Twinkie Cannon

I'm not a big junk food buyer.  R ate cheetos for the first time last year, much to the delight of a dear friend.  She couldn't believe he was 4 whole years old and had never had a cheeto.  I'm glad she got to witness his delight in the whole she-bang:  choosing it from the vending machine, marveling over the packaging (this was during his big cat phase,) and eating every one of the bright orange crunchies.  It was FUN.

Fortunately, he and his sisters also got to experience the wonder of The Twinkie.  Although Twinkies were a coveted treat for me as a kid, I had never gotten around to procuring any for the kids.  I'm not so much of a food puritan that I forbid it, but I'm sure as heck not going to go out of my way to provide it.  The opportunity came up at Maker Faire. 

What you see here is a Twinkie Cannon.  It shoots Twinkies.  Though my kids have had no more than one each Twinkie in their entire lives, the Twinkies they ate had been shot from a cannon.    I have not failed.

Hold 'er Down, Newt!

This fall, my kids, my dad and my husband modified a child's ride on, battery powered toy to go very fast, and to navigate some significant obstacles.  It was ridiculously fun.  Then we entered it into a race at the Ft. Wayne Maker Faire. That was even more ridiculously fun (if you can believe that six people can find so much amusement in something so silly.)  C drove it.  It looked like this: 

 

I'm not sure where to start with the history of Power Wheels Racing (read it here, instead.)  

If you're the link-clicky type, I *love* this interview  wherein a fellow race car engineer talks about education:  Power Racing Series and Education in America  We met him (and competed with him)  in Ft. Wayne.  I wish I'd seen the interview before meeting him; I would have loved to have talked with him about education. 

And to top off the whole amazing deal, and take the homeschooling/holistic learning to a ridiculous extreme (because this project would have been well worth the price of admission without a history/language lesson,) the combination of 1--working with my dad, 2--on something that goes fast and is somewhat hazardous at 3--the family home that my great-grandmother used to live in (chock full of memories for me) brought to mind a funny family story in which the punchline is my dad (as a small boy) yelling "Hold 'er down newt!  She's headed for the briars!" 

Well, of course I googled the phrase!  Hear the history for yourself! 

(have I ever mentioned how grateful I am to be alive during the technological revolution?  That I have a personal memory of hearing a catch-phrase from the 1920's...and I can google it and find out what the heck it's all about??  It's a dream come true!)   

I do not know Jack

Today the boy spontaneously said the alphabet.  This followed:

"R-O-W-A-N.  You couldn't spell my name without those letters, right?  Well, unless my name was 'Jack.'"

Disappointment

Upon digging into the Thanksgiving offerings, the boy says:

"Aw Man!  There are sweet potatoes under the marshmallows!"

Our Boy is a Reader!

We babysit a first grader after school. It's a nice (smallish) supplement to our income, she's a great playmate for R, the added structure to our days (gotta pick her up at the same time every day, back home at the same time every day,  little kids engaged in play for an hour before it's time for snack and homework) is beneficial...it's all good.

An unanticipated benefit is the homework she does at our house.  R follows along (and sometimes helps out.)  After 2.5 months of first grade phonics homework once a week (4 days a week it's just drilling math,)  he's really interested in decoding words.  The allure of doing something his (3 years older) friend is doing is irresistible to him. 

So I dug around for a little while this morning and pulled out our old set of Bob Books. The first one was missing, but the rest of the blue box was there.  So I handed him the second book, and he read it.  And then he read the third one.  He was still interested, but he was getting a little monkey-ish, so I asked him to hold off on the fourth one until tomorrow.  

The blue box has books of three colors, red, green and yellow (respectively.)  He loves that.  He's really into categorizing achievement (usually this takes the form of him being the "master" something and me being the "junior.")  He talked at length today about how motivated he is to get to the green, and then the yellow books. 

I'm not so thrilled with his "achievement for the sake of achievement" attitude...I'm much more of an intrinsic rewards kind of thinker...but...with regards to my four year old reading...I'll take it, thanks!

I'm desperately hoping that my life will be easier when he is a fluent reader (and maybe that will be sooner rather than later.)  He has a manic need to know drive.  I'm thinking that maybe, when he is a reader, he will find all kinds of things to explore.  Maybe the new found universe of literacy will distract him, and  he won't fixate (and tantrum) on his inability to figure out/understand the explanation of what the highest number is (true story--I don't write about the ongoing saga because the fits that come out of that frustration are so unbelievably ugly that not only do you have to see it to believe it, I don't even know what to say about it.) 

So, the boy is reading.  Baby steps.  We are on the way to life being less frustrating.  Right??

Safe, Responsible, Respectful

I've written about this before.  My feelings have changed only in that they have grown much stronger. 

Parents Line Up at CPS Magnet Schools.

Signups began Wednesday morning at some of Cincinnati Public Schools’ magnet elementary schools, ending what for some had been a 10-day campout – the longest ever – in sometimes frigid temperatures and rain.

 It's simple.  The ability to take ten days off of work and family responsibility is a reflection of enormous privilege.  Our best schools, public, tax payer funded schools, are unavailable to children who don't hold enough privilege.  Instead, they're left with schools like my neighborhood school, the school my children would be assigned to if they were to enroll in our public school system.  Really, click that link and look at my neighborhood school's homepage.  The motto, right there on the front:

Safe, Responsible and Respectful?  Really?? Absolutely I want that for my kids...but I don't need to send them to school to learn character traits.  In a school description, I'm  looking for adjectives like Engaged, Capable, Confident. 

This is the State Report Card for the school I would have to camp out for ten days to get my kids out of.

It's not just that CPS is diverse and some schools are better than others...it's that CPS is thoroughly stratified and tracked, and those kids who are unlucky enough to be born underprivileged don't have a chance.

Rethinking How Kids Learn Science

If I were to rank in frequency order the common questions I hear about homeschooling, "what about science and math?" would land right after the socialization question (a required essay question for new homeschoolers.) It took me a long time to understand where people are coming from when they're wondering how kids will learn science and math without a classroom teacher.

Personally, I love science and math, and I love doing both with my kids. It is really easy for me to follow along with the kids' interests and provide content to further their knowledge base, or related content that might (or might not) spark new interests.  The material is readily available, and much of it is low cost or free.

On Science Friday today: Rethinking How Kids Learn Science How important are museums, TV shows and after school clubs to teaching kids science? Ira Flatow and guests look at "informal science education" and what researchers are learning about learning science. Plus, what’s the best way to keep undergraduate science majors in science?

I think this Science Friday piece is a good start at describing our collective attitude toward STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) topics.

Halloween Costumes

Smashed Botatoes

One of R's greatest hits of funny toddlerisms is The Banana Story.

Last year, two years ago, I forget. R was eating a banana and he said "When I was little I used to say 'blalalala' for 'banana.' Now I'm a big boy and I can say it right! Bawana!" He said it with such confidence! The girls and I fell out, and continued to fall out with each retelling.

The hilarious Rowanisms have become more sparse as he has become more verbally proficient. That's to be expected, and I'm glad of his proficiency...but sometimes when he says something correctly my brain fills in with how he used to say it and I
feel a little nostalgic for the old days.

He hit us with at new one tonight. We had mashed potatoes for dinner. We all love mashed potatoes (a starchy carrier for butter and salt--what's not to love!) but since we try to make healthy choices, we don't have it often.

He was excited to see mashed potatoes on his plate. He said "I love smashed botatoes! I used to say it wrong. I said 'mashed botatoes.' Now I say it right! Smashed botatoes!" His conviction was enviable. No one wanted to squash it.

We all fell out. He wondered why we were laughing. We said we loved mashed potatoes too. How I love (and appreciate) that my girls are able to hold off on being "right," and let their little brother have his moment. He dishes it out to them all day long. How easy (and maybe gratifying) it would be for either of them to smack him down in moments like these. But they don't. Their reward is a private laugh with their dad and me.

He'll figure it out. He figured out "banana."

Mill Creek Restoration Project Follow Up

This sample had to incubate for 48 hours. She's attempting to count the pink, blue and purple specks.

Working at 95% Capacity

(the title refers to me--I think the kids are doing fine with downtime!)

You will have to forgive the bullet point  style update.  It's the best I can do right now!

What we've been up to (just the highlights!):

Latin--Visual Latin for T.  She loves it.  Latin 100 (a first year high school) course for C through Lone Pine Classical School for C.  She loves it.  Two thirds of my children now speak to me in Latin.  I have very little idea of what they're saying, and it cracks them up.  We just borrowed from the library some hilarious books, the only title I can remember at this hour is Cattus Petasatus. I confess that the humor is lost on me, but I have a deep appreciation for the enthusiasm.  C is carrying a high A average.  She has every expectation of being inducted into the National Latin Honor Society when she becomes eligible after this semester.  She would very much love to attend the Latin Convention (in Colorado) in the spring.

The girls are also studying for two national mythology exams.  The Medusa Mythology Exam for C, and the National Mythology Exam for T.  Both tests are in the spring.

C is stoked about NaNoWriMo coming up in November.

Both girls are taking a writing class with a local writer, John Overbeck.  That's going swimmingly.

Math suddenly makes sense to T She's rocking through Singapore 4 at a shocking rate.  After years of pulling teeth with her and math, I'm enormously grateful for this breakthrough.  Singapore math is funny.  It's challenging.  They say on their website that most American students starting the program test into it a grade back from their assigned grade level.  That puts T in the right spot for grade level...but she's so bright...with this new thing she's got going on, I feel like she's really hitting her potential.  Thank goodness!

C took the year off from formal math last year.  Her (high school level) chemistry class was so math intensive and homework intensive that I felt like it was in her best interest to reserve her time for something other than more math (ie- Terry Pratchett novels!) so I let her off the hook.  This year she's back in formal math with Art of Problem Solving Pre-Algebra.  Unlike Latin, this is something we do together.  Honestly, we're finding it maddening.  The text book goes from "yeah, duh," to "what??" in the span of a sentence.  I maintain hope that once we acclimate to the style, it will go more quickly.  Much of it is review from Singapore 6 (which she did 2 years ago.)  Initially I had expected to blow through this book by the holidays, and then hit Algebra 1 second semester (and maybe doing that online with an actual math teacher,) but at the rate we're going, I'm not so sure.

History at Our House with Mr. Powell continues to be a hit.  Ancient history this year. 

Water quality is our main science focus this year.  Last week we took the Orsanco REACH  tour.  It was phenomenal--even the weather cooperated!  Basically, we went out on the Ohio River, learned about river ecology, took and analyzed water samples, learned about fish, went back to shore, collected macroinvertebrate samples, analyzed those...and (shockingly!) determined the water quality on the Ohio to be good!  To be fair, the weather had been dry for two weeks.  We learned about the combined sewage overflow situation in Cincinnati.  Basically, our wastewater treatment infrastructure is horribly outdated.  Everytime it rains we dump raw sewage into the river.  We are currently researching what steps are being taken to update the sewers and how that relates to the political and economical situation in our city.  Homeschooling bright kids is not for the faint of heart.

This week we (with a group of homeschoolers, facilitated by me) are collecting and analyzing samples on the Mill Creek (our home watershed.)  I am so impressed with the educational program put out by the Mill Creek Restoration Project!  Apparently they have some fantastic donors.  At this moment I have a mobile field lab in crates and boxes in my living room, ready to take to the testing location tomorrow morning.  It is comprehensive.  And free.  And they use the data we collect.  This is real science, and I am so, so grateful that its available to us!

So, those are the big things.  Things I didn't mention are the fabulous moccasins T just made.  And the crazy rainbow cake C just made (from scratch, and she even cleaned the kitchen!) And probably some other things like pen pal letters, technological proficiency as demonstrated by a tutorial C wrote about how to post files to yahoo groups (complete with screen shots,) medicinal herbal teas made by T...and I don't even know what else.  I'm too busy doing it to document it.

And this.  I'll mention this.  The boy...the boy has been reading some sight words for a while.  Now he's decoding.  He sounded out "sassafras" the other day.

I say all this not to brag.  I don't want to boast.  That's rude, and its no way to win or keep friends.  I've tried (with success and failure) for some time to fly under the radar with regards to what goes on in our homeschooling life.  I speak vaguely.  I tell the funny stories.  I don't often tell the stories about how I go up to tell C to turn off the light and GO TO BED at 12:30, and she says "but Mom, I'm reading history!  Doesn't that count for something!  Here, look at this book!  It's hilarious. I just love how they abuse the 'end of chapter' questions!"  (It was A Smart Aleck's Guide to American History, if you're interested.  I saw it for the first time in the wee hours the other day.  She likes to keep her library selections under wraps until she decides if they're worth sharing.)  Upon quick examination, the book does "abuse" and poke fun at the boring comprehension questions that follow each chapter in a typical textbook...but she checked it out discreetly...and her analysis of it and her succinct description belies her age.  THAT'S OK! But it's the kind of thing that I haven't really shared publicly until now.

I'm thinking maybe it's ok to be a little more public about the crazy intellectual stuff my kids do.  Maybe even, it's more than ok.  Maybe I should.

Monongahela 2011

I think I might could be able to move to West Virginia.  I don't think I would ever tire of the natural beauty of the mountains.

We camped at a dispersed site along this road in Canaan Valley Wilderness. True story: Just after daybreak, a pack of dogs chased a bear through our camp. I certainly heard the ruckus, but by the time I had the tent unzipped, they were gone. I got the details from the dog handler later that morning. We packed up and moved to a State Park campground!

We swam in the headwaters of the Potomac River. The water was clean and cold. This time I remembered to bring our goggles, so we spied on the large mouth, gar, and other assorted fishies hiding in the rocks (we also identified some macroinvertebrates and determined the water quality to be excellent!)

I'm so sure this looks like an album cover...I just can't figure out which one.

I read once that heaven is a collection of good memories. This is one of them.

My Girl Kicks Butt...

...even when her sparring partner is a grown man!

How to Land Your Kid in Therapy

I've thought about this article off and on. Today it came up in a discussion on Facebook, and it turns out I do have an opinion (imagine that!)

I think the premise is fundamentally flawed. The premise is that having a kid on the couch (grown or otherwise) reflects a parenting failure.

I think that's wrong. People use therapy differently than what they used to. These days, mental healthcare has lost a lot of the stigma it used to carry, and more and more, people are using it as a tool to become more self actualized. The patients the author describes are not looking to correct any wrong doing, they're just looking to go further. In past generations, young people took the happiness issue, the fulfillment issue, to their spiritual leaders. Or they volunteered. Or did mission work. Or joined the Peace Corps. These days, they take it to the couch.

The idea that parents alone should produce self actualized adults is ludicrous to me. How could any one (or two) people provide everything another person needs??

Why on earth would we want them to?

In my opinion, instead of holding onto the old paradigm, the one where it's all the mother's fault (whether she had screwed up royally or subtly--by doing everything "right,") the author could have/should have recognized the limits to her scope of practice and recommended something other than therapy to her new generation of unhappy clients.

That would have been an article worth reading.

Atlantic article

How to Land Your Kid in Therapy

Just an interesting article...not sure I have any cogent thoughts....

I do not mess around

I did it! I'm down to trim (white) on two walls, three windows, the mantle, two exterior doors and three interior doors. The walls are finished (except for a 4x4' spot I missed!) and the trim is finished on the two walls that have a lot of stuff on them. The books are back on the shelf (they spent two days on the dining room floor,) the tv cabinet is back on the wall, the couch is back on its wall, the floor is cleaned, the rugs are down. We are back to conditions I can live with! Holy cow, I'm tired and sore!

D does not enjoy finishing type work (he's more of a carpenter/fix it man,) so I did basically all of the home improvement. He made some awesome meals, though, and he fixed a broken radiator cover, and he kept everything from falling apart while I was engaged, plus he got in a lot of good Daddy time with the kids--so it was definitely a team effort.

It was also very awesome of my friend G to have R over today. He came home just wiped out and totally satisfied. He and Lil B had a blast playing all afternoon!

So, yay! Painting over 12 years of living--fingerprints, crayon marks, smudges, something that looked like coffee (??) a big grey smear where the dog holds vigil outside the bathroom door--scrubbing it all off and painting it clean was such a joy!

Summer Project

Can I say how I love doing things that have tangible results and actually *stay done*!

And the second thing I want to say...why is it that I get halfway or better into a home improvement project (enough to really visualize the completion,) and then I don't want to do it any more?

Our living room is in shambles! The loose things are put away or in boxes in our bedroom. The rugs are rolled up, the furniture is pushed to the middle and covered with drop cloths...and it's no where near done! I've done a ton of plaster repair, some very nicely, some slapped up. I primed the mantle, two radiator boxes, three windows, two exterior doors, and three interior doors. I've primed about half of the baseboards. I painted the ceiling today. Yikes. The living room seems so much bigger from the perspective of a roller on a pole! Hopefully I'll be able to raise my arms tomorrow--I still have so much work to do!

My goal is to have it down to final trim by Tuesday, and completed on Wednesday.

Pictures forthcoming...

Weekly Roundup

This week I took 5 kids to:

*Art Class--"Copying the Masters" at Baker Hunt, a sweet little studio in Covington.

*the library, where we're blowing right through the summer reading program.

*a county nature preserve, where we expected to attend "Snakes Week," but I had mis-read the program, and it was last week, so we missed it. We had a nice hike, though, and found lots of turtles and frogs in the pond.

*the pool!

*Home Depot and Michael's, for pvc pipe and fancy duct tape, respectively.

*the park across the street, where we had another nice hike.

*the zoo, where everyone had age group classes & we visited the new "Night Hunters" exhibit and fed birds by hand at Lorikeet Landing.

We've had some excellent boffer challenges, watched some documentaries, caught up with a Disney movie we missed, done some school work (including setting up a pill bug habitat in preparation for some pill bug science,) and played some video games.

Yeehaw!

Battle Stance

It struck me that, in some circles, the fact that my three kids and my two daycare kids each have their own boffer might be a red flag of my inappropriateness of occupation, if not a strike against my sanity.

But, you know what? It works.

Boffers are infinitely safer than sword play with found objects or the dreaded plastic lightsabers (which are currently in my bedroom in "toy timeout.") As I have no clue as to how to eliminate sword play (not sure I even want to,) it makes sense to do it as safely as possible.

It rained most of the day today. When it finally stopped, my crew of 5 headed out to the driveway to whack the heck out of each other with pvc pipe covered by swim noodle and duct tape.

They played by agreed upon "rules of engagement." The big kids moderated their strength with the little kids. It was so totally fun!

Crazy Week!

We started summer off with a bang--Horse Camp for T, Shakespeare Camp for C, and our daycare friend to keep R and me company.

T learned so much about horses, horse care, and riding. She really bonded with her mare, Third. This week was absurdly hot for early June, so the riders also had the opportunity to go diving for grooming gear in a water trough, blue jeans and all! This afternoon she had a horse show. She decorated Third with ribbons in her mane and put her through her paces in the arena. She's missing Third all ready. She can't wait to go back to the stable.

C spent the week learning all kinds of things about theater in general and Shakespeare in particular--analyzing script, stage craft, voice projection, acting techniques, the evolution of the English language...last night while helping me water the garden she spoke only in iambic pentameter. This evening they performed A Midsummer Night's Dream. C played an awesome Bottom. She was hilarious. She's looking forward to the Groundlings program with Cincy Shakes this fall.

R was amazingly well behaved during the performance. I thanked him. He said "I'm a big boy. That's what big boys do!"

I have such awesome kids.