The Long-Awaited Euwy Map

A few months ago the kids started talking about their desire to create a more detailed and comprehensive version of their map of Euwy World. They had a lot of sketches of various areas, and a lot of pretty clear ideas. I suggested a relief map, similar to what we had done years ago on a paper maché globe back when Erin first got interested in geography (photo on this page). But since Euwy World is, unlike our own world, affixed to the inner surface of its spherical planet (this fact explaining why science has yet to discover its existence), a globe presentation would not be terribly enlightening. So they opted for a flat projection, on a 30" x 50" piece of particle board.

Noah, Erin and Sophie sketched in the land masses. Sophie and Fiona made the first mountains and other relief features. Noah and Erin added some others a month or two later. Fiona, Sophie and I gesso'd the entire surface a couple of weeks ago. Then three days ago Fiona and Noah set about painting the oceans cobalt blue (see previous blog entry for reference to cobalt blue). And over the last two days the bunch of us have spent several hours painting the contour colours. It's amazing how this task has entertained us all. We almost missed soccer today because our "little bit of Euwy Map painting" turned out to have been almost two hours worth. Where had the time gone?

The contour painting has been very instructive. It sure beats instruction about the nature and purpose of contour lines. The kids understand that a ring of dark green will always surround a ring of light green, that in riverbeds and chasms the contours tend to form V's, that gently sloping areas have broad swaths of contour colours, they can spot a plateau easily from its colour and shape, understand what a watershed is and can create logical watersheds based on contour colours and patterns.

We're about two thirds of the way through painting the contour colours. No instruction has been given. A lot of discussion has happened, natural, un-teachy conversation, advice has been given and graciously received, questions have been asked, jokes and ideas shared.

Noah has a lot of trouble with the fine work (of which there is much) in this project. He did a lot of sighing and looking away and eventually opted to focus on the plateaus. It was a wake-up call for me. I think we need to look into getting him glasses; he's quite far-sighted (though Erin is even more so and is an insatiable reader -- go figure) and we were told that if he wasn't having difficulty with reading, he probably didn't need to bother with glasses. At that point (two years ago) his reading ability had just leapt and he was easily managing Harry Potter level stuff. He muttered something non-committal like "yeah, my eyes sometimes get tired, but it's not really a problem." We left it.

He who loves stories and loves alone-time is not the passionate reader I'd hoped he'd be. He struggles with small fonts when sight-reading on viola, and it was note-reading on piano that he really struggled with. His reading speed has not increased as Erin's and Sophie's have, and it's become apparent in the past week or two that he's exceedingly self-conscious about this.

It all fits. I think we need to see about some glasses for him.

Once we finish the contour colour painting, we'll be adding place names. The kids have scores of names in their heads, awaiting the completion of the map. New names are coined almost daily.

The things you learn!

Every day with children is a learning experience. For mom as much as the children. Today I learned:

1. That cobalt blue acrylic paint and three-year-olds don't mix. Wait a second, that's not right. They mix ... only too well.

2. That two children snacking on chives in the community garden will cause an entire minivan to reek of onions for more than an hour.

3. When you leave gardening club 8 minutes late, get caught behind a road-painting crew for 12 minutes, and discover that you need to stop for gas, that if you know the highway really well you can still get to piano recital on time by engaging in judicious use of excess velocity.

4. Twelve-year-olds with high levels of performance confidence can smirkily pull of dynamite performances of under-rehearsed Scarlatti sonata movements when inspired by an audience.

5. That good piano teachers always bring enough helium balloons for all the younger siblings too.

6. That helium balloons are terrific accelerometers when left to their own devices inside minivans.

7. That when you're the fourth Suzuki violin kid in your family, your first ever start-to-finish "Twinkle Variation" might as well be the rhythmically awkward and tough-to-co-ordinate Variation B. Who knew?

8. That suffixes are fun when compounded for sport ... like in words like "agilitousability" and "beautyishfullness".

9. That the benefit of a bath is pretty much negated if you decide afterwards that it would be fun to wriggle your naked body up over the edge of the toilet bowl rim and through the toilet seat ring.

10. That three-year-olds who get up at 6, spend the day trying to keep up with their older siblings, don't nap and believe they're staying up long enough for a pre-bedtime family readaloud should have their teeth brushed before they snuggle up on the couch to wait for their siblings to finish practicing. Zzzzzz.....

Water levels

The danger of extensive flooding has dropped on the Slocan River in the past few days. I've been watching the government's flood watch website all week. Middle of the night on May 21, where the big spike occurred, was the night Chuck got called out by Search & Rescue to do evacuation traffic control. It has been very fun to watch the data.

Anyway, while the danger on the river has abated a bit, the lake levels are higher than they've been in 40-something years. I don't understand why this isn't playing out as rising levels on the river downstream, but there it is. Lucky for people in the river's floodplain!

The GRUBS garden is on the lakefront but normally the lake level is about 1.5 metres below the garden. Today it's about 15-20 cm! The adjacent hospital has dusted off its evacuation plan. The nursing home is on evacuation alert. Pumps are running full-time from the crawl space under the hospital and the main electrical box is only 30 cm above the water level. Fortunately there are concrete barricades up to prevent waves from washing up ... because there were some pretty big waves happening yesterday.

Here is one of our post holes at the GRUBS garden. The water level is holding steady over the past 24 hours, despite rain on and off. The kids' sprouts haven't floated away yet! The photo at the top is of the newly dug area which we were going to put a liner into (to keep water from exiting the soil) and make into a marsh garden. As you can see, the lake has seeped up through the soil. The kids call it "The GRUBS hot tub".

The forecast is for rain for the next 24 hours, but temperatures are also cooler, which bodes well. Here's hoping the kids' seedlings stay rooted where they are now.

Stinging Nettles

For the first time in many weeks we had nothing to do today. Well, Erin had a soccer practice at 9 a.m. but that hardly counted since I just drop her off at school for that and pick her up an hour later. Fiona decided to stay home with Noah while I dropped her off -- a first! One of our mail order book orders came; both Erin and I had picks in this order so we were very pleased.

The day was rainy. After a week of scorching temperatures intent on melting the alpine snowpack all at once we've been hit by a deluge. People farther south in the valley are evacuated or on evacuation notice due to the flooding, but we are sitting pretty up on our mountainside.

Sophie and Noah wanted some help starting work on building a printable paper pinhole camera so I did some cutting and glueing with them. Sophie and Fiona wanted to prime the large relief map of Euwy World that the older kids had started a couple of months ago and done the final relief work on a couple of days ago.

Then the phone rang and it was a friend of mine about to set off to go nettle-picking at a big nettle patch not too far from where we live. She has two kids about Erin's and Noah's age and wanted to know if we'd all like to come along for the fun. Surprisingly everyone was up for it. We dressed in long sleeves and long pants, found five pairs of gardening gloves, consulted our herbal books for inspiration and loaded ourselves into the van.

The patch was amazing -- several acres of what is a winter-time avalanche chute, just full of stinging nettle plants about a foot high. We were only there for about twenty-five minutes but managed to collect two sizeable cardboard boxes full of the plant tops. The kids seemed to have fun. Only one got 'stung' above the wrist of a glove and she was pretty brave about it.

Back at home I adapted a recipe for Nesselsoppa, a Swedish Nettle Soup. It was delicious, like a cross between spinach and asparagus with overtones of mild seaweed.

2 litres of stinging nettles, washed and slightly chopped (with gloves on!)
6 cups of water
2/3 cup of fresh chopped chives
2 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
2 cubes of vegetable (or beef?) bouillon
1 tsp. balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp. salt
fresh ground black pepper to taste

Place nettles in water and bring to boil. Boil until green and tender, approx. 5 minutes. Strain off and reserve liquid. Purée chives and nettles together in blender, adding as much reserved liquid as necessary for efficient blending. Dissolve bouillon cubes in remaining reserved liquid.

Melt butter, stir in flour over medium heat. Add reserved nettle water a little at a time. Add in puréed greens. Add balsamic vinegar and salt. Add pepper to taste.

I made a double batch of this soup and still have about two thirds of our nettles in the fridge. I'll dry some for tea, and make another batch of soup for the freezer.

First GRUBS salad

Here is Fiona enjoying her first garden salad of the year. It was just a perfect "Fiona-sized salad", made up of 6 or 8 shoots of fresh chive, a few snippets of fresh parsley, the first harvest of garden cress, planted 2 weeks ago, the tiny slices of the radish thinnings from her garden plot and two chive flowers as garnish. Served up with Fiona's favourite ranch salad dressing it was a fitting way to celebrate a round out a busy gardening day.

The GRUBS had a wonderful afternoon together. First we planted out about half of the seedlings that we had started in early April. There was a bumper crop of pickling cucumbers and basil, healthy numbers of lettuces and assorted other things, many of which had been labelled under conditions of relative chaos and were clearly not what they said they were, but could not be identified. So a number of mystery plants.

Then we went for a tour at the home of a "friend of the GRUBS". R. is a real-life acquaintance of mine, and an on-line friend. We live just a few kilometers apart, read each other's blogs religiously and exchange ideas and inspiration but rarely meet in person. But she invited the GRUBS up to tour her luscious garden paradise amidst the rocky scree of her mountainside homestead and baited us with some magnificent seedlings of pepper and tomato varieties I'd been lusting after. The kids (and adults) also pored over her birds nest collection.

Then we headed back to the garden to transplant the new seedlings and finish planting out the innumerable basil sprouts in any vacant nooks and crannies we could find. We noticed that the post holes I had dug a mere 24" deep a couple of weeks ago had water in the bottoms of them. And the amazing thing was that they were not wet from rain or irrigation but from the rising lake level. Our garden is less than 24" from being flooded out completely! The water is very very high and levels here are uncontrolled (i.e. the lake and river are undammed). However, the lake is massive, and we are optimistic.

I came home with a few dozen baby basils. Somewhere amidst the weeds in the fallow garden beds at home I will find a place for them.

On potties and adolescence

On a parenting message board someone mentioned that her 2-year-old son had no interest in the plastic potty she'd bought for him, and preferred instead to use the regular toilet. She asked if she was alone in skipping the potty stage with her child.

I wrote a simple, factual reply. No, we didn't use a potty either, though we owned one at one point. It just seemed like an unnecessary intermediate stage. Then I realized that we hadn't made much use of a lot of the other "intermediate step" trappings of childhood, especially not with the younger kids ... strollers, cribs, toddler beds, bottles, sippy cups and the like.

Upon thinking it through, I realized that this is a common thread in my parenting approach. I let the kids be little and dependent as long as they want, until they're truly ready to be more grown up. As a result they don't seem to need the intermediate step, nor do they then get 'stuck' at the halfway stage.

This is how I'm approaching adolescence too. I'm the mom who kept her shy 5-year-old home and homeschooled her, rather than push her to adjust to half-day kindergarten. But I'm also the mom who gave her 12yo her own cabin to live in and lets her hike in the wilderness alone. When my kids were 8 and under they were almost never out of my sight, even in group situations, something that other parents probably felt was over-protective. But by the time the eldest was 10 I was happily leaving them home alone for significant periods of time, something that many other parents feel is downright negligent. I'm trying to help the important aspects of childhood to last as long as I can, and then allow the kids to grow into all the independence they want as soon as they want it, thus shrinking the awkward middle ground of adolescence into as brief a transition as possible.

I suppose time will tell whether this is a successful strategy for the teen years. It was certainly very successful for helping the kids attain toileting independence!

Hiking, biking, paddling, ho!

Every year about this time the kids and I vow to get out into the great outdoors more and enjoy the natural mountain terrain that we're so blessed with. Somehow obstacles seem to spring up. Most have to do with the varied stamina, interest and ability my kids have when it comes to self-propelled activity. The year Fiona was small enough to tote around in a backpack, Sophie was still too little to last long. As Sophie gained more stamina, Fiona grew bigger, and heavier, and less willing to be toted.

But so far this year we're finding ways to work around the issues. In the canoe we share paddles around and take turns and Fiona stays amused by chattering and dragging her hand in the water. Last weekend we paddled to Silverton for a picnic and then back again. Provided our hikes are short and not too steep, Fiona will walk about half the time and I can manage carrying her the rest. We hiked the Galena Trail from home to town with a friend earlier this week (picnic on the way) and finished with a swim. I've discovered that we can fit four bicycles and the Burley trailer in the minivan (have I mentioned lately how much we love our Sienna?) so today we drove to Rosebery and rode the slowly but relentlessly climbing railgrade to New Denver, and then the highway back to Rosebery. We came pretty close to reaching the limits of Sophie's endurance, but she managed, and thankfully we finished with a long long downhill. Being able to drive the bikes somewhere helps a lot, since our home is situated on a highway grade that's too steep for cycling enjoyment.

Noah and Erin are so strong this year! Everyone seems to be enjoying the outdoors and the adventurousness of our as-yet-fairly-tame expeditions. I hope I can continue to develop the kids' outdoor interests and abilities. Goodness knows, this is good for me too!

A day outdoors

Today ending up being a day spent almost exclusively outside, the first of the year. First up was Sophie's soccer game. She and Erin were car-pooling with another family to Nakusp (40 minutes away) for their games there while Noah and a child from the other family had their game here. So we were up early to make the swap of children in time for the first game.

The entire morning was taken up with soccer games and transportation. Noah's team lost their game, but this was after donating two of their decent players to the other team who were short, and having those two score the two goals that put the other team ahead. The donation of players really helped keep the game collegial and mutually supportive. Very nice to see. Noah had some great saves in goal and did a great job as centre-forward in the second half.

After his game, we came home with two of his team-mates, one the product of the earlier kid-swap, the other a fellow violin student who was planning to spend the day with us. They played outside a bit, waiting for Erin and Sophie to get home.

When the girls got back, we were left with our four kids plus the extra violinist-cum-soccer-player friend. Erin, Noah, Sophie and their friend D. are all in the same art class which is holding an exhibit next weekend. They have agreed to be the musical entertainment at the Hidden Garden Gallery, so they spent almost an hour practicing outside, working out a "set" of pieces gleaned from the Suzuki repertoire for the most part, but with harmony parts. Fiona was obviously wanting very much to be a part of things.

More outdoor play followed, while I got supper prepared.

After supper the kids retreated to their bedrooms for a quick bit of practising on their current lesson assignments. Then we headed down to the GRUBS Garden for an evening meeting. We did a bit of digging and weeding and then inspected our bat house by torchlight (still no residents), watched for other bats coming out for night feeding (there were a few), played flashlight tag on the lawn and in the woods, and dug small lagoons out of the pebbles at the interface between the beach and the lake. We had planned to float a whole series of floating candles in the waterfront lagoons, but it was a little to breezy to keep the candles lit so while we got a couple lit, we decided to try again another night. The stars came out; we chatted and snacked on popcorn.

Then we headed home. The kids wanted some hot chocolate. Erin, who is getting a big kick out of the geometry problems in her math text lately, insisted on doing a bit of math. She got to work on that while I read "Hat Full of Sky" by Terry Pratchett to the other kids (Erin, as usual, has already read it). Everyone was really tired when they headed off to bed! Hopefully they get enough sleep to be in good humour and well-focused for tomorrow's orchestra and ensemble performance.

A Musical Weekend

We had our regional Suzuki Celebration Concert today, hosted this year in our own community. I was so proud of all my kids... students and offspring alike.

Each group from a community/studio in the region played 5-15 minutes as an ensemble, and then we finished with a violin playthrough, with kids from throughout the region playing Suzuki repertoire together. (Photo above left: Sophie and Fiona in the front row -- middle and right -- playing the final Twinkles, with Noah in the white shirt almost off the frame on the left)

Erin and the next-most-senior violinist and violist in our program did a lovely rendition of a Tango by Michael McLean. The trio are aged 12 (Erin), almost-12 (girl, J.) and 16 (boy, P.). They are so sweet together, definitely growing into social preteen/teen consciousness. It is fun watching the flavour of their banter and musical communication change as they grow up. The Tango was a great piece to see this in. Sultry it was!

Then Noah and P., the other violist, did the first movement of the Telemann Concerto for 2 violas in G major. P. is about twice as tall as Noah, but they are great friends, almost like revered elder brother and doted-upon little brother. They played beautifully together, really casting a spell. There were a lot of teary eyes ... something about these two boys playing so tenderly together.

Sophie didn't really have any special role at today's concert, but she played really well in the group, with a level of focus that she hasn't been able to muster until recently. She was often the kid who was last to be ready to play and whose bowing would be backwards for most of the piece, and quite oblivious to the fact. No more! She seems to be growing up.

Fiona got to be one of two open string soloists for our little arrangement of "Chicken on a Fencepost", a little fiddle ditty we designed specifically to include the beginningest students. She looked great and she played perfectly in time and right on the correct rhythm. As the littlest performer by almost a head's height, and the youngest by about 2 years, she was a crowd favourite.

What I loved most about the day (besides the viola duet) was how comfortable, happy and gracious all the kids were. They played their hearts out even on the beginner numbers, bowed, smiled, were careful to make sure the less advanced students and those from elsewhere felt comfortable, appreciated and included, and accepted compliments with humility and grace.

Tomorrow Erin will be performing with my quartet for the first time. We're the live soundtrack for a slide show and poetry reading multimedia presentation and "English high tea" which is a fundraiser for the local music summer school. Most of the music is trio or duet stuff, but at the eleventh hour we decided to add a couple of movements from an English string suite by Parry that we'd just acquired, and we roped Erin into doing 2nd violin. We've played the pieces only twice so far, but they're sounding just fine -- Erin is a very quick study and her sight-reading skills which finally blossomed about 3 years ago are holding her in very good stead.

Just wanted to brag. These are not cutting edge performances for any of my kids, but I am having such fun watching them grow up musically ... and personally. Sitting back and watching them in performance is such a fun way to appreciate their growth.

Soccer Days Again

Community soccer has started again. The three older kids are on three different teams. Three sets of practices a week. Three different games on Saturdays. It's something totally different for them, and I'm so glad they have it. The coaches are delightful, and soccer puts my children in contact with kids in the community they normally wouldn't get to know.

Erin's team is melded with P.E. at school for the local Grade 6/7 class, since they are, in effect, the team (minus Erin and one other homeschooler) and their teacher is the coach. It works beautifully for us because it keeps her practices out of the precious after-school hours when so many other things have to be scheduled. She's been riding her bike to and/or from occasional practices and demonstrating a lot of independence and confidence as she breezes into and out of the classroom on her own.

Sophie is one of the more capable, elder members of her team, which spans everyone from newly-five-year-olds who trip when running and start asking "when is it over?" after twenty minutes to 8-year-olds who are a head taller than she. I can see her ability to "see" the game maturing from last year.

Noah is the kid who I wonder about. Last year I practically had to bribe him to get him to give organized soccer a try. Team sports are definitely not my thing but I saw all that physical ability on the lawn at home and pushed him to give it a try. He was worried about the competitiveness and about the idea of letting a team down. He hates scorekeeping, at least on an individual level -- becomes almost physically ill in individually graded/scored situations. But as it turned out he was just fine with the team play and handled both wins and losses with grace and without stress.

He has such natural ability. He loves soccer. He garners incredulity from coaches for his sense of the field and his ability to cover the ball and be where he's needed. In goal he's amazing. He has phenomenal instincts and no fear of the ball. He's tiny compared to his teammates but one of the strongest, fastest, turn-on-a-dimest players. That's him in the photo above with the gloves on ... as usual in possession of the ball despite being crowded by a bunch of much bigger players from the other team.

It makes me wonder... am I failing to help him capitalize on this gift he has? I am not a big fan of organized sports of any description and we have certainly not placed high value on this sort of pursuit when compared to, say, music or literacy or gardening. Where would he be if he had grown up in another family, if he'd lived somewhere else and if his mom had yes to the spot in the competitive gymnastics program he was offered and eagerly taken him to practice four times a week, if we'd signed him up for hockey at 6 and soccer every spring and fall from the same age? What kind of a kid would he be if he'd grown up in a family that placed as high a value on sports as we do on music? Would he be happier? More self-confident? Would he have as strong an aversion to competitiveness? Where would his skills be at?

It's fun to wonder, so long as the wondering is not tinged with guilt.

A Music Festival Day

I got up at 7:30, laid a fire in the woodstove and put the coffee on, then grabbed a bit of computer time. Sophie, Fiona and Noah drifted out of bed between 8:00 and 9:00. Sophie and Noah got their own breakfasts. I got breakfast for Fiona. I went outside with the dog for a bit of training. The kids drifted to the computer. I came back inside. In the meantime Chuck had got up and headed off to work after breakfast and coffee.

Sophie decided she wanted to cook something sweet. Fiona wanted to help. I set them to work making peppermint creams (1 large egg white, whipped, combined with 340 gm icing sugar and 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. peppermint essence, divided in three, each lumped kneaded with a few drops of red, green or yellow food colouring, rolled into small balls and pressed with a fork). That kept them busy for quite a while as they're slow whippers and kneaders. Noah was settled in on the computer playing Sims2 :-P

Erin spent most of the morning in her cabin/bedroom. She's not exactly forthcoming about her activities there. She was either reading, writing in her journal, working on her novel or composing music. And of course she spent time doing her hair in one of the thirty-some-odd braid/bunch patterns that she's gradually developed skill with. How she manages to do all these complex French braids and inverted braid / ponytail things to herself so neatly with no instruction and no help is beyond me! Anyway, she came in about 11 and had breakfast, then did a bit of piano.

We wrapped up gifts (including some lovely-looking peppermint creams as an afterthought) and headed off to the fifth birthday party of a friend of ours. A low-key party, just a couple of families (comprising 10 kids, aged 1-15) and a bunch of adult friends around a bonfire and playing in the woods. After tofu-dogs and corn chips and cake, my older three started a big soccer game. That went on for a while. We headed out at about 3 pm.

On the way home we stopped off to buy radish and pea seeds for planting this weekend and some copper-pipe end-caps for our GRUBS fundraising craft. (GRUBS is our gardening/environmental club). There was some discussion concerning Noah's desire to purchase a remote control vehicle. He has the money for a really nice one, but is in the 'cooling off period' mandated before actually making the purchase. His best friend and fellow-RC-fan actually advised him against spending so much money. He's mulling it over.

At home Noah (you guessed it!) headed back to his Sims2 game with Sophie. Fiona and I did a few minutes of violin practising. We did the dishes (most of us). I started pulling supper together and got a load of laundry pulled in, folded and put away. Erin practiced her piano performance piece. Chuck came home from a busy morning/afternoon in ER.

At 5 pm Erin, Fiona and I headed out the door with a box of warm pizza, some drinks and peppermint creams for the drive to Nelson for Erin's piano performance. Noah and Sophie opted to stay home with their dad, something we've allowed them to do lately. If he gets called in, they can stay home, but they need to agree to deal with the telephone so that they can assure him that all's well. If they don't feel like doing that, they can come with him to the hospital and hang out while he works. There are lounge areas and his office computer and friendly nurses, so they don't mind that. As it turned out, they did spend a couple of hours there over the course of the evening.

The drive to Nelson is about 90 minutes. The performance started at 7 pm and Erin was playing near the end, which worked out to about 9 pm. She'd agreed to play in just one class at the music festival last week, and we were pretty sure that by minimizing her involvement (most kids play in at least 4 or 5 classes, organized by age, level, composer, era, Canadian works, etc.) she would not be asked to play in the Honours Concert but alas we'd got the phone call Thursday night. Music Festival policy states that if requested, you are expected to play. So we made the extra trip.

She played well. Afterwards they presented awards based on the in-class performances over the previous 10 days. Erin got a small scholarship. Her homeschooled friend Ian (14 and an incredible pianist) was recommended to the Provincial Festival, a competitive level in the music festival circuit, with Erin recommended as alternate. Only five students from the music festival (voice, piano, strings) were recommended as participants or alternates, and given Erin's young age (she still has three more years as a Junior) and minimal involvement in the festival I was very surprised she was one of them. The funny thing is that Erin and Ian both said, point-blank, "I don't want to compete." It's very unusual for students not to take up the opportunity to "go to Provincials" but there it is -- our self-assured homeschooled kids want no part of the competition. (The local festival is pretty much non-competitive, except for the Honours Concert, scholarships and nominations for Provincials, which are done fairly discretely at the end-of-festival concert.)

We were very late leaving to head home, so I called to let Chuck know. Noah and Sophie had practiced their viola and violin. We headed out, Fiona falling asleep almost immediately. Erin and I talked about this and that, including different approaches to music education, competitions, emphasis on listening skills vs. mechanical skills, etc.. We got home at about 11:00. Chuck was in bed. Noah and Sophie were playing with their Sims. I prodded them into bedtime mode. Erin headed out the cabin.

I read aloud to Sophie and Noah from "Eldest" by Chris Paolini. A late night. An odd day.

Expectations

"Expectations are just premature resentments."

Someone shared the above quote recently on an unschooling list. I wrote to my Suzuki list that I was finally discovering the magic of a Suzuki parenting relationship free of concrete short-term expectations courtesy of Fiona. Fiona is (so far) a little easier-going and a lot more outgoing than her older siblings. But the difference I notice in being her Suzuki parent is mostly due to the fact that I'd pretty much decided that age 4-5 was the optimal time for me to start my kids as Suzuki students, and so when she decided at 2 1/2 that she wanted to get busy with lessons and daily practising, I just decided to humour her. We started working together doing all the standard pre-Twinkler stuff, but I was pretty sure that she would not make clear progress until after the honeymoon period wore off, she ditched the violin for a year or two, and then started back at it at age 4 1/2. I was not invested in the idea of daily practising or forward progress. We were totally just doing it to have fun.

I was the one who was taken aback when my mom suggested moving her officially off a box to a real violin before Christmas. And then I was surprised again when it was time to start using fingers and bow together. I was not waiting for the next step to fall into place. It did and I almost had to be shaken out of my little "isn't-this-cute-and-fun" reverie to recognize that it had. But here she is, age 3 years 2 months, playing the A section and the B section of all the Twinkle variations (not putting them together very often yet but within spitting distance).

The magic is that she is the one who is driving the endeavour. She asks to practice. She is willing to do hard repetitive work even when it's not totally fun in the moment. She owns her violin-playing. There are no autonomy issues. I always knew she would learn to play an instrument (likely violin) very well, but when she started the work she's doing, I had absolutely no expectations about how or when she would get there.

When one is both the teacher and the parent, and is the one setting forth the goals, it is doubly hard not to get over-invested in the attainment of those goals. With Fiona I've finally got a glimpse of what happens when you don't. If only I can hang onto this orientation as she progresses!

Computer epiphany

I am finally finding my peace with TV/computer games in my home. I think. It's really just fallen into place in the past week and may all fall apart again, but here's my epiphany...

Children cannot be expected to self-regulate without having the tools they need to self-regulate. Some kids are naturally gifted in the self-regulation department and need few tools. Other kids need plenty of tools.

My own kids, all of them from the looks of it, have a tendency to get 'locked in' to certain activities. They have difficulty with transitions and tend to get so focused on whatever they're up to that they lose complete track of time, nutrition and sleep needs, the needs of others, etc. etc..

For years we've had a wonderful system for TV. Anyone can watch anything, so long as they choose in advance what they're going to turn the TV on to watch, and when they're going to turn it off. No limits, no parental controls, just this simple procedure. What this does is makes TV into a legitimate choice rather than a default activity. That's all that's been necessary.

This system has worked brilliantly. The kids watch TV extremely selectively and make (IMO) extremely wise decisions about what and how much to watch. Weeks often go by when they don't watch anything at all.

What I've torn my hair out over is the computer use. Each of my three kids are on one of the three household computers for between 3 and 8 hours a day during an average at-home day. As computer use has escalated, creativity, physical activity and social interaction has dropped. While I certainly appreciate the educational and social value of Runescape, there is no doubt in my mind that the outdoor play, social time, community activities, musical, imaginative and artistic creativity that would otherwise fill 8 hours is more valuable. My kids agree wholeheartedly with me about this and complain that they "forgot to go outside" or "didn't get around to calling Bob about skiing" or "keep forgetting to work on the loom." Still, they love their computer time.

Then last week I had an epiphany -- they have good intentions, but they don't have the tools they need to self-regulate computer use. I can trust them to self-regulate, but *only if they have the feedback they need, in the form they need it*. What they need is a system similar to our TV system. Perhaps even more robust, because they need to be able to document and track the progress they're making with this issue. I was reminded of this essay by Donella Meadows entitled "Give Me Feedback and I Will Change the World (Or at Least my Own Habits)". Feedback is probably the most important tool my kids could use ... non-judgmental, non-coercive feedback.

So we now have a little applet called UserTime running on everyone's desktop. It quietly clocks everyone's computer time so that we can print out our individual computer use each week and see how we've done. We have a whiteboard beneath a clock adjacent to the computer desk, and the only rule is "when you sit down at the computer, mark down the time you're going to get off."

Computer use has dropped to under 2 hours per person in the past few days. Kids are writing haiku and stories, working with the electronics kit for hours at a shot, doing math for fun, playing card games with each other, composing music, enjoying readalouds, seeing more of their friends and of each other, playing outside, helping out around the house more and as a result of all this feeling good about themselves.

A Home Library

We live what is basically a library-less existence. For a couple of years Erin had piano lessons in Nakusp, and we were able to purchase a membership to the tiny but nicely-appointed library there and use it regularly. For the past four years piano has been in Nelson, and the library there is rather difficult for us to use. It isn't open before piano lessons, we're not thrilled with the fees, the borrowing limits, the selection and quality of the books and the lack of user-friendliness. Sometimes, if piano is rearranged or if there are no lessons for a week or two, we can't get books back, and there's no on-line system for renewals. We also find that we are so exhausted by the end of our other Nelson errands that we just want to start the long drive home rather than browse at the library. So while we had a membership there for a while, it just didn't work well for us.

There's the library at the local public school which we are welcome to use, but honestly we just haven't put the effort into this that we should. My kids don't like being there while classes or parts of classes are using the tables because they feel like intruders, and it's hard to predict when the library will be (relatively) empty. It is of course only open on school days, and only during the school year, and with the school having fewer than 150 students K-12 the selection is small.

There is a tiny 'reading centre' that serves some of the functions of a local library here, but the children's book selection is so limited that we found we quickly exhausted the entire selection at each child's level. It's only open 8 hours a week at best, and not at all lately because the heating system went belly-up.

One of our favourite things to do if we have time to kill in a larger city is to visit their library, and we dream of that kind of access, but it just isn't here. So we do other things instead.

So we raid our friends' bookshelves and they raid ours --- though it's important to keep lists of what you're lending and borrowing! (Actually, building a sign-out system is a great project for a kid...)

I have wishlists at Amazon.ca and Chapters.ca and have fun researching books, filling my wishlist, refining it and spending money. This is the only kind of shopping I actually enjoy. I try to buy books we'll really treasure, that are worth owning for the long term ... for their literary merit, depth, beauty and/or reference information.

We've put a fair bit of focus on video documentaries. We subscribe to Zip.ca for the winter months and get access to thousands of esoteric DVDs.

We browse and buy used books wherever we can. Prices are often very good, so I'll buy books here that "might someday appeal to someone". And our local donation store and freecycle book nook are often productive places to not only pick up books but to cycle those we no longer want back into circulation. As you can imagine, our many bookshelves tend to be full to over-full!

We enjoy audiobooks. Audible.com and iTunes both have great libraries of audiobooks for download that can be burned to CD or transferred to portable players (iTunes only to iPods, but Audible works with scores of devices).

We re-read books a lot. It helps to have filled our home library with books that have real literary merit or lots of depth of content for reference.

I still dream of a local resource centre that would combine the functions and collections of the school library and the reading centre, as well as serving as a location for the sharing of other community resources (kitchen, garden and home-improvement tools, toys, baby equipment and games). And someone who won a lottery would donate a million bucks or two to expand the book collection. But until then, we make do... with enough books in our home library to serve as the backdrop for photos of the kids many times over.

A unit study

We have been studying the flu. Chuck, who was vaccinated due to his work in the nursing home, was spared, so he headed off on a continuing education course 4 hours away. The rest of us have been completely down and out for the past 8 days.

There are two strains of Influenza A in our community of about 1000 right now. I'd guess about 80% of the non-immunized population have been sick. Public school attendance has been 30-50% for the past two weeks. Alas, homeschooling has not spared us this time around. Sophie managed to contract the flu at community orchestra 12 days ago.

We spent most of the time watching DVDs as even reading aloud demanded too much of us/me. The big hits have been "All Creatures Great and Small" (12 episodes watched, some of them multiple times) and Leonard Bernstein's wonderful "Young People's Concerts" series (6 episodes watched). We did manage to get through a couple of novels as readalouds. But little else happened.

I spent a lot of time dreaming of an angel who would come and wash the dishes, split some kindling, bring in more firewood, empty the garbage, bake bread (or at least bring us some store-bought) and cook meals. But we managed to get through. By yesterday afternoon we were all feeling human again, and Chuck arrived home last night before the indoor supply of firewood ran out again.

Creativity fell to negligible levels this past week, but today it has resurfaced. Yesterday the kids wrote a silly song together. Erin is working with our new-to-us 4-harness table loom to create interesting weaving patterns. Noah is back at work building his website. Fiona and Erin have been watercolour painting, and the kids are pulling out their instruments again today for the first time in a week.

Erin's Osprey Chair

About three years ago the second violinist in my string quartet ("the Osprey String Quartet") was no longer able to travel to New Denver for rehearsals. Our quartet owned four nice hardwood folding chairs, for use in small-town venues where the only other option was uncomfortable stacking chairs. The fourth chair has been empty for the past three years. We made ourselves into a trio (my mom on violin, me on viola, and a cellist friend rounding things out), and grasped for repertoire among the much more paltry body of string trio repertoire. We kept performing our regular recitals, but wished a second violinist would materialize in the area -- there's so much great quartet music!

Three weeks ago I heard Erin practising her Beethoven Romance and realized what a huge leap she's made in technical and musical ability in the past 6 months. I talked to my mom about maybe giving Erin the chance to try playing a quartet with us for the experience. They thought that would be lovely, a great opportunity for her, and kind of fun for us. We handed Erin the first movement of a Mozart quartet in a friendly key and told her to look it over. My mom, who is Erin's official violin teacher, even thought that we might be able to perform it with her at some point, though she thought we'd have to be patient with her over stylistic and ensemble issues. She worked with Erin on the music a bit at her lesson.

This morning we had a trio rehearsal scheduled and told Erin we would run through the Mozart with her at the beginning of the rehearsal. We started reading through it ... and never looked back. We did the first movement. The blend of the quartet is terrific. Erin's 3/4 violin (the new one, with a huge sound) holds its own just fine. There were a few stylistic things up until the first repeat... but by the second time through the first section, she'd absorbed the weighting-and-unweighting stuff that we were all doing on the syncopated motif and had adjusted her bowing style to match ours. Her solo passages were confident and beautiful. She was doing so well, we decided to sight-read through the third movement. Erin played as well as the rest of us, I think. And then the more challenging last movement. Same deal. Our cellist said "Well, it sounds like we have half a recital here. Erin you're hired. Let's figure out what we'll do for the other half." So we started talking about romantic quartets.

Our quartet is whole again. And it's my kid who has suddenly blossomed as a born-and-bred chamber musician who has filled the empty Osprey chair. I am awed. I am proud. I had no idea her musical maturity had grown so far.

She was thrilled. She knew how well she was doing. She knew that in the space of an hour the equation had shifted and she had become part of the quartet, and not "some kid we were doing a favour for."

When we came home, she spent almost three hours delightedly playing with playdough. What a bundle of incongruities she is!

Growing up and moving out

Erin has moved into her own place! Over the holidays, with the weather unseasonably warm, and the resurgence of "issues" concerning her pre-bedtime routine and how it ostracizes Sophie from their shared bedroom, Erin decided to move out to the cabin.

It's a 140 sq.ft. log cabin situated about 30 ft. from our back door. The guy who homesteaded here 35 years ago built it his first summer here and lived in it for a winter while felling and seasoning logs for the main house. Two years ago we turned it from the storage shed it had become into a nice little three-season guest cabin with a proper subfloor and floor, some basic furniture and a new roof that doesn't leak. But it's unheated and basically unwinterized. The plan had been to put in a heating system and to double-glaze the window and fix the ill-fitting door this spring and turn it into a bedroom for Erin. That would give Fiona a bunk in the "girls'" bedroom and possibly encourage her to relinquish the family bed she inhabits now. It's a beautiful but simple little space and I was feeling quite envious -- the dark trek through the sometimes forbidding weather between bedroom and the rest of the living space (including the indoor plumbing) seemed a small price to pay for the serenity and space.

Erin decided to grab it early. It seemed a decent solution to the turf issues in the shared bedroom, and appealed to her sense of adventure. She moved about ten blankets and a space heater in and set about making herself comfortable. If the weather gets really cold again (below, say, minus 10 Celsius), she'll probably have to spend a few nights inside on the pull-out couch, but for now she's so happy.

For her birthday earlier this week she was given an electric blanket (to supplement the electric baseboard heater) and a wireless networking card which enables the old clunker of a laptop to grab basic internet content. She's begun writing stories again with a vengeance, and doing music composition projects. She's reading lots and basically enjoying a level of independence that is safe and comfortable for her right now. On the whole I think she's happier and more gracious in interacting with the family when she's inside with us too.

She is having fun working with me to plan furniture and décor. We will order a proper double-glazed window and build a properly-fitting door once spring comes. The heating issue is the big area of indecision right now. The clearance needed for a woodstove would eat up a lot of the floor space. A propane heating stove would be very pricey to purchase and install. And I can't stand the idea of using electricity to heat it. I'm leaning towards propane ...

Featherpuff Bread

I've been dropping little hints for a couple of years about how nice it would be to be able to grind our own grain for bread. Last fall when we went to the Menno Relief Sale / Pioneer Festival at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto (big family event for Chuck, and we just happened to be around Ontario at the time, so we took the kids) Chuck got totally entranced by the miller and his obvious passion for his mill and for the benefits of fresh-milling flour.

So it wasn't exactly a huge surprise to find that my Christmas gift was a Family Grain Mill attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. (Supposedly you're supposed to have the 'big', 325W KitchenAid to use the grain mill, whereas ours is the 'small' 250W model that we got free on points a few years ago, but we'd been told it works just fine, so long as you keep the speed slow and give the machine breaks after every few cups of flour.)

I ordered a book about whole-grain bread-baking that I'd been hearing about on the Home-Ed list for a long time. It's "Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book" and it arrived a couple of days ago. I'm really impressed with it. It's a veritable bible of whole-grain bread-baking, but it's not so crunchy that it doesn't discuss things like breadmakers and store-bought flours, yeasts and additives.

The 'finesse' touches, which I'd been ignoring because I didn't understand whether or why they are important, are explained simply and thoroughly. For example, how and why to rest the dough, how to test for the right amount of rise, how to know when you've kneaded enough, etc.

Lately I've been on a sourdough kick, making dense, dark breads with thick chewy crusts. With Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book in hand I decided I wanted to challenge myself to bake a loaf of light, elastic sandwich bread out of fresh-milled whole wheat. I followed the recipe in the book for "Featherpuff Bread". It was everything I expected and more! It rose almost four-fold on the last rise and the consistency was consistent and, as promised, feather-light. Yum Yum Yum, the first loaf probably won't make it through to tomorrow morning (it's now 10 pm here).

Math again

Unschooling or not, I took the bull by the horns. Erin had written "completion of Singapore 'New Math Counts' Level 1" into her Self-Design learning plan, quite voluntarily, back at the end of the summer. A term went by and we were encouraged to revisit the plan and what's happened, learning-wise. Erin had not opened the Singapore book. I asked her if she wanted to set that as her goal for the next term. Surprisingly, she said "okay" without complaining.

Erin finished Singapore's primary program (nominally Grade 1-6, but more like 1-7 by Canadian standards) before her 10th birthday. She's now almost 12 and she hasn't really touched formal math in the past two years. Perhaps if she hadn't written it into her learning plan I would have convinced myself to let it lie. Maybe I shouldn't have been quite as eager when I saw the door was opened a crack. But whatever. She seemed to agree it was time to get back to formal math.

The next day, I grabbed the proverbial bull horns and said "okay, time for math."

She rolled her eyes, but came willingly.

Gosh, her computation sure is rusty. And she's having a hard time getting focused on the review work we're doing, as it's hazy and half-remembered. We had a few good laughs over it, actually, which shows how relaxed and comfortable she is with our math work, I guess.

"Okay," I prompted, "so you'll need to take half of eighteen too...."

Erin smiles guiltily, opens her mouth, looks blank and says ... "um, six? or, eight?" and starts laughing at herself.

"Erin," I say, laughing too. "You have this look on your face that says 'My brain is not present, but my mouth is open and I'm going to speak a number anyway.' You nut. Now, when your brain returns, maybe you could let me know what 4/18ths is."

She laughs a bit more and then it occurs to her that it's 2/9ths.

Three days in and it's flooding back and it's apparent that intellectually she's well beyond ready for this stuff and it will come really quickly. She's finished two (of twelve) chapters, and is agreeable and cheerful about our daily work together. It's almost enough to make me start to believe that there really are families that use a parent-directed curriculum without necessity of coercion.

Sophie is blasting through the end of Singapore 2B this week after having taken a several-month break. Noah has started plugging away at 3B again. I wouldn't be surprised if Sophie overtakes Noah some day before too long. She is so enthusiastic, and doesn't seem to have any trouble with the concepts. Noah doesn't have intellectual trouble with concepts either, but his perfectionistic defeatism gets in the way when he encounters something he doesn't get intuitively at a first glance.

So things feel kind of mathy around here all of a sudden. Fiona, on the other hand, is working on reading and writing right now. Today she learned to spell her name, verbally, on the computer, and with pencil and paper. Sophie taught her - what fun!

Fionisms

Me: "Fiona, you're playing in the pantry with the door closed. Are you sneaking treats?"
Fi: [while scarfing Christmas toffee] "Yes. ... I mean no. I'm sneaking snacks. I mean no. Not sneaking, just eating. Healthy snacks."

...

Me: "Fiona, no running, okay."
Fi: "I'm not running, I'm prancing."

...

[while bouncing rhythmically on the couch]
Fi: "Please! Do! Not! Jump! On! The! Fur! Ni! Ture!!!! Please! Do! Not! Jump! On! The! Fur! Ni! Ture!!!!"