Math cat

Though still essentially an out-and-out unschooler, Fiona has been taking Introductory Spanish at the local school this semester. Nominally she's in Grade 4 and the requirement for second-language learning doesn't kick in until Grade 5 within the DL program we're part of. But she was interested in doing something like this. When we first raised the possibility last fall, our DL liaison teacher who happens to also teach Spanish and Math at the local school looked at the schedule for us and we were disappointed: Spanish was scheduled for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays conflicted with Fiona's gymnastics, and Wednesdays with her violin master class. So we set Spanish aside in the hope that it might work out for next year.

Then the high school schedule got shuffled, and Spanish ended up on Mondays and Fridays during Semester 2. This worked out perfectly: these are Fiona's two completely empty days. Although the course is intended for students in Grades 7 through 12 (with the bulk being Grades 7 & 8, as it's an introductory course), the teacher knows her well and was happy to welcome her. Our current principal is generally quite opposed to grade-skipping, but there is a policy that DL students can be welcomed into any class with the approval of the teacher. We had that approval, and since Spanish isn't offered to younger grades no one could really ask "why wasn't she placed with her age-mates?"

She's doing well in the course. Her test and assignment marks have been great, and she's fitting in very well, participating well in class and, more amazingly still, taking on leadership roles in group projects. She loves all the trappings of school: the binder she takes, the supplies that tuck into it, the schedule of three hours a week that she needs to be there, the deadlines for assignments, the studying for tests. It's been a fabulous introduction to school for her.

She would like to attend school a bit more next year. The obvious course to add would be math, since it's the one subject in which she has been following the school's curriculum. The wrinkle is that she's four years ahead age-wise. But Spanish has given her a chance to show that she fits in socially with those kids and can handle the organizational expectations of a high-school style course.

Yesterday she was doing some algebra at home from the end of the Grade 8 workbook. It had snowed outside. The wood stove had a nice hot burn going and the living room was cozy and warm. Fiona was sitting on the sofa with a London Fog in a mug in front of her. The cat was curled up beside her being cute and loving.

Fiona decided that math should always be done this way. "Everyone should have a math cat," she said. "This will be one of my Terms & Conditions for doing math at school next year." We envisioned the scenario:

Teacher: "Okay, everyone open your books to Unit 6.2. I would like you to do the odd-numbered practice problems on page 142 and 143. Can someone help me with this box? Thanks. You can come and get your cats now."

The teacher and a student yank the lid off large Rubbermaid container. The nineteen cats inside begin to stir.

Teacher: "One cat only per student, please.... "

Spring Break in Hawai'i

The snorkelling was amazing.

I've been somewhere tropical twice, both times to Baja California. Once by VW bus, once, in an extravagance borne of at deep Northern Ontario winter, by plane. The last time was 22 years ago. Our last attempt at a real family holiday away, in 2008, was an abject failure. So we were excited but also rather cautious about the prospects for a true mid-winter tropical holiday. When Noah broke his foot a week before we left, we hoped that was it for misfortune this time around. As it turned out, this was the case.

Papaya tree off our lanai. Stuff for smoothies!

 We got on our flight without incident. Noah's crutches earned him early boarding, which was a nice bonus! We had a breath of tropical air in Maui before skipping over to the Big Island on a short flight.

We had rented a house about 40 minutes south of Kona in a rural neighbourhood overlooking the Pacific. The house turned out to be perfect: spacious but not grandiose, nicely appointed but without the sort of opulence that would have made us nervous. It had two bedrooms plus a loft with a bed, two bathrooms, a nice open living area and a lovely lanai (deck) running all the way around. There were lovely neon green geckos that inhabited the exterior of the house and the railings.

Kilauea caldera at night

From the deck we could practically touch the papayas and coconuts hanging from trees. There were baby pineapples and avocados on the property as well. Another popular fruit tree was the noni -- but purely for ornamental reasons, as its fruit is known colloquially as the vomit fruit or starvation fruit, as our noses attested upon close inspection.

The neighbours' roosters, some wild turkeys, yellow-billed cardinals and mourning doves filled  the air with lovely sounds, and at quiet times we could hear the waves crashing on the beach below. "Below" meant 2 kilometres along a winding road which led relentlessly and precipitously down to a lonely pebble beach; grades were as high as 22%. It's amazing what is possible with road-building when there is no possibility of snow!

We ate at home, mostly, but also did occasional lunches at various small restaurants along the highway between where we were staying and whatever was the snorkelling or sight-seeing destination of the day. We had about a week in Hawai'i and filled it with a fair bit of chill-time at the house, day trips here and there, and a fair bit of snorkelling.

We took a day at Hawai'i Volcanos National Park. Noah was able to do a couple of short hikes with us: one through a lava tube and another into part of the caldera featuring sulfur crystals and steam vents. We headed to Hilo for dinner and then returned to Kilauea after sunset to see the fiery glow of the crater lighting up the steam and smoke above. Volcanic activity here isn't nearly as impressive as it was 10 years ago, when lava was pouring across roads and into the ocean on a daily basis, but there it is still in evidence throughout the park. Fiona is now busy putting together a science fair project about lava ("The Effect of Agitation During Cooling on Crystal Formation").

The kids definitely enjoyed snorkelling, and the reefs were amazing. Fiona was the most obsessed, spending as much time in the water as she could. The first day presented a bit of a learning curve: fitting one's mask, learning to clear a snorkel, putting fins on at the right moment, and managing to get into the water from rocks with waves breaking across them. The surf was low (relatively speaking) during our visit, but for people who rarely deal with waves of more than a few inches on their home lake, even 1-metre swells were intimidating when they were bashing across rocks and fish and other unknown marine obstacles.

Boogie-boarding at sunset

But when that undersea world opened up, with its incredible variety of friendly, brightly-coloured fish, the tide, so to speak, turned. The first day was fun but challenging. By Day 2, it was nothing but fun. We saw an amazing variety of boxfish, tangs, surgeonfish, iridescent parrotfish, butterfly fish, trumpetfish and moorish idols. We had bought a little aqua-pac so that we could use a point-and-shoot camera underwater. Unfortunately the bright light of the water reflections prevented us from being able to see anything much in the LED view screen so photos were shot pretty much blindly. I had been madly entering GoPro Camera sweepstakes for a month before, but had failed to come up a winner. Here's the video we could have shot at the beach we visited the last two day if we'd had one.

Gecko friends

The weather was lovely. Overcast for at least part of most days, and downright rainy for an occasional morning, about 75 degrees on average, yet with enough sun to risk burns if we weren't careful. I managed to run a couple of times without dying in the heat. We spent time at the pebble beach playing in the surf. We got creative weaving palm leaves. We encouraged geckos to wander up our arms. We floated on the ocean at sunset. Noah discovered that if he could get past the crashing waves safely, once floating his foot was quite happy in the ocean.

We made a stop one day at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, the Place of Refuge. There we saw sea turtles, native carvings and structures, artisans at work and a pretty cool outrigger canoe in the process of restoration. We liked the market in Captain Cook, where we were able to stock up on mangoes, salsa and lilikoi butter. The latter was first discovered in a leftover jar in the fridge of our rental house. It's a glossy bright yellow butter the consistency of smooth peanut butter, made from passion fruit (lilikoi). We came home with one precious 250 ml jar of the stuff. If I ever find passion fruit on sale by the case-lot in Canada, I will certainly be making my own lilikoi butter!

And we kept watching Downton Abbey, a nightly ritual of two episodes, finishing season 3 the night before we left.

The trip home was uneventful. Noah was able to walk on his cast by this point, so we checked his crutches and boarded flights with the masses rather than with the infants and the disabled. We took a different route, stopping at a border town with a "shipping services" business. We had had delivered there a bunch of things that don't ship affordably to Canada, including a big clothes order for Noah which he was thrilled about, and binoculars for Chuck. And more practical things like a replacement motor for the fan in our range hood.

We picked up the dog on the way home. She had been having a holiday of her own, staying in a home-stay type situation down the valley. She'd had some troubles playing nicely with others, as she isn't terribly well socialized to other dogs but seemed happy and healthy. The cat had been subsisting on occasional visits from a friend at home, and was in raptures to see that we had returned. The weather was kind when we returned: we had a couple of days of real spring-like weather and sunshine before we headed back into cooler temperatures and eventually more snow.

Seattle at the MarQueen

 We had chosen to drive to Seattle and fly to Hawai'i from there because we knew not only would it be cheaper, but it would be better not to rely on the small airports closer to home that are subject to up to 30% flight cancellation rates through the winter. But then Chuck's locum booked his flight into Castlegar and it was of course cancelled, so we ended up having to wait around for 8 hours while he flew into an alternate airport, rented a vehicle and drove here.

All of which made for a very late departure, but the kids, Fiona especially, were insistent we leave on Saturday anyway, even if we only got a few miles across the border. Which is about what happened. We got into Washington State, grabbed a very late supper at a really cruddy Chinese place and checked into a room at the nearest chain hotel. All in all things were going really well, though, as no one seemed to be developing appendicitis.

Space Needle reflected in the exterior of the EMP Museum

The next day we had an easy drive to Seattle. Through the Columbia River gorge, past the wind farms, over the Snoqualamie Pass and into urbania. We stayed at a neat hotel in the heart of Seattle Center in a heritage building. The MarQueen was built in 1914 as a training centre and boarding house for Ford metalworkers, most previously working as blacksmiths. The rooms were all suites, so we had a bedroom, sitting room and kitchen all nicely appointed with period decor (and about the same price as a nice hotel room in Castlegar!) and a real feeling of being back in the past. There was room for everyone, with a special bed-sitting area for the gimpy boy who had broken three bones in his foot a week earlier and was on crutches with an air-cast and not wanting to do much walking around and sight-seeing. A hundred years old or not the MarQueen had wifi and that kept him happy.

We spent a day and a half in Seattle. We hit up some neat ethnic restaurants for meals, explored Seattle Centre, spent a day at the EMP Museum viewing the Icons of Science Fiction and History of Video Games exhibits, cruised the monorail, peeked into Pike's Place, did a bit of shopping, and then, pre-bedtime, mainlined Downton Abbey episodes. 

Spice jars

I found some pigment water-based chalkboard markers. They handle like traditional marker felts, but produce brilliant opaque colour on black. In this case, I've used baby food jars with lids spray-painted matte black. They don't smudge, but can be washed off with water and a soft cloth.

We have a huge drawer of spices in baby food jars, but their paper labels are now greasy and all the same yellowy-white colour, so we always have trouble finding the right jars. Alphabetizing the drawer was not a sustainable strategy.

So this is the new approach. I think colour-coding the lettering according to the item contained within will help. Herbs will be green, mustardy and gingery things ochre yellow, curry and turmeric orange, darker spicy things brown, salt and garlic powder white.

I love these chalkboard markers. If I were a teenager all over again I would teach myself hand lettering and drawing with these implements and contract out my skills as a café board artist. I think it would be the perfect part-time college job.

Cellular decay, v.2

It was over five years ago that we bought a very out-of-date cellphone. It served us well for about three years. Erin took it with her to Edmonton and Montreal, we used it during our monthly Calgary trips, she took it with her when travelling to and about Calgary on her own, the kids occasionally used it while on road trips with Corazon, and we took it on our weekly trips to Nelson so that we had a contact number as we tried to co-ordinate multiple teens and kids and multiple errands in a single trip often complicated by poor weather.

It never worked at home, because although our area got cellphone coverage a couple of years ago, our phone was part of the wrong network and was too old anyway for the relatively up-to-date 3G service. Then the phone died about eighteen months ago. We were no longer travelling to Calgary every month, so there was no urgent need to replace it.

But now I'm teaching two or three afternoons a week at a place with no phone, and Fiona is ever so tired of being dragged along to spend the time in a chilly, furniture-less spare bedroom because I don't feel good leaving her at home without an emergency contact. Our Nelson trips are getting ever more complicated, requiring two different vehicles shuttling and meeting up and allocating 7 different kids. And closer to home, I would say that at least twice a week some of us end up significantly inconvenienced by the kids not being able to reach me. Either I end up driving around town looking for them, or they end up having to leave activities early or (more often) wait around for an hour or two for a ride at a pre-arranged time. So I've been toying with the prospect of getting another cellphone, one that would also work at home. It would be so nice to be able to say "call me when you're done."

At first I thought a basic 3G flip-phone would make sense. But then I began looking at my other electronics and I realized that they're coming up on being 3, 4 and 5 years old. My iPod classic is functioning fine, but Apple hasn't been updating this model since 2009, and if it ever tanks I'll be absolutely dysfunctional. I use it when teaching, for entertainment during all my driving, to help get to sleep, sometimes during running, and for general entertainment. It's probably used for 2-3 hours a day on average which means it's got more than 4000 hours on it. How many more can I count on? My iPad is also working pretty well, but it's an original and won't run the new iOS, so increasingly I'm finding that I can't run new apps. And it doesn't have a camera; I'm really wishing I had an internet device with a camera that I could use as a teaching adjunct. Right now I have to use a camcorder, plug it into my computer, upload the video, edit it, convert the file, upload to YouTube, set privacy, and email a link to my student. Doing this every week, even just for one or two students, is getting old really fast.

So maybe an iPhone is for me. Erin has had one for a couple of years and loves it. Sophie has had an iPod touch for several years and feels the same. The camera on the iPhone 5 would be a dream for my teaching. And it would be so nice for my family to be able to reach me while I'm not at home and neither are they, which is a lot. I predicted that if cell service ever came to our little town we would probably fall down the slippery slope into reliance on a cellphone for daily life. We've held out for two and a half years but I feel the pull of gravity.

The winter outdoors

The last few weeks have been perfect outdoor recreation weather, and we're taking full advantage of it, especially on skis. Fiona has discovered XC skiing this year, and she's quite a natural at it. She and I have been going out at least a couple of times a week together, exploring various trails in the area. There's a lot of trail-grooming that has begun taking place in recent years, which is nice for me on my whippy narrow track skis. My equipment is 25 years old but holding up fairly well.

It's been fairly cold for our area for much of the past couple of weeks (minus 10 or 12 Celsius) but the sun has peeked out even on the coldest days. That makes all the difference. 

The cross-country trails in Hills afford lovely scenery.

Fiona has joined the Jackrabbits program. Her classmates have been XC skiing for two or three years, but she's keeping up pretty well for a noob.

The snow is so delicious! Here ground hoar has formed at night on sun-warmed hillocks. In the high country, on steep slopes, this will create a serious avalanche risk, but down on the XC flats it's just beautiful.

Homeschoolers are able to join the school ski program. This gives them free skiing and free lessons three Wednesdays in January. There's a nice cluster of homeschooled girls a little younger than Fiona, at a similar skiing level. They get along with the school kids really well too, but have a special chemistry all their own.

Fiona is getting braver and more capable on downhill skis. We don't ski much each year, but this is her third year, and her skills are building. 

I think we're doing really well for physical activity this winter. I'm hardly running at all, I confess: I'd love to be squeezing in three runs every week and it's not quite happening, but that's because I'm doing so much skiing with the kids, Fiona especially. Sophie and Noah are both in the (fairly intense) Fitness program at school, and Sophie has been doing dance and volleyball and PE as well. Noah will be adding Outdoor Education in semester 2, which begins shortly. And Fiona? This week she had gymnastics on Tuesday, downhill skiing all day Wednesday, an hour in the gym on Wednesday evening, PE at school on Thursday, XC skiing for an hour and a half on Friday, plus 90 minutes of swimming at the hot springs the same day, tomorrow she has Jackrabbits, and Sunday she'll likely ski downhill again. It feels wonderful to be getting outside so much in the depths of winter.

Having the right clothing makes all the difference. Really warm gloves, Smartwool socks, goggles, seam-sealed waterproof breathable insulated jackets and pants, the right footwear, polypro as a base layer of clothing, warm hats and helmets. Our equipment is all borrowed or rented, but the clothing is good stuff we spent money on. Comfortable kids are happy outdoor kids.

Bob

It was the morning before I had to leave for Kelowna to pick up Erin. Noah, Fiona and Sophie had to be got up, the lunches had to be made, everyone had to be fed, coffee had to be made and drunk, suitcases had to be packed for Fiona and me for the overnight, art class supplies and sewing machine had to be readied for the morning's class. In other words, it was the usual chaos plus a bit more. And of course the chicken feed and water had to be topped up before I left. Ten minutes before we all had to depart, I ran out to water the chickens, and saw something leap up towards the fenced roof of the outdoor chicken run.

And there he was: this guy. About twice the size of a house cat, meaty and substantial with strength and claws and attitude to match. He was trapped there, startled by my presence. I couldn't see how he'd gotten in, but getting out wasn't proving to be easy.

I saw no blood or feathers around, and the chickens usually stay inside the coop where it's warmer, so I wondered if he had maybe just arrived. Perhaps the chickens were still alive, cowering inside. Regardless, I wanted to get him out. I cracked the gate to the outdoor chicken run, just wide enough to admit a camera lens, and took this photo. He growled, hissed and growled some more.

I cracked the gate a little wider and then went around to the far side of the coop, prodding him from behind with a long stick in an effort to encourage him to leave through the gap I'd left him in the gate. He was spitting mad and didn't want to move. But finally he made a grand leap and ran for it: straight through the little chicken door and into the coop.

I suppose I wasn't thinking entirely sensibly. I was only thinking of the poor chickens that he might be about to kill. So I ran around to the coop door and quickly opened it, peering into the relative dark, hoping that my appearance would scare him out the little flap-door at the back by which he had come in.

The image was like a split-second landscape revealed by a flash of lightning. I saw, and I slammed the door shut, only really understanding what I had seen after the door was closed. I had seen chicken carcasses: it was already all over for our rooster and four hens who had been faithfully contributing lovely blue-green-shelled eggs to our pantry for a year and a half. But I had also seen the cat, a mere 14 inches from my face, sitting in the nesting box closest to the door, growling his horrid growl, crouched upon his deadly claws.

We now had two minutes until we had to leave for school/art class/Kelowna. Like any reasonable person would, I spent that two minutes uploading the photo to Facebook (thereby alerting Chuck) and then simply drove away, trusting that the cat would eventually leave by the open gate. Which it seems he did.

We dealt with the chicken carcasses another day. I suppose we'll be back to raising new chicks this spring.

Fear and locked doors

Dear Ms. School District Superintendant

I'm writing to express my distaste for the recent board-level changes in school security policy. 

I chose to raise my children in this area in large part because I wanted them to grow up in an environment free of pervasive media-drive fear. Not free of risk, of course: none of us can ever live entirely free of risk. But I wanted them to grow up in an environment uncontaminated by the sort of fear and distrust that is rampant in larger centres and other countries. I wanted my children to believe that the world is by and large a good place filled with good people. I wanted them to learn to keep risk in perspective. 

[Our community] and [our K-12 public school] seemed to provide that kind of environment. The school and the community are friendly, open and trusting. Not to the point of stupidity, but they provide a balanced openness and acceptance. We have not fallen prey here to a paranoid distrust of each other or of strangers. Children in our area who are asked for directions by tourists respond helpfully rather than cowering in fear. The school has had an atmosphere of welcome acceptance. School staff have worked hard to build connections between school and community, between living and learning, between the natural world and the people living within it. Children attending school have felt part of a school community that encompasses the larger world, rather than held in an institutional community turned inwards, insulated and protected from the larger world. 

The new security policy strikes at the heart of this openness. It creates an atmosphere that draws a firm line between the scary outside world and the supposed safety of school. It is also a terribly unscientific interpretation of risk. Considering that schools are supposed to be helping children learn to critically examine and interpret information, this sets a very poor example. The risk of a Canadian school student dying in a motor vehicle accident on the way to or from school is hundreds of times higher than the risk of dying in a school shooting. Why are we letting a media frenzy relating to an incident in a different country with a radically different health care system and firearms law dictate which doors we can walk through?

If the school district is truly concerned about reducing the risk of school shootings from negligible to even-more-negligible, they should consider the factors that are commonly cited by experts as motivating such gunmen. School shooters tend to be isolated loners who are fearful and disempowered, and they tend to take out their anger on institutions where they perceive their isolation and disempowerment to have begun. Surely it is no stretch to see that a school lockdown policy -- which inhibits the free interaction between school and community, which symbolizes the isolation of students from the wider world and which restricts student movement and location -- will tend over the long run to increase the likelihood of disturbed individuals choosing that school as a target. It is no mystery why US rates of school shootings continue to rise as schools get more and more controlling and "secure." Such policies are dehumanizing. They put up barriers. They isolate. All factors that play into the disturbed thought patterns of future potential mass-murderers.

For goodness sake, let's keep risk in perspective. The risk of a school shooting here in our corner of rural BC is virtually nil. The risk of choking on a piece of food at a school lunch or dropping dead of cardiac arrest on the soccer field is higher. We're not rushing around banning team sports or grapes. Why is the school district buying into media-driven fear, and in doing so eroding healthy attitudes towards community and the wider world, the sort of healthy attitudes that are protective against violence? I hope that the recent directive was a misguided attempt to comfort families by being seen to be doing something in light of the media hype surrounding a shooting in a nation very different from ours, and that upon realizing that parents do not need or want this sort of "comfort" the administration will revise the policy.

I urge you to rescind the current directive so that the wonderful healthy openness between students, families, school staff and communities can be preserved. Barriers build fear and resentment and reduce student security both real and perceived. A policy of openness serves our students, and their security, best.

Sincerely,

etc.

Matcha White Chocolate Truffles

Matcha White Chocolate Truffles

1 lb. good white chocolate
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup matcha powder

~ 1 lb. white chocolate chips or buttons for dipping

Melt and stir together the first four ingredients. Chill for several hours.

Roll into 1 tsp. balls, dip in melted plain white chocolate. Store in airtight containers in a cool location, well away from dog.

Note: Sophie describes the above recipe as Matcha Truffles: Extreme Edition. Unless you really love green tea, you might want to tone this down. Start with a couple of tablespoons of matcha powder and work up from there to taste. We decided that wrapping a bit of the truffle ganache around a macadamia nut balances the flavour beautifully, so that the extreme mix works well.

Moot court

Our workshops exploring aspects of law and government have continued since last spring and concluded this week with a moot court. We've made a special trip to Nelson for each one, and even though we do far too much driving at the best of times, it's been worth it.

Our Lawyer Mentor has employed an consistent and unique theatrical style which the kids have played along with happily. He reads a narration of the events of our fictional country aloud. As he does so he non-verbally appoints certain kids to certain roles. "The head of security .... [grabbing a police hat and dropping it on the head of a likely-looking 9-year-old, then gesturing for her to come onto the rug which is serving as the centre of the theatre space] .... went to the king [she walks to where the king is standing] and said 'I will make sure your laws are followed!' [nodding for her to repeat this line, which she does]," And so on, with the story evolving at each session.

Here's how the story of our country has evolved:

In the beginning there were no rules. The people were free to do whatever they wanted. Everything was wonderful. There were parties with lots of singing, people rode horses all over the country and built wonderful houses. Except that people who wanted to sing would sometimes sing all night when others wanted to sleep. People who wanted to ride horses would sometimes ride them through fields where farmers were tending their rows of carrots. Big strong people who wanted nice houses would sometimes just take them away from smaller people.

While it was nice to be able to do what you wanted, some rules were needed to help keep order. A lady  decided she would make rules to control the chaos and she came to be called Queen Henrietta. She made laws about not riding horses through carrot gardens, and about not singing all night when people wanted to sleep. But she also made laws that said the people had to give her presents all the time. She became very powerful and rich, and the people, who disagreed with some of her laws, were not very happy.

Her evil nephew Prince Henry saw that the people were unhappy. He saw that the Queen was very rich. He decided that with the help of some of the people he could get rid of Queen Henrietta. And so he did. He told the people that he would help them be in charge of their own country, so they agreed to sneak into Queen Henrietta's castle at night very quietly and then suddenly yell "Boo!" This frightened her so badly that she ran away. Now Prince Henry told the people that they could vote to choose someone to make all the laws. But he got his friends to give all the people O'Henry candy bars so that they would vote for him. Once he was elected, he began to make laws to keep himself in power.

The new laws meant that the people had very little freedom. If they disagreed with Henry they were arrested by his security force. There were no parties allowed, no singing, not even any talking a lot of the time.

Finally the little people sneaked up on Henry and scared him away with a big "Boo!"

They chose a nice guy to be the head of the country and called him King Fair. King Fair agreed to make only the laws that the House of Laws told him to make. The House of Laws was made up of one person chosen from each family. They talked together and then decided what laws King Fair would pass. "So it shall be passed," King Fair replied every time the people from the House of Laws told him about a new law they wanted. If it seemed like laws were broken, the police would arrest people. The court would listen to evidence and decide if they were guilty or innocent.

The country also created a list of basic rights and freedoms that should not be interfered with. And so the court also kept an eye on the House of Laws. If they made any laws that interfered with those basic rights and freedoms, he would strike down the law. And the government worked very well for several years.

But rumours began surfacing that the Evil Lord Voldesnort was planning to take the country over with the help of collaborators. So the government took the unusual step of making a far-reaching security law. Among other things the Security Act mandated the installation of wireless video surveillance cameras in every living room in the kingdom. The Brown Family refused to allow the camera to be installed. They were arrested and charges brought against them.

And so we ended up in a provincial supreme courtroom last Friday. In all honesty the defence lawyers didn't do nearly as good a job as the prosecution. While the unconstitutionality of the security act was clear-cut in most people's minds, the defence didn't do a great job of demonstrating this in court. But in the end the judge found for the accused and the Browns were set free.

Fiona had the role of a witness for the defence. She was Miss Matters, an expert on the health and safety issues pertaining to microwave radiation. She read a prepared statement and was examined by counsel for the defence and then cross-examined by the prosecution. She wore and then presented to the bench Exhibit C, a tinfoil hat used by those concerned about the health effect of microwaves.

I'm so thrilled that we've had this opportunity. It has spawned some amazing discussions afterwards as well. It has been the nidus of broad, far-reaching exploration of the philosophy and practice of law and government.

Between the subjects

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the way the boundaries between subjects don't need to exist at all. I know that many schools pride themselves on making "cross-curricular connections," but those are more like threads connecting otherwise discrete areas. As homeschoolers we are free to dwell for months in the spaces between the subjects.

This fall has been a case in point for Fiona. She's been learning about ... how does one describe it when it isn't a traditional subject area? ... learning about where math, art and nature overlap.

I think perhaps the thread of discovery that led us into this playground was the stylized form of doodling called zentangles. This was clearly a form of creative precision that appealed to Fiona: the fine lines, the iterations, the patterns and conventions, the interesting figure-ground relationships.

And then, suddenly there was Vi Hart and her quirky doodling in (and about!) math class. Fiona has spent hours watching these videos over and over, experimenting with the tricks and techniques. Hexaflexagons, binary trees, Fibonacci spirals, doodling music, she's loved all of Hart's stuff.

And that brought us to October, when art class began. Last year's classes focused on the alphabet and on place: our community, the natural world we treasure, and letters, and words, and art that combined them all. But this year's series of workshops, wonder of wonders, is about geometric patterns in nature and art.

How perfect for this girl at this moment in her life!

Right from the first class drawing compasses were part of the exercises. Mandalas made with concentric circles. Lines made from circles. Equilateral triangles made from circles. Squares made from circles. Fibonacci spirals made from squares and circles.

As with most homeschoolers' classes, this one is multi-age and multi-level. The instructor is amazing at meeting the needs of barely-5-year-olds, and even some of their younger siblings, as well as challenging the 9- to 11-year-olds.

Fiona is neat to watch socially in the class. She enjoys talking to the adults -- she chats away with the art teacher and the homeschool liaison teacher genuinely and comfortably as if they are good friends, and they afford her the same respect and warmth. She and the 11-year-old are at similar academic levels and are friends from way back so they banter back and forth about science, spelling, vocabulary, music, books and math. She enjoys the company of one lovely girl who is almost exactly her age; they often hang out after class for an afternoon. But her favourite classmate to spend time with is a 6-year-old. And it's not a doting babysitter-like arrangement. She doesn't play with this kid because she thinks she's cute or because she enjoys being a leader who is bigger and older and more capable. She plays with her simply because they're really good friends. She really really likes J. as a person.

Art class is outdoors sometimes too. We walk to and from the lakeshore, or along the creek, or along the streets of the quiet neighbourhoods near the school. The kids enjoy the less structured time, the physical outlet of getting themselves somewhere on their own two feet and the chance to socialize. Along the way they're learning to see the patterns in nature, collecting specimens and samples, building ephemeral art.

I love ephemeral art. We have a friend living nearby who makes a living at sand and snow sculpture. I admit to at first thinking it was kind of gimmicky, a sort of festival competition endeavour designed to pull in tourists and make a spectacle. But I see it differently now that I've watched his work evolve, and seen Andy Goldsworthy's work, and grown older and more comfortable with impermanence myself. For kids, I think ephemeral art lowers the stakes: there's no need to strive for perfection if you know it will wither or blow away. Just enjoy the process, and appreciate your work for as long as it lasts, and that's all. What wonderful therapy for perfectionists!

I was mystified a year or so ago when Fiona announced that architecture is something she could see herself doing as a career. Mystified because she had never expressed much interest in building toys like Lego or Knex. Mystified because she had never been rapt over cranes or framing or cement trucks as I assumed budding little architects would be. But she loves the design aspect of architecture, especially spare, clean contemporary architecture. She doesn't see many clean modern lines in our little hewn-log corner of the world, but she loves images of the sexy towers in Dubai, and of achingly spare glass-and-rice-paper rooms in Kyoto apartments.

Further, she has fallen in love with contemporary design. An IKEA catalogue was her gateway drug. Now she's browsing design blogs and awards. Who knows where it will all go. At this point I'm avoiding labelling and categorizing her interests as much as I can. Although a certain amount of labelling is helpful to her in finding resources and talking about her interests, I think it is wonderful the way she is comfortable inhabiting the overlapping space shared between various subjects.

Fall bits

Where has October gone? Where has my blogging mojo gone? My additional teaching load, and all the juggling of travel and activities by Noah and Sophie, is taking a toll.

Fall was amazing until the rain finally caught up with us. The leaves were a good two weeks later to start turning, and then when they did it was in a flash of gold glory. Still it was sunny. And (relatively) warm. 

Now it's been raining for a couple of weeks. And cold, and grey, and dark. The wood stove is working all the time and we're inside a lot more. 

Fiona has been doing a lot of neat art and math. The topo map project (previously mentioned) but also a lot of Vi-Hart-inspired doodling, zentangle style art, and circle-geometry stuff. The art classes that were offered last year to homeschoolers are underway again, and this year's focus is mathematics and patterns in art, which is just a perfect fit for Fiona's current enthusiasms. An art class where the vocabulary frequently includes words like radius, concentric, tetrahedron, equilateral, rotation and intersection? Right up her alley! They're currently working on making mandalas, using various paint techniques, geometry with compasses and straight-edges, and carved print blocks. 

A last few tidbits, clockwise as above. 

We've been doing some organized running clinics. Fiona attended the first one and enjoyed it. I'm going to continue doing some regular Sunday clinics in a neighbouring village. I am trying to work up interest in an ongoing local running group, so I've put some time and energy into hiring a clinician, setting up an email loop, and doing publicity.

My knitting bug has hit again, with the stoking of the wood stove. The only local yarn shop (90 minutes away) closed last spring, so I shall have to find a good on-line source for yarn. It's a shame not to be able to see colours and touch hanks in person though. 

My networking with other runners and cyclists has made me keen to get to know even more of the local wilderness. Last weekend I stumbled on a fabulous trail that I had never heard about. A well-kept secret, I suppose. It's low-elevation, easily accessible, rolling in profile, quite and stunningly beautiful ... yet very close by. How could I not have known? I've biked it and run it and loved it both ways. It's made me hungry to truly and thoroughly get to know the backcountry around here. In the last couple of years I've got a good handle on the trails between my area and town. But that's just a wee portion of what's out there. I want to get back into backcountry hiking and camping too.

Fiona dressed up for Hallowe'en as No Face from the Studio Ghibli anime movie Spirited Away. An easy and warm costume for a typically cold and wet Hallowe'en.

The Law and Government classes are drawing to a close. These fun theatrical classes about the evolution and structure of our constitutional monarchical government system have continued sporadically throughout the summer and into the fall. Fiona has continued her role as Head of the Executive branch of government, but she now has a new role as Miss Matter, a witness for the defence in the case of against Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who have refused the installation in their living room of a video surveillance camera according to Section 10 of the Kingdom Security Act designed to protect against the rumoured terrorist plans of Evil Lord Voldesnort. The mock trial is scheduled for the Nelson Courthouse in a couple of weeks.

Bokashi

Bokashi bin, and wheat-bran starter

Okay, it isn't pretty, but it's pretty cool.

We've been outdoor composting for more than 20 years. We tried indoor vermicomposting for a while, but despite our best efforts couldn't entirely prevent fruit-fly outbreaks. We don't have a garage, so the worms were on their own outside, and eventually bears got the bin. And bears, really, are the problem. Yard waste won't attract them, but the food waste definitely does at certain times of year. Our solution has been to move the compost pile to the far corner of our property and let the bears snack as they like. But it's not ideal. Habituating the bears to human food waste is not such a great thing. Bears learn quickly and seem to share their knowledge through some sort of bear intranet. One compost bear tends to become several.

Winters present a different problem. Just getting to that faraway compost pile is a challenge when the snow is thigh-deep. No one likes doing it. Compost is the most dreaded chore on the kitchen chore rota. And of course, nothing actually rots during the winter, so in spring there's a gradual thawing of a mountain of food scraps. Just in time for the bears' arrival.

And now that most of us are eating meat a few times a week, we have the problem of bones and meat waste. We don't have garbage collection, so that stuff has to go into the freezer to be stored until we make our monthly trip to the dump.

So now we're trying something new. The chicken manure, leaves, garden waste, straw and grass clippings will keep going in the compost pile, but our food waste will go in our bokashi bin inside. Bokashi is Japanese for "fermented waste" and the bokashi approach to food waste processing was invented in Japan in 1980. It uses a combination of lactic acid bacteria, photosynthetic bacteria and yeast to ferment food and cellulose (i.e. wood/paper) anaerobically. Indoors, in a sealed container.

You put your food -- including citrus, meat, bones and dairy -- in a sealed drum or bucket with a wheat-bran "starter" which provides the micro-organisms necessary for fermentation. You sprinkle a little of the starter in every time you dump a day or two's worth of scraps into the drum, and re-seal it. Then, once it's completely full, you seal it fully for a minimum of 10-14 days. After that, it is fully fermented, won't attract animals, and is just waiting to fall apart into compost.

Last week we had a chance to intercept some bokashi bins at the post-fermentation stage. During the annual Garlic Festival in September, Fiona and I had worked a few hours on the waste management team. This meant directing visitors and food vendors to get all their recyclables in the appropriate bins, and to place any food or food/paper/wood waste in the buckets destined for the bokashi drums. The half-dozen 60-gallon drums underwent their fermentation, and were delivered to the school-and-community Harvest Festival last Friday by the bokashi guy. They were opened and dumped into trenches in the garden.

The stuff smelled pretty distinctive. Not horrid. Very cidery / vinegary. It was laced with the white mold that sometimes shows up in our compost pile and is a hallmark of a good bokashi process. Like the documentation suggested, it looked pretty much the same as it had when it went into the drums. It hadn't decomposed, but the bokashi guy assured me that much of the cell structure had been destroyed. It will apparently decompose in 10-30 days when mixed with soil or buried in a compost pile. The school bravely dumped a couple hundred gallons of the stuff into the garden beside the place where the little preschoolers play. And just as the bokashi buy promised, no bears have shown up.

I think it will take us 3 to 4 weeks to fill a 5-gallon drum. We have three drums. We'll fill two, wait the 14 days while working on the third one, and then take the fermented ones out to dump in the compost pile. That's one trip to the compost pile every 6-8 weeks. Two or three trips each winter. Sure, it'll require a sled. But that we can handle, given the infrequency of the requirement.

So far our bin smells cidery when opened, and harbours no flies. Thanksgiving turkey bits are in there, with dozens of plum pits, a few bamboo skewers, a lot of tea leaves, some paper and coffee grounds, a bunch of dried-out mozzarella cheese and the usual food scraps. Week one has gone as expected. We'll see how the winter goes.

We Live Here 3D

Recently Fiona has been fascinated by Vi Hart's quirky art-in-math videos. She's made Fibonacci spirals, binary trees, trihexaflexagons and various other doodly-mathy things. Recently she noticed how a particular style of spiral doodle looked a bit like topographic lines on a map. And as she didn't really understand how topographic lines worked, I explained them to her, and printed out a topo map from our area. I also suggested it might be fun to someday cut out and stack layers of cardboard using topographic lines as a guide to create a three dimensional model of the topography of an area, real or imagined.

Well, she wanted to do that right away. So we found a couple of old cardboard boxes, traced over the topographic lines on the map we'd printed out, and started cutting. One topo line at a time we cut out our paper map contours, traced them onto cardboard, and cut each layer. Fiona glued the layers together and was entranced as the topography began to take shape. The creek drainages, and the peaks, the valleys, the ridges.

Today she painted.

A layer at a time, with bright and darker greens and greys. She used acrylic paint for its forgiving nature and opacity. Of course the open corrugated edges weren't really filled: I wondered about smoothing everything out with some polyfilla. But in the end I didn't suggest that because I figured the real point was to notice the way in which topographic lines on a map, which are so beautifully visible on this model, allow one to approximate the three-dimensional shape of the terrain.

After the painting was done, we looked at the model without the map, and tried to identify peaks and locations. Then we got out the map to check and get a bit more precise with our locations. And we decided to repurpose some sewing pins into map pins, and mark a few places with names.

Fiona is very pleased with the finished product. It took us two pleasant afternoons, totalling about 4 hours. We worked together part of the time, and sometimes I read aloud while she worked.

(We have a few of these picture-perfect unschooling days a year, where a thread of interest turns into an interesting project and results in some awesome photos. I always blog about them because .... well, because they're noteworthy. Not because they're typical.)

Suffer-bike-run

Sufferfest went almost exactly as I expected, except that it was harder, and more fun, and the weather was exceptionally fine. So, not exactly as I expected. But close.

The bike ride was long and hard. The 45k included about 1400 metres of climbing. I was worried I wouldn't finish before the course closed: a number of people didn't finish, and a few sneaked in just past the official cutoff but were granted finishes. It was a hard physical slog for longer than I've ever worked that hard. Longer than my marathon. I finished in under 5 hours, though not by much. Official times have not been posted. But I'm told I came 3rd overall among female riders. Maybe there were only three women? There were about 40 riders but it seems most of them were male.

Surprisingly I felt pretty good once I had a chance to catch my breath at the end of the day. I had a scrape on my leg from a small crash but that was all. I went home, slept and got up for the run. Muscles still seemed happy enough to oblige.

The 25k run was fine. It had about 650 metres of climb and an equivalent descent. As expected my bones and gristly bits held up well and the next day I just had a pleasant amount of muscle soreness. I managed to shave about 5 minutes off my 2010 time, sneaking in under 3 hours. Two years older and 5 minutes faster, even after a huge bike ride: I'll take it!

It was a really motivating weekend. Especially with respect to the bike. I have a decent amount of endurance, but I realized it would help to be a lot stronger when it comes to powering up hills. So there's something to work towards for next year.


Next year I'd like to do the bike ride again. And I think I'd like to run the 10k with Fiona. She's started running with me and would like to keep that up. There were an impressive bunch of kids running the 10k this year, and she would like to be part of that next year.

Sufferfest v2.0

Two years ago I ran the 25k Sufferfest True Blue trail run. I hadn't trained specifically for it, though I had been training hard that summer. It was the first year for Sufferfest and I wanted to support the event, just a stone's throw from my home town. I originally thought to run the 10k event, though the 25k looked enticing. I had just run my first-ever race, an Alberta (i.e. flat) Half Marathon three weeks earlier and was feeling good. I figured an extra 4 kms wasn't that big a difference.

But it turned out the Sufferfest trail run was a whole different animal. Steep up, steep down, rooty and rocky. I had also just switched over to minimalist trail shoes and though I had run in them a fair bit, I hadn't really run any trails. I felt great at the outset and ran hard -- over all that crazy terrain, which quickly took its toll on me. My knee and my foot were paying the price by the end and I did a long rallentando to the finish line. It took me weeks to recover.

So you'd think that if I entered Sufferfest again I'd be a little more judicious in my choice of events. But no, I've gone an entered the 25k again, despite a summer of little to no training. I've been running on and off, but no real long runs, only a handful over 5 km and nothing at all systematic. (And I've entered the 45k mountain-bike race the day before. It's a length that's almost double the longest trail ride I've ever done in my life.)

My old friend the Minimus 10

The bike stupidity aside, I feel differently about it all this time around. I have a lot more experience pacing myself over long runs and steep trails. I've been running in a minimalist way for a long time now. I plan to run in my Minimus Trail 10's. They're considerably more minimalist than the shoes I ran my first Sufferfest in, but now they rank as old favourites, and more shoe than I usually run in. On roads I run barefoot. On rough trails these days I wear either Unshoes, my home-made huaraches or Minimus Zeros. So the Minimus 10's are a solid old standby. I know they'll work for me. My muscles, ligaments and tendons have adapted to this kind of running -- and some -- and I've done a lot of miles on exactly the sort of trails I'll be running this weekend. I've also noticed that my body is pretty good at endurance running. It forgives my completely non-systematic increases in mileage. I'm fine running nothing more than 5 km for a couple of months and then going out and doing a challenging 15k. Sure, Sufferfest is a big run and I'll be tired and sore as stink, but I don't think I'll be injured.

Not unless that bike ride kills me. Stay tuned.

Bike bridge

Our property is ideally situated to avoid logging, development or loss of privacy. We own a mere 2.5 acres (1.0 Ha) but the surrounding crown land is heavily forested, but steep and creeky -- not suitable for logging. Above us runs the highway, and a long way down a 45- to 60-degree slope is a regional park, so no risk of anything man-made growing up in either of those directions. Which is lovely, except that it makes it almost impossible to create any trails that start at our place and connect up with anything. We're prisoners of our terrain. Our small area of more moderate grade is all we've got to work with. 

So Fiona and I decided that if we can't hook into the nearby cross-country trails from our property, we could at least create some sort of interesting circuit to make use of on our bikes. We have dreams of a reticular network of tiny trails connecting obstacles, jumps, skinnies, ramps and whatever else we can dream up. Today, with Chuck's help we got started. We used two 18' cedar logs to span a small gully. Then Fiona got busy with hammer, nails and a bunch of cedar decking recycled from our old deck.

In less than an hour we had completed the bridge. Fiona got up her courage: the access at the far side comes from a short but steep slope. She made it across without any difficulty!

Thermos hack: yogurt-maker

I have a large plastic thermos, and inexpensive item that is world-weary and not particularly water-tight. It has a capacity of about 3 Litres, and is perfect for making a large batch of yogurt for our family. Since we've been freezing the local summer fruit bounty, the kids are making a lot of smoothies and subsequently we go through a lot of yogurt. This is so cheap and easy.

A Thicker Yogurt

4 cups boiled water
4 cups tap water
4 2/3 cups instant skim milk powder
1/2 cup fresh yogourt with active bacterial culture, or two packets of yogourt starter

Combine boiled and tap water in a large thermos. In my house the resulting temperature is about 115ºF, which is ideal for starting a yogourt fermentation. I can trust this temperature, but if you're trying this for the first time, definitely check the temperature of the mixture and adjust as necessary. Whisk in skim milk powder, then whisk in the fresh yogurt. Using skim milk powder allows you to get a thicker yogurt by getting more milk solids in less liquid volume, and it means you don't have to go the fussy process of heating the milk to kill any lingering thermophils.

Place lid on thermos. Place in unheated oven with the light turned on to provide a bit of warmth. Leave undisturbed for 8 hours. (Put a sticky-note on the oven to remind yourself and others not to turn it on! Ask me why my thermos is world-weary with bubbly plastic on the bottom...) With luck you should have a nice thick yogurt. It will firm up a bit more in the fridge.

Yield: 8.5 cups of yogurt

Swim lessons

We haven't felt swim lessons are a necessity, but they're nice when they work out, and the child is motivated and ready for the input. Fiona has never had any swimming instruction other than guidance from me and her siblings. She has been comfortable in deep water for a year and a half or so, and happy submerging for several years. But she's still mostly a dog-paddler, albeit one with a pretty cool self-styled backstroke. She's motivated to improve at everything, though, and swimming is no exception.

Our lake is only realistically swimmable for a couple of months a year, and we live a long, long way from a public pool. So it's nice to seize opportunities when they arise. A friend of ours is a swim instructor living in the next village over. She offers swim lessons in their lake (a little colder even than ours) every summer. This year the timing worked out, and lessons weren't full before we found out about them. It's a 75-minute drive, round-trip, but we go in the morning before the rest of the family gets going for the day. Fiona reads aloud to me from our readaloud book. We chat. We watch for bears, and moose, and coyotes, and great views, and raging creeks.

The first two days were SO cold! About 13ºC in both the air and the water, and windy to boot. Fortunately there were a couple of extra wetsuits available for loan, one of which fit Fiona. And a swim cap has made a huge difference.

She was very ready for this instruction! No fear, all eagerness, some decent confidence in the water. The stroke instruction is something she's internalizing really well. She's got the beginnings of a really good front crawl, and already looks like an expert in the back crawl. All in just three half-hour sessions.

End of the school year

Sophie and Noah both entered high school this year out of a lifetime of unschooling, Sophie full-time in a combination of Grade 8 & 9 (Grade 8 being considered high school here) and Noah part-time in Grade 10. I realize I've written almost nothing about their experiences there. All in all I think it's been a successful year that has given them both a lot of what they wanted. It was hard to know: Noah in particular isn't very forthcoming, and then there was the fact that the teachers were engaged in job action all year long and we didn't receive any report cards until school had wrapped up at the end of June. I was pretty sure it was all going fine, but it was hard to really know.

Both kids went to school without complaint, even after the novelty had long worn off. I left 99% of the organization and responsibility up to them. I think I asked each of them maybe once or twice over the course of the year whether they had homework or assignments they should be working on but that was the extent of my parental management. While I sometimes wondered whether Noah had any kind of handle on due dates and exams, he seemed to blunder through without problems. He still doesn't much enjoy tests and exams, but the kid who would burst into tears over his first wrong answer in a note-naming quiz at his piano lesson when he was 8 seems at age 15 to handle timed tests without too much stress. Sophie took to the whole organizational challenge with glee. While she had a little trepidation going into her first set of exams, she discovered she loved the challenge and ended up looking forward to her subsequent exams. It was wonderful for me to see that they handled the transition with little active parental involvement.

That's not to say that I have felt detached or have wanted to remain aloof from their school learning. I love our local school. I know most of the teachers at a personal level. I have no end of respect for what they do and I love the flexibility and innovation they exercise. I very much wanted my kids to be happy and successful there. It's just that I felt that part of the reason they were attending was out of a desire to become more independent people with more responsibility and lives separate from home and family. It seemed to make sense to give them that at this point of transition and trust that they would handle it well unless it was proven otherwise. I also figured that my confidence in their ability to make a successful transition might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, that they'd rise to my expectations.

Sophie likes getting good marks. She has a certain awareness of what the achievement benchmarks are and keeps track in a fairly normal way of how she's been scoring on tests. But she doesn't seem to let the marks take on more importance than the learning. She's pleased when she does well on a test, and remembers the grade, but she's not going to school and studying in order to get good grades. She's there to learn. It's just nice when the two coincide.

Noah seems fairly unaware of the whole business of marks. He too is pleasantly surprised when he gets good grades, but he's the sort of guy who doesn't wonder about or ask about end-of-year report cards. He doesn't seem curious about how he's scored or to compare himself to his peers. Marks are sort of a beside-the-point form of validation to him, I think. Sometimes they're a decent indicator of mastery of learning, but they're not as accurate an indicator as his own assessment.

Anyway, they both ended up with excellent grades.

Socially it's been mostly good. Both kids have lots of friends and seem to be viewed as interesting, easy-going and friendly. There have been a few poor choices made here and there about this and that. There's been a bit of para-romantic drama, particularly amongst the Grade 8/9 girls. Noah, whose grade-level "class" consists of one other student, has ended up being kind of a mentor and social magnet for a bunch of slightly younger kids. That puts him in the same social circles as Sophie and thankfully they both seem totally cool with that. They've both got involved in the local Youth Centre, Sophie being on the Board of Directors, and Noah continues to do some volunteering with the community Gaming Club.

Their relationships with the teaching staff have been wonderfully positive. The teachers seem to really, really like them. One of the things I love about the school is how authentic the teachers are: they're real people, with passions and hobbies and lives outside of work, and they share these with their students. In a tiny town like this teachers have two choices: they can create an artificial separation between their teaching persona and their real lives, or they can meld the two. When their daily lives are as visible to their students as they are in a village of 600, the former seems oddly dishonest. You are who you are, whether at the coffee shop with your mountain-biking friends, or in the classroom. To pretend otherwise seems as bizarre as it would be to ask my kids to call me by a teacher name, and not "mommy" when I'm instructing them at home.

So it seems to me as if the teachers are not just teachers, but mentors, to my kids. They share a lot of who they are, their interests, their values, their politics, their passions, and so my kids see them as real, whole people, not simply as authority figures and dispensers of education.

Corazon worked beautifully. Both Noah and Sophie were involved and that meant that there was a student from each of Grades 8, 9, 10 and 11 from the local school going down for rehearsals every Tuesday afternoon during fifth block. The school supported this (and the week-long Cuba trip for the older two) and the carpooling worked out well.

The most significant down-side has been the way their string-playing has got pushed to the back-burner. With Noah there was the added complication of him not having a local teacher. Without Erin causing us to be in Calgary every month to serve her hunger for lessons, there was no natural way for us to get Noah a teacher. His SVI-fired enthusiasm for the viola gradually petered out last fall. He continued with his ensemble-playing, and did a couple of Symphony gigs with me. But regular practicing and solo repertoire work came to a standstill. Sophie, the full-time school student, brimming with enthusiasm for all this nifty new structured learning which was coming so easily to her and earning her such approval, found violin to be a pretty poor cousin. She quit private lessons before Christmas, continuing in the chamber trio but doing a minimum of work. However, she is back taking occasional lessons now, so she hasn't totally given it up. Both kids are registered for SVI in a couple of weeks and are looking forward to it.

The other major issue has been the amount of driving I've had to do. Chuck's drive to work (past the school on the way) is often somewhat discretionary in its timing, but he didn't tend to work around the kids' schedules, so I did almost all the driving. That meant an average of three or more trips to the school per day. It's not far: it takes about 12 minutes per trip. But all those little bites out of my day, and all the gas out of my minivan ... it got tiresome. If they didn't have 10 pounds of textbooks, and 5 pounds of computer, and a no-shoulder winding mountain highway to travel, if there was a schoolbus or public transit, if the road wasn't so steep, if it was only a mile, if there was another family out this way, I wouldn't have to drive all the time. If Noah is willing to get his Learner's Permit when he turns 16, it's possible that if he passes his test a year later I might get out of some of the driving during his last few months of school. If Fiona and I can do without a vehicle all day.

Which begs the question ... will they continue in school? Yes, that's the plan at this point. Noah will go full-time next year. He found this year that even for his home-based learning he was more efficient taking a lot of it to school and doing it there. It just seems simpler to do it all under the school's umbrella next year: they're very flexible. Sophie has some reservations about next year's class mix. She has enjoyed working at a higher level, has liked being part of classes covering Grades 8-10 or 8-12, and could definitely handle even more challenge than she got this year in her Grade 9 courses. Next year she may end up in the top grade of some three-grade splits (7/8/9). She's not particularly optimistic about the social and educational milieu that will give her, but is reserving judgment for now.