trial and error. He never asked for a break, wouldn't eat, wouldn't rest, just wanted to ski, ski, ski. He did drink a Powerade. What's a hovering mother to do?
Here's a video of his first day:
Then it got really warm and they couldn't ski for a couple days, so we went to the waterpark and the caverns and whatnot -- more on that in another post. They got back to the slopes at the end of the week. Benny couldn't wait. They skiied like maniacs and had a great time. Here's a video of him at the end of his final day, when he was able to turn:
Was I completely panicked the entire time he had skiis strapped to his feet? Absolutely. I had all kinds of paranoid scenarios running around in my head. He would crash into a tree. A giant snowboarding teenager would smack into him and annhilate him. He'd be decapitated by the lift. He'd fall off the lift and roll down the mountain. Etc. I wasn't raised around skiing -- I kind of viewed it as an extreme activity engaged in by Olympic athletes and rich people with a death wish. I can see now that skiing is a skill that kids need, like riding a horse or swimming or playing chess.
Here's the first thing I saw when I arrived at the slopes after dropping them off and going swimming with the baby:
Yes, there are Benny and Dan, floating along on the chair lift, miles above the ground, with no seatbelt, no lap bar, nothing between them and certain snowy death. It did rather take my breath away. However, watching the total rapture and joy on his bright little face made all the panic manageable.
What a deal. A tumbling class and a swimming class, back to back, for three and four year olds at the YMCA. Tuck, straddle, tuck, straddle. Pictures inside.
First they do gymnastics upstairs. For 45 minutes they jump, tumble, hang, somersault, pop around, and laugh.
Then they get their shoes on, pack up their things, and trundle downstairs.
Then they go down to the locker room, change into their swimming suits, pack their clothes into their backpack and put the backpacks in the basket, and then they swim! They get a 45 minute swimming lesson with two teachers, and they have a great time.
Happy girl. And for older siblings up to age 9, the YMCA has Kid Gym going on at the same time. Great morning for all the kids, while the moms go sweat on the machines! What a deal.
I haven't thrown a basketball around since I was in high school gym class, which I violently hated. So what is Benny in love with? Basketball.
Here's one to file under "What POSSIBLE qualification do you have to teach your child THAT?"
Several times in the last few months, when we go to the playground, Benny has gotten very interested in the basketball games going on, and has even gotten himself invited to join in a few. Of course, he is hopeless at it. He's tall enough to ride on Space Mountain, but not tall enough to get a basketball up and through a hoop.
So, he needs to practice dribbling and shooting, I assume. I'm about as skilled in basketball moves as I am in ballet. That is to say, not at all skilled. And our resident tall man in the family isn't exactly the team sport type either. I cannot pretend and I cannot lie. We are hopeless at basketball.
Here's what I know, from high school gym class:
1. You have to dribble. 2. You can't grab the other guy. 3. When shooting, bend your knees.
And that's about it. I know there are positions on the team like right wing and forward ho and quarterback, except probably not those. I know that points can be made by persuading the ball to go through the net. Free throws? Three pointers? Everything else is filtering in from vague memories of watching the Detroit Pistons win the World Series when I was a kid. What? Not the World Series? The Stanley Cup then? No?
So, you get that our family is a little sports-retarded. But we are, in our defense, willing to flump around on the basketball court and try.
In other news, the 57th Carnival of Homeschooling is live, and my post about the opera was included. It is always an interesting collection of homeschooling blogs, and this week is no exception.
My son got his green belt in karate last week. It took him more than two years to do it. I firmly believe that no other teacher would have gotten him to this point. Fortunately, his teacher is a saint.
When Benny started karate, in the fall of 2004, he was four and a half. I wanted to start him in martial arts because I thought it would help him to focus on the real world around him, to come out of his brain a little bit, and to engage with other people. This is a child who was constantly humming entire movements to concertos (in the right key too), had four or five imaginary friends, and wouldn't answer a direct question without having it repeated ten times. It wasn't that he was being naughty. He just really wasn't paying attention. To anything. Except what was between his ears.
Violin study was helping him, and we had/have a wonderful teacher, willing to patiently work on drawing him out of his insular world, while not making excuses for him based on his eccentricities. But I knew in my mind that Karate would be great for him.
I tried him at another martial arts studio in Virginia Beach, which had been recommended to me by a friend. They rejected him outright, because he was too spacey. Then the Norfolk Karate Academy opened up, just down the street, and I had new hope. I was looking for a happy medium between the lame-o McKarate franchises and the too-too-serious dojos with black walls and swords hanging from the ceiling. NKA seemed like just the thing. And Mr. Odom agreed to take him on.
Benny was any karate teacher's worst nightmare. Distracted, singing, picking his nose, rolling around on the floor, bugging the other kids -- it was pretty horrifying. Every week I expected to be told that we had to leave. But Mr. Odom did not give up. He repeated himself so many times that a weaker teacher would have been driven insane. He was kindly and brutally consistent in the face of Benny's completely erratic behavior. We saw the children who started at the same time get their yellow belts, their green belts, and on and on. More kids started, and passed Benny. Benny never got discouraged, and neither did Mr. Odom.
Two years and several months later, the child has a green belt. And he's acting like a green belt (for the most part) in class. Who can say what exactly brought about this change? Was it Benny's intense and almost irrational love for karate? Was it Mr. Odom's persistence and the quality of instruction? Was it just that he got older and more mature? I can't say precisely what the formula was, but I know that it worked. This little space cadet, who used to be about as serious as a school mascot, has now started to show us some real progress, some real performance.
It means a lot that Mr. Odom didn't just promote him automatically, when the other kids got new belts. It means a lot that he never let Benny feel humiliated that he wasn't advancing. He always made it clear what was expected, and he accepted nothing less. This means that the green belt means something real for Benny. He knows he earned it. And now he can't wait to get to karate and learn what's next.
Here's Benny's last class as a yellow belt. They're doing the second form in the kibon (basic) series:
Here's Benny getting his green belt and also a little motivational speech from Mr. Odom:
And here's Benny with his new belt, and Mr. Odom with his little orange project. The face you see here is an example of Benny's newfound ferocity in the karate uniform:
You can visit the Norfolk Karate Academy right here.
Homeschool PE started yesterday and four little boys had a lovely afternoon at the downtown YMCA.
Benny had a great time playing with other little homeschoolers yesterday at the Norfolk YMCA, thanks to the organizers of the Homeschool PE class. They did some fitness stuff, some games, and then they all had swimming lessons with Ms. Raelynn -- what a deal. I put Sadie in the child watch, and I went and actually worked out, by myself, without little children -- I even sat in the sauna. Imagine that.
There were two lively young YMCA folks running the show, in addition to the swimming teacher. I felt completely fine leaving him in their care, although I did spy on them from the hot tub when they got to the swimming part. Benny was thrilled with the whole deal.
I was kind of amused with the Y guy talking to me about how the idea of the class is to get kids up and moving -- there may be a little bit of stereotyping going on there -- not all homeschoolers are huddled around their hearth, afraid to move or speak because they might be sullied by the world outside. But who knows -- maybe there *are* some kids for whom this could be the sole source of exercise. Benny does a whole lot of other active sports, but I'm cool with being told he needs to do sit-ups too. He probably does. Who cares? He had a blast, and made friends. So, yay! Call the YMCA and sign up your child, then join me in the hot tub for a prime viewing spot. It costs $20 for a four week session.
Here's a picture of Sadie after being picked up from Child Watch... waiting by the pool for Benny to take a shower and get dressed. Yes, she did manage to get herself wet. What real live two-year-old could possibly avoid it?
