A pretty good math-er

Erin had a friend, another young unschooled teen, staying over last night after our community orchestra performance. In the late evening we were all sitting around the fire reading, chatting, knitting, whatever. Fiona decided to do some math. She's almost done the Miquon Red book now and was working through a page of combined multiplication and division. There were a lot of answers that were 12 in the first half of the page. She noticed how many there were and counted them up. "Wow, that's a lot of 12's. Ten 12's."

The general conversation around the fire went on for a moment. Erin's friend J. was talking about something or other.

"That's ten 2's more than a hundred," a little voice piped up. J. stopped talking and looked at Fiona.

"Ten 2's is twenty," continued the little voice. "So, a hundred plus twenty, that's a hundred and twenty."

J's eyes bugged out. "Wow," she said, "I could do that easily, but I'd still have to think about it. And I don't know anyone who could have done that when they were four."

"Well, I'm a pretty good math-er," explained Fiona.

Seed crackers

These were originally a plainer twice-baked seeds-and-grains cracker modelled on Lesley Stowe's Raincoast Crisps by an on-line friend of mine who lived in California and couldn't buy the originals there. I took her recipe and adapted it several times over, creating different variations. My favourite variation has the green pumpkin seeds and also adds dried cranberries for a festive red for Christmas time, combined with rosemary. The second baking takes time and oven space, but really, it's a blissfully easy recipe. I often make great batches of these crackers at this time of year for potlucks, Christmas gifts, or post-concert receptions.

Don't overwhelm these crackers with a zesty cheese spread or antipasto. They're great on their own, though they'll keep good company with mild cheeses. They also work really well as a gourmet accompaniment to fairly bland potato-vegetable type soups.

Cranberry-Rosemary Seed Crackers

2 cups (500 ml) whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp. (30 ml) flax seeds
2 Tbsp. (30 ml) sesame seeds
2 Tbsp. (30 ml) millet
1 cup (250 ml) pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup (125 ml) sunflower seeds
1 tsp. (5 ml) salt
2 tsp. (10 ml) crushed dried rosemary
1/4 cup (60 ml) brown sugar
2 tsp. (10 ml) baking soda
2 cups (500 ml) soured milk
1 cup (250 ml) dried cranberries ("craisins")
1/4 cup (60 ml) molasses

Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir the milk and molasses together. Pour the wet stuff on the dry stuff and stir it up. Turn into two very small greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 F for 50-60 minutes. Cool slightly, remove from pans and cool almost to room temperature on rack. Wrap cooled loaves in waxed paper or foil, or else place in a sealed container, and refrigerate overnight.

Unwrap the next morning and preheat oven to 250 F. Slice the loaves as thinly as you can manage using a bread knife. Lay the slices on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with additional salt to taste and bake/dry at 200F until crisp (about 45 minutes, depending on how thick your slices are: turning them over halfway through the drying time may help speed the process).

Store in sealed containers in a cool dry place for up to 3 weeks.

Christmas Baking

Our family seems to have developed a strongly entrenched tradition of Christmas baking. There's an expectation that we'll spend the weeks from late November to mid-December putting by double batches of at least six or eight recipes. There were years early on when I actually had the time. Lately I've been very grateful for the kids' assistance. This year it feels like we've cut corners. We haven't yet got around to the cashew brittle, and we've entirely dispensed with gingerbread and fruitcakes. But yesterday Sophie had trouble finding an empty tin for the last of the almond crescents, so I guess we've done okay . Here's what's in our cupboard:

Chocolate truffles
Chocolate rum balls
Chocolate-coated mint nougat
Christmas Strawberries (these are so gross, but the kids insist)
Candied fruit peel
Almond crescents
Orange shortbread
Seed crackers (these are divine -- I'll post the recipe soon)

Today was our Ethnic Cooking "Kitchen Club". We decided to visit Germany in the Christmas spirit. With vegetarians amongst us, focusing on Christmas baking whilst learning about German cooking seemed a good hedge. Schnitzel was unnecessary. We threw together an ordinary soup and salad for lunch, and spent the morning making our treats. Of course, we needed some glühwein to go along with it:

Glühwein

2 bottles of inexpensive dry red wine
3 cups of water
1 cup of sugar
1 lemon, thinly sliced
20 cloves
7 sticks of cinnamon

For full alcoholic punch, add the wine at the very end, just before serving, and just warm gently. If alcohol isn't the point, as it wasn't for us, mull everything together in a pot for 45-60 minutes, at a gentle simmer. Serve in mugs.

Pictured above, clockwise from right are Pfeffernuesse, Basler Leckerli (actually Swiss-German, but close, right?) and [Italian] chocolate almond biscotti, which we renamed biskotten in honour of the day. We doubled the black pepper in the pfeffernuesse and wished we'd added a bit more still. But they're very yummy and may join our roster of annual Christmas baking. We finished up with marzipan, made from fresh raw almonds, lovingly blanched and hand-peeled by Sophie and me last night, which was utilized by the kids mostly as edible playdough.

Homeschool beginnings 1

Tonight Fiona's reading is showing evidence of having jumped some significant hurdle. She is on her way to fluency I think. When she figures out a word, whether on her own or with help, the learning sticks and she generalizes it to similar words. It's a snowball effect. Last week the first set of Bob books suddenly became easy for her. This week she's making her way through "Frog and Toad". A huge jump. And that got me thinking about the first time I had a little [even more] precocious reader. There is Erin in the photo, at age 4 3/4, reading her way through a DK Eyewitness book. Nine years ago, almost to the day.

I had no intention of homeschooling my kids. We moved to our little town when Erin was born in part because we'd heard great things about the school and it was my assumption that she would go there. Other people knew better. Two different people, both of whom were new friends but people I felt a real affinity for, asked me out of the blue when she was about a year or two old "so, are you planning to homeschool?" I had absolutely no idea where their questions were coming from, and they couldn't really explain other than to say "well, it just seems like the sort of thing you might do." I thought that was ludicrous. There was a terrific school in our town. Why would we homeschool?

So we put her in preschool. She was shy. This was supposed to help her come out of her shell. She learned to smile and keep a stiff upper lip and was mutely co-operative and sweet-looking. She followed directions and was quiet and predictable. She seemed bright enough even if she didn't talk, and the staff loved her. When I asked her what she thought of it, she said it was fine. Her only complaint was that "it takes up too much of my learning time." By this she meant the time that she liked to spend at home reading, doing various projects (she was in the midst of a geography obsession) and practicing violin. Oddly enough she told me that her favourite time was circle time. That was an unexpected choice, since I knew she mostly preferred to be by herself and disliked large-group anything. It wasn't until months later, after she'd stopped attending, that she explained that she liked circle time because it was the last part of the preschool routine before outside play, at which point she knew she could expect me to arrive for pickup at any time. It indicated that her misery and stress would end soon, that was all. But she didn't tell me that at the time, because she knew she was supposed to be liking preschool. Gosh she tried hard to do so.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. She seemed to cope just fine and I didn't have a clue how difficult it was for her to go and appear cheerful and comfortable and to try to do as expected. In retrospect the one good thing that came out of preschool was that I saw she could cope with school if she had to. And so if we chose not to have her there, it wasn't because she "couldn't hack it," it was just that we'd chosen something different.

Because gradually it became clear that she did not truly enjoy preschool, even though she was trying hard to make it look like she did, because she knew she was supposed to. She had a terrible phase just before her fifth birthday. Stuff was falling into place like crazy in her brain and there were lots of changes -- she'd suddenly leapt to reading at a very high level with complete fluency, her violin playing had taken off in a big way, she'd learned to ride a bike, and she had a new baby sister. She was staying up very late, getting up in the middle of night, listening to music at 3 a.m., even when I asked her repeatedly not to. She was testy and volatile during the day. Preschool, which she'd endured uncomplainingly for more than a year, suddenly didn't seem worth enduring any more. She complained more and more about going, about the time it took up, about the unpredictable and aggressive behaviour of the other children.

As a mom of three kids under five, getting a reluctant four-year-old night-owl out the door for 9 a.m. preschool began to slip to the bottom of my priority list. She attended less and less, and became more and more reluctant. What she really wanted to do was read and read and read. At preschool they were concerned that all she did during her time there was look at books. I pointed out that she was reading fluently, hence her interest in books, and their response was to bring in a set of alphabet letters and attempt to test her mastery of the alphabet. She stared them down, stony and mute. At home she was delving into the second Harry Potter book but she didn't want to perform for anyone.

That same fall we went to have a social dinner with the family of two of my Suzuki violin students. He was principal of the local K-12 school and she was the Grade 2 teacher there. They knew Erin from Suzuki group classes. "My gosh," they commented, after listening to her talk, watching her read and then seeing her assemble some of their son's Meccano by following the schematics. "What are we going to do with a kid like this? Do you ever wonder?" We, meaning the school.

I hadn't wondered much, but I began.

Laundry day

Arghh, I've used the clothes-dryer twice in the past month! Once was almost excusable -- it was the first major washing of all our yummy-soft but oh-so-linty new organic cotton bath towels. But the other time was nothing more than poor planning, laziness and a case of old habits dying hard.

So today is laundry day and I will use the airers. If I'm careful, I can get the better part of two extra-large loads hung indoors. The piano and the stringed instruments like the extra humidity, and with the wood stove things dry quickly.

Two and a half years ago I installed my first laundry airer. I bought it from 1898 House, though there is now a Canadian source of these as well. I've been very happy with that first airer, but when I decided to expand my indoor drying capacity I opted not to spend $100 a second time. Instead I spent $10 on two pulleys, and $12 on some nice walnut-finish wooden hangers. I used a scrap of trim wood, a drill with a 1/4" bit and in no time I had a shirt-dryer with a pretty large capacity for its size. Shirts seemed to take up a disproportionate amount of space on the rack-style commercial airer, and dangling hangers off it turned it into an unwieldy monolith. So my second airer is entirely home-made and dedicated to shirts.

Once this is full of damp shirts, I hoist it to the ceiling and the laundry is out of sight as it dries. I should probably go and do that right now, but I'm savouring my coffee-and-computer time. Yesterday was declared a Screen-Free Day and I missed my morning ritual. Instead yesterday I had to knit, read to myself ("The Soup Peddler's Slow and Difficult Soups" by David Ansel) and aloud to Fiona ("Squids Will Be Squids" by Jon Scieszka). The rest of the day somehow filled up with flour-milling, bread-baking, soup-cooking, more knitting, family games, practicing, more reading aloud, mathematicking with Fiona and attending Sophie's children's choir concert. No laundry got done though. Must go fill laundry airers.

Christmas choir

We all went to the concert and listened to the first half dozen songs. Then I left. She sang. I returned. Under the floodlights she'd been unable to see whether I'd left or not. I could have stayed. Ah, well, I did the honourable thing. Anyone in the audience who saw me leaving likely thought I was being a terribly unsupportive parent, but there you are. I'm told she sang beautifully. I could hear a little through the wall. It sure didn't sound like my kid, but there's no doubt it was. A big strong confident voice. From the one who didn't speak more than a few words in public until she was at least 8. Afterwards there were lots of hugs from fellow choir members and the director. My unhuggable kid. Not so much anymore.

Choir resumes mid-March. "What will I do with my life until March?" she asks. Her friend S., the only other teen in the choir, commiserates. S. will graduate from the local high school this spring and return to Japan. I know Erin will miss her, but I also know that she has many other friends in the choir and she will still love it.

Last night Erin played the Preludio from the Bach E Major Partita for my aunt and uncle who are visiting from Australia. My mom and I had to agree after hearing her -- she now plays it better than either of us do. And I think it's official now that she has more friends in this little town than I do. She's got the whole danged choir for starters. I think I'm going to have to start to get used to being known as Erin's mom, rather than as myself.

Musical form

Fiona has done all the picky work on Gavotte from Mignon and has most of the teaching points mastered. She can do the slur before the repetitive sixteenth-notes in the D-Major section and the separate bows before the repetitive sixteenth-notes in the B-flat-Major section. She can "tunnel" her F-natural finger on the E-string beneath the D & E-flat 3rd- and 4th-fingers on the A-string, and she can pizz. the chords at the end.

But one of the disadvantages of working through a piece in bits, though this is very necessary in the case of a piece with as many technical points as the infamous "Mignon", is that it can be tough putting all the bits together into a cohesive whole that flows from one bit into the next.

Nothing some scissors and construction paper can't fix, though.

"What colour does the first section make you think of?" I asked, fanning the pad of craft paper for her. She chose a light green. I cut out some rectangular bits. "See, pointy corners for the staccato bows," I told her. "And two sections for the first bit and the last bit," I remarked, notching the larger rectangles, "because you play the section twice, with two different endings those times."

Next we moved on to the D-major section, for which she chose a blue-green paper shaped like a triangle. And the B-flat section was a red circle, because the circle reminded her of a tunnel, and that's where the tunnel-fingers come. I cut a hole in the last green section to represent the surprise bar of rests. I can hold it up and poke my finger through the hole when she reaches the rests in the piece and it makes her giggle every time.

We put the sections in order on the floor, talking about what each one meant. Then I switched two around and challenged her to fix the mistake. Another game involved me holding up a random section's paper symbol and she would be challenged to play the first two notes of that section. At first when she played the piece in toto, I would stop her at the end of section and hold up the cue for the next, reminding her what it stood for and what to think about. Soon she was able to put the sections in order by herself without help, and to play through the piece referring to them visually as she went, without pauses. And slowly she developed a mental image of the sections in order, and could play the piece without actually using the physical objects as a guide.

At her lesson this week we shared our system, and her grandma/teacher decided that we needed something to denote the "coda" on the end of the last section. "It needs a tail," she said. I was, of course, knitting at the time, and Fiona and I knew right away that taping a piece of yarn onto the last piece would do the trick. So our Gavotte from Mignon is now complete with its tail.

With beginners I often use full sheets of paper for this exercise and treat them as stepping stones. The child plays the section denoted by each 'stone' while standing on it, and then pauses and moves to the next stone to play the next section. The pause required for the step gives the parent or teacher the chance to slip in a verbal reminder or a sung cue.

Fiona has finished putting together Lully Gavotte now. She learned this piece much faster, not surprisingly, as it's more straightforward, and is having much less difficulty sorting out the musical form. But I suspect that when we get to Martini Gavotte we will be back to using visual aids. I believe Noah had animal cards for Martini. Erin had an entire necklace of custom-made FIMO beads for all the bits and pieces and repeats for the Gavottes in D that begin book 5. I once did an entire group class focusing on musical form, using Duplo (the giant Lego stuff) to represent sections. Representing musical form in visual symbols, especially when the child's own input guides the process, is fun and very helpful.

Get out of my life

For years I've been claiming that we're not doing adolescence in my family. (Okay, stop snickering.) Now that Erin's almost 14, I'm taking a moment to look at how things are going.

Are we doing adolescence yet? Well, not in the traditional way.

Some things have changed. She showers regularly. That's quite a shift from four years ago when it seemed the only time her body saw water was when we drove to Nelson and used the swimming pool. (And we made a point of going often for that reason!) She does her hair, wears some simple jewelry. She has some nice clothes that make her look like a teen and she wears them comfortably and looks beautiful. She has an iPod loaded with pop music. (As well as Beethoven Symphonies.)

Erin has always had a high need for private time, and she's been given that in spades over the past year or two. And yet she still wants to carve out even more for herself. She wants me "out of her life" in a particular way. What it boils down to is this:

I cannot join "her" choir. It's the community choir, an amazing talented group of adults singing complex four-part choral arrangements, groomed to a high degree of musical polish. I'd love to sing, but she would never let me. It's her thing. They're her friends (one teen, the rest being mostly over 50). She sings her heart out. She giggles with her fellow first sopranos. She loves rehearsals. She enthusiastically memorizes all the music before anyone else. She has been assigned a solo and apparently sings it beautifully -- so they all tell me. But I cannot join her choir. I cannot even arrive early to pick her up, lest I hear some of her rehearsal or see her singing and enjoying herself. In fact, it's much better if I let her get a ride home with Kay or Pat or Kathy and don't pick her up at all. And while I can come to the performance, I must leave during the song that she sings solo in.

The Christmas concert is tomorrow night. I will dutifully absent myself during her solo, just as I did during her solo in Adult Choir at the summer school. I would love to hear her sing. But if this is the sum total of her "get out of my life" rebellion, carving out this lovely social and musical role for herself in a wonderful strong choir of adults in our community, I shall live with the disappointment.

Quoth the homeschoolers

Sometimes I wonder about the socialization my kids are getting. Not that they're not picking up decent social skills, or that they don't get to hang out with other kids, or that they aren't happy. But sometimes I hear things that make me wonder ... they just don't seem like kids their age.

Case in point #1. A 9-year-old girl is unwinding after community orchestra, playing a computer game with her brother. She warns him against something that's likely to cost their character a life. You'd think she'd say "look out, we'll die!" but what comes out of her mouth is

"Beware! We shall perish!"

Stranger still, the warning is not spoken but sung, starting on middle C, with "perish" jumping up the octave to C-above.

Case in point #2. An 11-year-old boy comes into the house from a viola lesson. The minivan was chilly, there's snow blowing between the carport and the house, and on the way through the mudroom he grabs a chilly grapefruit for a snack. You might expect him to be a bit cold, and maybe to say something like "man, I'm cold!" But no, instead he announces, with a dramatic flourish:

"Oh, what coldness life possesses!"

Winter rehearsal

This rehearsal was from a couple of weeks before our performance, not entirely polished, to be sure, and heavily edited in the interest of bandwidth, but it gives you a taste. In the "Largo", the camera pans from Noah to me to my mom Daphne on to Erin and then to J., Erin's close friend and fellow unschooler, who plays this solo. When the Allegro starts, we gain Sophie and two other violinists in the ranks, and Erin takes over solo duties.

Tinkering with code

About a year and a half ago Noah began expressing a persistent desire to learn computer programming. I'd taken some Basic and TurboPascal courses in the past, and done a fair bit of programming back in the 1980's. What Noah wanted to do (make games and in the process come to understand the logic of computer code) was so far removed from the sorts of course-like approaches to line-by-line coding that I had experience with that I didn't quite know where to start.

I found Logo for Microsoft Windows and a free e-book for kids to go along with it. That didn't turn his crank. The book was too cutesy and slow-paced, and the limitations of the programming language were way below what he wanted to be able to do. Next we looked at a number of more robust programming languages. We downloaded demos of things like DarkBasic, which would allow him to build games from scratch using code. The problem here was that the tutorials required going through laborious course-like steps to learn the commands and syntax. This was not, it seems, how he wanted to learn. He didn't want to spend an afternoon reading tutorials so that he could learn how to code a purple square and make it rotate 270 degrees clockwise on the screen. We then looked at a number of game-programming environments. Things like Stagecast Creator or GameMaker, which allow users to create games using a drag-and-drop interface, without the necessity of learning a programming language. A couple of these looked pretty promising, and Noah spent some time tinkering around, trying to decide whether he liked them enough to buy the full version. Apparently he didn't ... most of his interest ran out before the demos did. He reverted to game play on the computer.

There were so many demos and trial versions of so many programs I honestly can't remember most of the names. To him the ones that used drag and drop modules felt like cheating -- they weren't real code, even if they were fun for a while. But the computer languages were too far removed from game play to be motivating for him. He wasn't ready to start at ground level and work his way incrementally up through systematically learning syntax and recursion procedures. I couldn't really find the right approach for him. I had sort of resigned myself to the fact that he needed to be older, to have the self-discipline to take on a course-like approach to learning a language over weeks or months, and then maybe he'd be able to start to get at what he wanted.

The funny thing is that he found his own path a month or two later. He got intrigued with a couple of computer games that had "development modules", in essence places where he could take apart bits of a fully developed computer game and tweak them to modify things. Gradually he learned enough by deconstructing and reconstructing that he could build his own modules. The first such program was very simple, Owen Piette's WXSand. He build up a huge system of alternate elements that he could create unusual scenarios with. Among the next was Clonk Endeavour (much more complex, and this sent him off to do some graphics work in PaintShopPro). And then on to things like Lugaru, RigidChips, HTML and installing his own Linux-based web message board system.

Oddly enough, this deconstructive tinkering is exactly how, 13 years ago, I taught myself HTML. I used the View>>Source option on my web-brower's menu to figure out how other people had built web features that I wanted to know how to construct and I copied & pasted and modified and guessed and tweaked. I guess Noah takes after me in the 'tinkering' department.

Korknisse

Today Sophie learned to purl. She took up knitting a couple of years ago but only just got around to doing anything other than endless garter stitch scarves. I showed her the stitch and she tried out a little sampler of garter stitch, stocking stitch, 2x2 rib and 1x1 rib. And then I showed her some pictures of korknisse and she was entranced. After quickly doing one myself in the round and very quickly deciding that the big needles /small number of stitches combination would be deadly for a beginning knitter, I wrote the pattern out in a schematic for her, to be knitted flat on two needles. She was able to follow the pattern, her first ever, easily. In case you have a neophyte knitter yourself who can cast on, cast off, knit, purl and knit 2 together, I've uploaded a pdf copy of the pattern here:

Korknisse schematic pattern

I expect a few more of these cute little fellows will grace our tree by Christmas.

Christmas music listening

My kids turn the Christmas music on on December 1st every year. It seems we are at home a lot, even with all the rehearsals and concerts and the usual activities, because I feel like I'm listening to our Christmas CDs 36 hours a day. We're actually not much in the way of music listeners. We're not too fussy about background music, at least I'm not. I dislike 'clutter' in my auditory sphere, and enjoy silence, rather than layer upon layer of background sounds. When I put music on, I want to listen to it, I don't want it to be wallpaper for the rest of my life. My children seem to falling into step with my inclinations on the issue.

Except once it's December. Then the music is on constantly. Over and over. It begins to drive me a little batty, but I guess the holidays wouldn't be the holidays without this. For the past couple of years I've been buying new albums in self-defence, just to provide more variety. Our collection is heavily choral, and overwhelmingly classical, even though I try to nudge the kids in broader directions. (This year I've won Noah over on some of the Celtic stuff.) Here's what's on the roster:

The John Rutter Christmas Album
The Mystery of Christmas by the Elora Festival Singers
A Celtic Celebration by the Night Heron Consort
A Renaissance Christmas Celebration with the Waverly Consort
On Christmas Night by the Guelph Chamber Choir*
See Amid the Winter's Snow by the Menno Singers
O Come All Ye Faithful by the King's College Choir
A Classical Kids Christmas by Classical Kids
The Messiah by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists

That's about 12 hours of music. I really think we listen to just about everything every day. In the past two years Erin has become a strong member of our very good community choir. She loves part-singing, memorizes her music at the drop of a hat and has a strong voice that blends well with the soprano section. I wonder if all those years of obsessively-listened-to Christmas choral music is what created this place in her heart for choral singing.

* This one is our all-time favourite, and it honestly has nothing to do with the fact that my dad sang on this CD. It's just a great collection, great arrangements of slightly eclectic Christmas carols beautifully sung.

Structured formal instruction

The other day I got thinking again about some ideas I'd picked up reading the Gordon Institute for Musical Learning website. Gordon talks about different types of instruction and how they're appropriate for children at different ages. I think the distinctions he makes get at something very fundamental. Here's how I interpret his ideas.

First comes the stage of readiness for informal unstructured learning. The adult presents things (or "creates a rich environment") in an unstructured fashion and expects no particular response from the child. This is the closest to unschooling, and it is all that most children are ready for prior to the age of 3 or 4, regardless of their IQ or academic level or whatever. You might liken this to a fallow field that is scattered with wildflower seed and then carefully watered and protected from wind. Amazing things may very well grow, but it's pretty serendipitous.

Next comes the stage of readiness for informal structured learning. Here the adult presents things in a structured fashion -- sequentially or in a way that is contrived to hopefully produce certain types of learning. But again, no particular response is expected from the child. Some examples of this type of learning might be offering to play math games, presenting opportunities for playful literacy learning, or demonstrating for a child as he tries to learn to tie his shoes. Some children will be ready for this type of learning by age 3 or 4, others not until 5 or 6. You might liken this to a fallow plot in a garden into which the adult has planted specific varieties of flowers in carefully designed rows or beds. The important thing is that no particular response is expected from the child. All you can do is create opportunities. At most you give guidance -- a metaphorical gentle touch at the elbow. Whether the child learns or performs or participates is entirely up to him and as the adult you need to be okay with that. I think that the beauty of the Suzuki method of music education, when properly applied, is that it capitalizes on this stage of readiness.

The final stage is that of readiness for structured formal learning. Children will be ready for this between ages 8 and 12. Learning is presented in a structured fashion and particular responses are expected from the child. One might liken this to a commercial market garden, where specific crops are planted, with thinning and pruning and fertilizing taking place in order to maximize yield.

Now, Gordon believes structured formal instruction ought to start at age five. I think that's far too young for most kids, especially boys. But even more fundamentally I disagree with Gorden in the "should." He believes that chronological / developmental readiness for a particular instructional approach obligates its use. I believe that autonomous motivation is also required. The child should be requesting (whether with words or actions) a shift into formal learning before that shift should take place.

The difference between informal and formal structured learning is chiefly in the expectations of the instructor. The instruction is given in a structured format in either case, but in the latter case certain responses are expected. It's all in the adult's attitude and expectations!

We're back in a phase of fairly enthusiastic math bookwork in our family (that's Erin in the photo above enthusiastically doing extra algebra). Sometimes I sit back and think "How can this be? How can I have children who are perfectionistic, private, highly autonomous learners with strong aversions to anything that smells of school-like expectations, and yet who actually like sitting down with their mom to do math bookwork?" I wonder if the secret is that I am not really attached to outcome. What we do at the kitchen table looks a lot like what school-at-homers do, but my quirky, anti-schoolwork, oppositional kids actually enjoy math bookwork because I don't expect it of them. If they decided not to do any (as most of them have, for long periods lasting up to two or three years at a stretch) they know that's okay.

Music instruction has been structured in our family from a young age, but I think that in some sense there's a suspension of specific expectations there as well. I believe they have the ability to do very well, and that ultimately, if they want, they'll be very fine musicians. But I don't expect mastery of anything in particular on any particular timetable. I only expect that if they want lessons, they will make a reasonable effort to use the teaching they've been given at their previous lessons, because to me that's a matter of respect. But specific mastery, specific types of practicing, specific amounts of work, no, I provide guidance but if they aren't interested in following it, that's okay.

Family bed fall

She joins her mom and dad about half the time in the middle of the night. She's warm and cuddly, so who can resist? But maybe there just isn't enough room for her any more. I swear I didn't push her out. She was there and then she rolled over and suddenly - kathunk - she was on the floor. She cried a bit, hopped back in bed and that was that, or so we thought.

But by this morning she'd developed quite a shiner. She clearly clipped the bedside table on the way down. Poor mite. But she doesn't remember any of it! A good thing, I guess.

Into the pantry

Here's our portion of the 104 cases we hauled, sorted, weighed, packaged, labelled and organized. Four full cases and a lot of 5-pound bags.

I had a crew of six homeschoolers working with me and Baby Scale (Mr. Scale was deemed too fussy, so we opted for his sleek digital offspring). We were amazing if I do say so. It took about 5 hours for us to get all the sorting & packing done. We only made a few small mistakes, recognized quickly and corrected, and overall the 'flow' of the operation was excellent -- the best of any year yet. Normally there are at least 5 adults involved in this operation, but this year, though the order was bigger than ever, we managed fine with a crew of kids.

I must say, though, that I am getting really tired of carrying these same hundred 25-pound cases over and over again -- first from the skid into the truck, then from the truck to the carport, then from the carport to the living room, then around the living room and kitchen as they were sorted and labelled, then out to the shop to await pickup, then into the various vehicles that arrive to pick stuff up. That's over a ton of fruit and nuts carried six different times.

Candied fruit peel

Here's what we're doing with the peels from some of the citrus fruit we bought in bulk. This is a recipe I first used as a child myself. It's a double recipe to start with and we doubled it again this year. It's a very simple recipe. The results are delicious, though with a characteristic slight bitter bite of an aftertaste that leaves you reaching for another delicious sweet piece of peel to quell it.

Candied Fruit Peel

Ingredients:
Peels from 8 oranges and 8 grapefruit, quartered
water to cover
4 cups of sugar
yet more sugar

Equipment:
a large heavy-bottomed non-reactive saucepan
candy thermometer

Place the peels in the saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer 30-45 minutes, until tender. Pour off water, reserving 4 cups of it. With a spoon, remove the soft inner white part of the rind. You don't have to be obsessive about this, though you'll find less bitterness in the final product the more of the white stuff you get off. Honestly, though, the stuff is darned yummy no matter what you do.

Slice the peel into strips. Set aside.

Place the 4 cups of sugar and 4 cups of reserved cooking water in the saucepan. Heat on medium until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to boil and boil on moderately high heat for about 45 minutes (though this is hugely variable depending on stoves, saucepans and elevation) until a candy thermometer indicates that you've reached the soft ball stage (238 F or 115 C). Add the peel and simmer for 15-30 minutes, until as much of the syrup as possible has been absorbed and the peel has a semi-translucent appearance. Drain in a colander. Then while still warm, toss, a few strips at a time, in a container of a cup or so of additional sugar.

Because we made such a big batch, we had a fair bit of syrup left over and couldn't bear to waste it, so we brought it up to the hard-crack stage and poured it on a cookie sheet, making the largest hard candy we'd ever seen just for fun. We sometimes make little bits of colourful hard candy to use as the windows for gingerbread houses, but I can't image the gingerbread house that would require a window this big!

Fruit and nuts

You may be familiar with the base level of mess that my house suffers from. Imagine the usual mess compounded by a weekend of rehearsals and performances, meals on the run, and then two days of full-on Christmas baking. Got the picture?

Now, on top of that add 75 bulk boxes of dried fruit, seeds and nuts. Here's Fiona in the midst of the portion that is now in the living room. The remaining two thirds of the order is in the kitchen-dining area. The $10,000 order arrived today, finally, almost two weeks later than we expected, thanks to a series of unfortunate events. But it's here, and the order seems to be complete, and we're thrilled.

It's not all ours, not by any stretch. It's a fund-raiser for the regional Suzuki Assocation. We pre-sell a selection of products in 2- and 5-pound bags, and we order from Rancho Vignola in caselots. Then we pack and weigh the smaller amounts for distribution. That's a job for tomorrow and Thursday. We'll be using "Mr. Scale," an ancient but bombproof hardware store scale (once used for weighing out five-penny nails, I think). Because this year's order is so big, we thought it would be helpful to have another scale. So we borrowed "Baby Scale" from the medical clinic. Baby Scale is meant for weighing babies, but we also think it might be Mr. Scale's baby.

We also pre-sell a lot of whole cases, on which the markup is much smaller, since there's no packing and weighing involved. In this respect we almost operate like a buying club. Several of the return customers have orders over $500. I confess we count our own family amongst this group.

This year our family order consisted of hickory smoked almonds, pistachios, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, dried cranberries, chocolate covered almonds, shredded coconut, walnuts, cashews (all in 5 or 10-pound amounts) and caselots of almonds, lemon pineapple fruit logs and pecans. Last week we took delivery of 80 pounds of fresh citrus fruit, and a week or two before that we got over 100 pounds of grains and beans. Our pantry overfloweth!

I love buying in bulk. It means we never have to worry about having staples around. It means
we can get wholesale pricing, which means fresh delicious organic food that is often cheaper than its grocery store counterpart. And the packaging ... I just love getting 25 pounds of almonds in nothing more than a single cardboard box sealed with two metal staples and a single strip of packing tape.

Winter performance

Gosh, I hope this happens every year. Our community held a dramatic reading of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" on Saturday. Local actors and literati (both defined in typically broad, earthy Slocan way) read the various stages. Some of the readings were truly excellent.

The performance was a fund-raiser for a decrepit community hall that is gradually being renovated and is now somewhat functional. The local Suzuki string ensemble was asked to contribute a little music to open the program. We chose to do an arrangement of two movements of "Winter" from Vivaldi's "The Seasons." We arranged it for soloist, 1st, 2nd & 3rd violin sections, and viola sections, not having any celli or bass players amongst us. The two senior violinists, Erin and her also-unschooled friend J., played the solos for the two movements. In the above photo they're coming forward for a bow. Left to right: Erin, her grandmother, D., Sophie, J., W., Noah and myself. Noah and Sophie are naturally mostly hidden behind their music stands, being the most vertically-challenged of the group.

There was a wild and wooly devolution into a few strange harmonies just before the recapitulation of the Allegro movement due to the 3rd violins skipping a few repeated quarter notes, but I was proud at how everyone, especially my own kids, responded and recovered the required togetherness with total professionalism. We finished with a four-part chorale arrangement of "Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming."

I have a video of a rehearsal which, if I can download the right software, I'll be able to capture, edit, compress and post here.

"A Christmas Carol" was very much enjoyed by my kids. Oddly, though they've seen the Alistair Sim movie version several times, I've never read the story aloud to my kids. They all suggested that it would be nice if the community reading was an annual thing. Here's hoping!

Coloursmiths

You just can't call a kid dressed in a combination of orange, turquoise, gold, green, purple, two shades of pink and navy blue a "blacksmith," now can you? Nor her candy-apple-red sister, for that matter.

It was the kids' day to make twisted-S-hooks in the smithy today. They got to hammer on the anvil, watch the forge heat and re-heat the steel to red-hot, and even do some of the twisting on the vise. My kids are superkids. They can bend steel!