Happy Groundhog's Day

We Have Achieved Easter

Longsuffering husband and I went to bed at 1am, after hiding all the colored eggs around the house, along with the little presents the bunny was going to bring to the kids this year. Between 1 and 7, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, Benny woke me up 4 times to let me know that the bunny had visited but that he was going to wait until morning to hunt the eggs, and Sadie woke me up 3 times to go potty.

It was a supergreat night. I absolutely loved last night. I particularly loved the third time that Sadie said, "MOMMY! I WEED TO GO POTTY!" and I came back with, "Sadie, you just went potty. You cannot have to go potty." She began to volubly sob and wail, saying, "I DO TOO WEED TO GO POTTY AND MY TEE-TEE IS COMING WIGHT NOW." I guiltily sat her on the toilet to see if she actually did. Well, she did. Guess I was wrong. Or delirious. At 6am I heard someone stumping down the stairs, and I rolled out of bed and staggered out into the hall to tell Benny that if he didn't go to bed immediately I was going to throw all the Easter eggs into the furnace and give whatever toys the bunny had delivered away to the undeserving children down the street, who were at least ASLEEP and therefore MY FAVORITE children on earth.

It was not Benny. It was no one. Or maybe it was my sanity, stumbling away into the night. What matters is that I finished the colonial Easter dress last night and here it is:





The children at Christ and St. Lukes this morning were treated to a rich experience. First they got to march in the procession at the beginning of church with the trumpets and the organ and everyone singing, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." That was exciting. Then they had an easter egg hunt and sat and listened to the Easter story being told on story cards they could take home with them to retell it at home. Then they got to go and stand right behind the clergy by the altar during an Easter baptism of three little babies, before joining their parents for the rest of the service.

Here's Sadie getting some help with her egg hunt:



Here's Benny sorting out his loot:



No one puts together a more meaningful and engaging church experience for children than the experts at Christ and St. Lukes. I am constantly amazed.

This afternoon I'd like to take a nap, but I need to do my prep work for the Phi Bensa Zoe Academy that launched last week. What's the Phi Bensa Zoe Academy? I'll blog about that tomorrow...

Happy New Year

In which I resolve to blog every single day. WOOPS -- I guess I forgot to blog yesterday. Well, there's always 2008. No, but seriously, in which I make 10 homeschooling resolutions for the coming year.

Not all unschoolers are freewheeling rock stars with no thought for tomorrow. Some of us wild woollly renegades who eschew formal curriculums still make plans and goals for our homeschooling year. Last year my objectives were pretty vague and insubstantial, but this year, since Benny is old enough to kind of understand and participate in his own goal-making, I decided to formalize it somewhat.

1. Benny gets his blue belt. Benny does Tang Soo Do, which is Korean karate, at the Norfolk Karate Academy. He got his green belt shortly before Christmas, so I'm hoping the blue belt will come before the end of next year. He has to learn the next form, which is pretty hard, and he also has to take his behavior in class to the next level. No nose-picking, for sure, for the blue belt. Possibly even no spinning and humming.

2. Benny finishes the Rosetta Stone Spanish curriculum, level 1. We've been toying around with this for a couple of years, and it's time to get serious. We're probably going to be going to Guatemala later in the year, so all of us have this one on our lists.

3. Finish Suzuki book 3. This will be good and bad, since for book 4 we have to find a new teacher, but since he's already on the third song of a seven song book, I'm anticipating this one will be done by the end of 2007.

4. Read 12 books. In December we read Charlotte's Web, which was our first real chapter book (besides books like Mrs. Piggle Wiggle where the chapters are episodic). So I'm thinking we read another chapter book each month, titles to be determined, as we see what works. Considering Alice in Wonderland first, since they're kinda familiar with that, and maybe Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after that.

5. Memorize 12 poems. Last year we memorized "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear and "Have You Seen The Wind?" by Christina Rossetti. I want to do another poem each month, learning vocab and also general stuff about each one we do. This month we're doing "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll. Benny picked it. I was going to push for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" but whatever!

6. Do 50 science experiments. The kids love to do these and they don't have to be fancy or complicated. We have neat books to choose experiments from, and I'm just going to let them pick what they want to do each time.

7. Teach Sadie her letters and numbers. She kinda knows some of them. I don't know if we'll do a really straightforward "Letter of the Week" approach, but we have to knock that out before she considers going to preschool.

8. Learn multiplication table. We actually started this this morning and got through the 7s. I mean, he doesn't have them memorized, but he gets the concept. I just let him draw numbers into grids that I made, and let him figure it out on his own. It was actually very magical to watch this, and it all happened before 9 am! Tomorrow we'll do 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, and isn't that as far as the official multiplication table goes?

9. Do H-Z in South America. We did interesting lessons and songs that we made up ourselves for A-G, on South America topics, then we abandoned the project when Sadie became, let's just say, an obstacle to progress in various ways. Mostly that she was 2. Now she's going to be 3 and we're going to finish this project.

10. Get Sadie into ballet, and graduate from Prezuki to regular Suzuki lessons on the violin. And potty trained, but hey, that'll happen soon, RIGHT?

There you have it. Our fun year. Let the learning begin.

Trunk or Treat Rained Out

The downtown Norfolk YMCA does a great job of planning cool stuff for families. Unfortunately, they cannot control the weather. Now I've got a fog machine and a black light crying in the corner because last night's "Trunk or Treat" was rained out!

It's not that we're hypercompetitive (okay, it is that, but it's not *just* that). We just really love Halloween. We love the spooky stuff, the dark, the drear, the ravens, the severed hands, all of it. If we had a little less common sense, we might be in danger of being one of those families you see on Wife Swap, where they sleep in coffins and wear shrouds to school. Okay, probably not, because most of the year, we're as cheerful as anyone else, but in October, when the wind gets a little chilly, we always find ourselves browsing the spider web aisle.

We live on a bad street for trick-or-treating. Nobody comes down this street. So our burning desire to decorate way more than is reasonable has never been realized -- we anticipate the grief and frustration of having dressed the house for a party, and having no one come to dance.

When we found out about the Trunk-or-Treat at the YMCA, where you dress up the back of your vehicle, park it in the parking lot, and let the kids trick-or-treat around to everyone's car, it seemed the perfect opportunity for us to shine. And there was a contest for best trunk. We needed no further enticement.

We got a fog machine. And a black light. Decorations. A thingy to make it so we can plug in a bunch of stuff in the back of our van. We have, I must admit, an eight foot inflatable bat that lights up and runs with a little fan inside to inflate it -- you know what I'm talking about.

WE WERE REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT TRUNK-OR-TREAT PARTY.

Then it rained. And they moved it indoors. Which was just not going to be any good, what with the fog machine messing up people's workouts and the black light trying to work against the fluorescent gym lights... to which we say... never mind... I guess there's next year... sniffle snuffle.

Today we are going to get conciliatory pumpkins.

Geocaching on the Fourth

If you've never heard of geocaching, you're probably normal. But if you're a certified geek in every other way, you need this sport in your life.

For educational merit, Geocaching is awesome. This time of year, it's pretty high on mosquito content too. Bugs notwithstanding, it's fun for the whole family, and all you need is a GPS thingy, and a willingness to get off the beaten path.

Geocaching is a worldwide game based on the old practice of explorers, cowboys, woodsmen, and other outdoors types -- leaving "caches" in secret places, so they could come back and get stuff they couldn't carry. Players hide caches in public places (or with permission on private property) and post the latitude and longitude coordinates on the internet so other players can go find them. Caches can be as small as a film canister and contain nothing but a log to sign and replace, or they can be a big waterproof container, where players can trade items. Lots of people leave Happy Meal toys, for example, for kids who are joining their parents on a treasure hunt. Caches can be hidden deep in the wilderness, or right on a downtown street corner.



You need a GPS unit, so you can wander around in the woods, walking this way and that, staring at the radio in your hand which tells you you're 15 feet away, then 400 feet away, then that you're standing on it, then that you're a mile away, all between two adjacent trees. You need a free account at the Geocaching web site, so you can look up caches to find. And you need BUG SPRAY!!! Don't forget the bug spray. And boots. Today I was ankle deep in mud.

Geocaching is fun for the kids because they like to find treasures, and leave treasures for other kids to find. My six-year-old loves signing the log books. For homeschoolers, this is a deep mine... which I haven't even really begun to think about properly. For example, you can put a "Travel Bug" in a cache, and send it around the world, tracking its progress on the internet, as other cachers transfer it from place to place. You can hide your own caches too. Some are puzzle caches, math-based caches, and of course you learn about the compass, the lat and long, and finding your way in the woods.

Today we went out "caching" and found four of the four we were seeking. A good day! They say days like that can make the game addictive. Tomorrow we're going to Ohio to visit grandparents. I'm *trying* not to look up geocaches to visit along the way.

Sunprinting for Father's Day

My friend Kristen, her two kids, and her mom (henceforth known as Nana) recently visited us. Nana had an amazing suitcase full of wondrous things -- books, games, projects galore. On our final day, just when I thought the amazing suitcase's depths had been exhausted, Nana pulled out a project for a sunny day: Sun printing.



Mix the paint, schlop it onto the fabric any way you like, then lay down the shapes you want the sun to highlight. Leave the projects in the sun until they dry, and PRESTO you get lovely magic "prints." Benny and Irene made shirts for their dads for Father's Day, and the most amazing thing was that the little siblings (both 2 years old) got to paint too. Because you apply the colors with sponge brushes, and because it doesn't really matter where you put the paper shapes, the two year olds really got into the effort.



Finally, we found a use for our porch roof. After five years. A couple of tips from Nana: 1. Slip a garbage bag over a piece of foam board for a working surface. 2. After you're done painting, slip the garbage bag off and let the shirt dry on it. 3. Use a different garbage bag under each shirt. 4. Those sticky foam shapes work great for sharp, detailed prints. 5. Nana uses Setacolor Soleil paints, but you can also get a kit from Hearthsong or Klutz.

Nana sunprinted a giant piece of muslin, and then had the kids draw on it with Sharpies. We made a list to help them remember all the highlights of our visit together, and they drew scenes from it... from tubing on Broad Bay to Maymont Park in Richmond to the Fireworks at Harborfest. After the drawings were done, we all wrote our names on it, and we have a permanent record that could be made into a memory quilt for them.



Naturally the little siblings got in on that end of it too. Who would pass up a chance to color with a Sharpie, that forbidden fruit of the craft cabinet top shelf!!! So a good time was had by all, thanks to Nana! Of course, on a rainy day, you're going to have to find something else to do. Like go to the aquarium... oh... wait... not that....

We're Normal. Thanks, Memorial Day.

Ever since we bought the grill, we feel different. Cleaner, better, more capable of heating meat.

We live next to some very serious PETA employees. Maybe this is why we haven't bought a grill, lo these many long years. Buying a grill and then using it to cook anything but, you know, peppers or something, would seem like a political statement. We're really not prepared to be political about something so incidental as dinner. So, we haven't bought one. Even though the neighbors on the other side have one. Even though our little deck seems empty and lonely without one. We exercised restraint. We're decent folk, and not prone to the aggressive and public preparation of food that might offend. After all, PETA people are good people, and why cause a fuss?

This year, however, the PETA people next door have been really bossy about our cat, who sometimes escapes into the world when I'm trying to get a basket of laundry out to the mud room. He always comes back in, having eaten a bird or engaged in some other atrocity, and he's been living cheerfully like this, with maybe a weekly walkabout, for 12 years. The vet says he's in perfect health, but the neighbors went so far as to promise (threaten) to take him to a shelter "where he can live indoors." While I understand about cats outside and whatnot, this seemed a bit thick.

So, we wondered, as Memorial Day dawned, and my husband felt the old familiar itch to spray liquid fuel all over a pile of rocks and then set them on fire, why are we being so sensitive?

Here's Dan opening the flammable rocks, after spending quite a long time putting the grill together:



And here are Dan and Benny standing over the grill, with a satisfactory little fire raging away inside:



Later, around the dinner table, we felt surprisingly little guilt. Benny, who is mostly a vegetarian anyway, by his own choice, preferred to eat a hamburger "without meat." As he lovingly chewed up his sesame seed bun, he said very encouragingly, "DAD! I love what you grilled!!! Except for the meat." And he's never even read a PETA flier. Imagine. :)

memorial+day PETA grilling meat vegetarianism