FSA Day 2 - writing to task

Today was the writing portion of the test. None of these girls have ever had to "write to task." For the 9-year-old girls it went fine. Both have excellent writing skills and the two writing topics given were ones that 'worked' for them. The first was about an environmental topic of their choice, something they're both passionate about and experienced with, and the second was an open-ended fantasy story-starter that they enjoyed.

The poor 12-year-old, though, was given an essay topic that went something like this:
"Grade 7 is a time of changes and new responsibilities -- lockers, class schedules, more homework and longer assignments. What advice would you give to a Grade 6 student about having a successful grade 7 experience?"

This 12-year-old girl in particular is not terribly imaginative, and struggles a bit with written expression. The topic above totally shut her down. She was so angry. "How can I write about that? It's horrid!" Knowing that the tests are being marked by teachers affiliated with the SelfDesign program, we re-framed it a little for her. "Write advice to your littlest sister on creating a meaningful year of learning for herself when she's 12." That helped a bit, but she was already angry and started that session in a pretty rotten frame of mind. She was a good sport and did it anyway. But talk about cultural bias!

I'm glad there are only three sessions. I think the kids will get through to the end of tomorrow's work without appreciable resistance. Another day would be a hard sell. They are free to refuse to do the test, and they know that. As homeschooling parents with children in a Distributed Learning program we cannot refuse on their behalfs, though we can ask that they be exempted if we have reasonable grounds to believe that the testing will be particularly traumatic for them. In the case of these kids, anxiety and trauma seemed unlikely, and none has chosen to refuse to do the testing.

Literacy down, numeracy awaits tomorrow.

FSA Day 1 -- reading comprehension

FSA is Foundation Skills Assessment, a set of standardized tests all students in our province in Grades 4 and 7 are required to write. By virtue of being enrolled in the Wondertree Self-Design homeschool program, rather than simply registered as a homeschooler, Sophie is considered a Grade 4 student. We get some perks from the SelfDesign program, and in weighing the pros and cons of keeping her enrolled there this year we looked at the standardized testing issue. She's a pretty easy-going kid who has no overwhelming anxieties about reading, writing or math. She's got excellent academic skills. I figured it wouldn't cause her any appreciable stress to write these tests. Yes, I'm philosophically opposed to standardized testing, but I'm philosophically supportive of what the Wondertree SelfDesign program is doing -- creating a community of support and some financial help through the government to offset educational expenses for unschoolers. This radical program walks a fine line with the government; what they're doing is pushing boundaries, questioning assumptions, and yet playing the game to the extent that the government will work with them and provide the funding. And part of 'playing the game' means creating the expectation that their 9- and 12-year-old learners will write these FSA exams.

It could be worse. The results do not go on the student's record, only on the school's. The tests are relatively brief and relatively basic... reading, writing and math, an hour and a half a day for three days. For our learners, they are administered at home, supervised by family friends or even (if necessary) by parents. Almost half the testing is computer-based. The writing portions can be done by hand or on the computer.

And so we agreed to do this in order to support the SelfDesign program in its relationship with the governmental Ministry of Education. We've kept it very low-key. I didn't go through any test prep at all with Sophie. She didn't do any practice tests, all we did was briefly talk about the format and intent of the tests to demystify the process.

Today we did the reading comprehension portion of the FSA testing with Sophie and two other girls, unschooling friends enrolled in the same program. Overall it went fine. I think it really helped that they were all in it together. They felt like they were all doing this slightly weird experiment with what school is like. We made it into a somewhat special occasion by allowing for some social time and some junky snack food. On Friday when they're all done we'll invite the rest of the siblings and have a movie and popcorn party.

This is the first time Sophie has ever written a test. She thought it was sorta stupid but mostly painless. She disliked the written tidbit but gritted her teeth and did it in good spirits. We are all secretly dreading the writing portion which they'll do tomorrow. All three write reasonably well but intensely dislike "writing to task" like this. We shall see.

Happy Surprise Half-practising Day

We have an interesting dance in our family when it comes to music practicing. I do not require the kids to practice every day. I expect daily practice since I believe it is part of a respectful relationship with a teacher who is teaching with the expectation of regular work at home. My kids know that I would never make them practise, or punish them for not doing so. But they also know that if they weren't to practise, I'd sit down with them to try to figure out what we could change to make it work better for them. I'd treat not-practising as a problem to be solved collaboratively. And if we tried to solve it repeatedly and couldn't, I'd suggest that maybe they should at least take a break from lessons.

The bottom line is that they love taking lessons, and their musical instrument study is such a fundamental part of who they are and of many of the relationships they have with others that I don't think they'd ever want to give it up. They really need to practise not because I expect it, or because their teachers expect it, but because they expect it of themselves. They begin to feel awful about their lessons if they haven't done what they think they should have to prepare. And they don't like to feel awful about their lessons.

The net result of all this is that they like me to prod them into practising if they're having trouble getting started. They expect these prods and while they like to moan and complain a bit, their protests don't amount to more than some transition-resistance that they need to express verbally before buckling down to work.

Tonight came after a long day and a late supper and all four kids were putting off starting their practising. I could hear them chatting in the living room, enjoying each other's company while they all procrastinated. I imagined myself walking into the room and giving them the prod they expected. I knew they really didn't feel like practising, none of them. Even Fiona, riding high from yesterday's note-reading break-through, was feeling lousy with a head cold and suffering the effects of an unusually early start to the day. I knew that if I went in and prodded them they would all moan and complain and then practise, but that tonight their heart wasn't really going to be in it. They'd merely go through the motions. I thought about it for a while, listening to the four of them chatting together happily. There they were, all in the same boat together, procrastinating, waiting for me to show up and play the heavy.

I got up and went into the living room.

"Guess what day it is?" I asked.

"I dunno. What?" they replied.

"It's Surprise Half-Practising Day!" I announced. The idea had just popped into my head.

"Yay!" they all exclaimed, and ran off to practise half as long as usual.

Sometimes as a parent I manage to pull off something that strikes just the right balance. I lucked into one of those instances tonight.

Clickety click!

Last spring Fiona was very interested in musical note reading. We played a few music theory games and did a little work on pitch and rhythm reading. She enjoyed it but progress was slow. Some things she got easily (like rhythmic reading) but the pitch stuff was a bit of a struggle. As it has been with all my kids at first. The others started reading work later, and the pitch stuff only clicked with them around age 8. I had absolutely no expectations with Fiona. She was interested, so we did note-reading semi-regularly for a while, and then it sort of fell off the radar and neither of us missed it.

Last month, though, she mentioned wanting to get back to note-reading. She knows it's part of the path to joining the community orchestra, which she'd like to do when she's seven, if not before. And when her grandma mentioned at her lesson that it might be time to look at note-reading, as she's almost ready to start Suzuki Book 3, we decided that it was time to give it another whirl.

Within a couple of days her rhythmic reading skills had all come back. She was easily playing basic combinations of various note values in a variety of simple time signatures on open strings. Motored her way half way through the first "I Can Read Music" book in the space of less than a week. Pitch was another matter, though. She couldn't seem to get close enough to the music to see what she needed to make it work for her. Her studious concentration was almost painful to watch, but not terribly effective. She understood the concept, but hadn't formed the link between her excellent aural pitch skills and the rising and falling of the black blobs on the paper. She had to read and think through every note separately. It was hard work. Within a few days she was on Lesson 26 for rhythm, but stuck on Lesson 3 for pitch. Still, she was cheerful in her hard work, and not unduly frustrated. She could memorize the exercises with repeated use and give herself the illusion of mastery, and that was enough to keep her plugging away.

But between last night and tonight, something clicked. When I put up the same example tonight, she played through it easily. I figured she'd just memorized it. We moved to a fresh exercise in Lesson 4. Same result. Then Lesson 5. Finally I stopped her after two perfectly executed exercises from Lesson 6. It's good to stop when you're riding high on your success and wanting more.

Now, we're still talking very very basic note-reading. Four different pitches on the A-string, with no rhythm attached, just straight quarter-notes, up and down with occasional skips of a third or a fourth. But something significant has clicked now. That intuitive connection between the up and down march of the blobs on the page and the sounds they're associated with has formed. She can sight-sing, and sight-play those simplest exercises with no help and with total accuracy. And that's something she was nowhere near (or so it seemed) being able to do twenty-four hours ago. How amazing it is to be such an immediate witness to cognitive shifts like this. Learning is a fascinating thing.

Push-me pull-you

For a long time I've been muttering to Noah that I thought he'd be a great candidate for a martial arts program. He has such physical intuitiveness, such an amazing sense of his own body, yet doesn't enjoy team or competitive sports. He's also easily intimidated by the physical energy of fellow human beings when he doesn't trust their impulse control and social skills. He's not physically fearful in the least (as witnessed by his tree-climbing, rope-wrangling adventurousness) but he's easily intimidated by the physical assertiveness of other people. Children especially. So sports have been a hard sell with him. While we try to stay active through unstructured pursuits, there are long stretches of the spring and fall where the kind of exercise that lends a healthy balance to our lives is hard to come by.

Noah does have a bit of an interest in things Japanese, and in martial arts, by way of his contact with computer-gaming. And he would benefit from a physical outlet -- especially something scheduled into his week -- since the computer tends to suck all his time and energy otherwise.

So I dropped a few teasers over the months and years. "You'd be great at martial arts, Noah. We should try to find you something." These were wistful teasers. It seemed unlikely there would be a suitable program anywhere near us. I knew there was an amazing aikido dojo in Nelson, but Noah hates travelling to Nelson no matter the reason. That was out, for sure.

But imagine my surprise to hear a couple of years ago that there was an offshoot of the Nelson dojo being built outside a little village of 700 half an hour south of us. I filed that little tidbit away for future reference.

A couple of months ago I watched Noah having fun with Sophie on the far side of midnight one night playing an invented bizarre combat art he termed Yoga Boxing, leaping around on one leg in the "Tree" yoga position attacking Sophie and having an absolute hoot. His balance, strength and precision were amazing. I thought to myself this kid has to get involved in a martial art. I decided to start investigating that new aikido dojo.

I was sold, but with Noah it was quite a different matter. He hates trying new things; expectations he doesn't fully understand make him anxious, as does the possibility that he won't excel at something the first time out. Normally when I nudge Noah into something, I have to do it in a way that is calculated to help him over the hump of his initial resistance. I thought that he and I were getting much better at reading and understanding each other's signals. But my goodness, I've been totally confused this time around.

A few weeks ago I got in touch with the people at the nearby dojo and found out that they were running youth classes. I was told we were welcome to drop in to observe. I planted a seed with Noah (and Sophie who is also in the age-group for the youth classes). I told them we'd go and check it out sometime. Noah's response was somewhat resistant, but I knew that was coming from his anxiety over trying new things. There was a glimmer of interest too. The mixed signals were starting.

I'm used to his ambivalent signals, though, so I let things go until after the Calgary trip and then told him one morning that we'd be going to check it out in three days' time. No argument, but no enthusiasm. Just the mute signs of anxiety over something new. Then, that morning, I reminded him that this was the day, and that there were no expectations, we'd just go and watch. When it was time to leave, I gave him his marching orders. "Time to go. Come on. We're going to check it out. You don't have to do anything, but you do have to come."

He came along uncomplainingly, though it was clear he wasn't exactly joyfully looking forward to it. Silent dread might have been one way of describing it. But dread and curious excitement at the same time. On the way down we chatted about what it might be like, and it was apparent he knew a fair bit about martial arts -- certainly more than I did, though I shared what I'd learned about aikido by my reading and research. I also explained that I was pushing him into checking things out because I recognized that he often enjoyed things after he'd got over the hump of his initial resistance -- and that as his mom I wasn't always sure when I should push and when I should back off, but I'd decided a small push was likely worthwhile with this activity. We went, we found the place, we felt a bit awkward introducing ourselves, but were able to watch in a low-key way. When the class was over, Noah told the sensei that he thought he might like to join, and he asked to stay to watch a bit of the adult class that followed. When we left the dojo half an hour later he told me "yeah, I think I might go for it." He mentioned finding the behaviour of one or two of the boys a little intimidating, but thought he still might like to join the class. That sounded pretty positive. I felt vindicated in my pushing. We'd both loved the facility and found the sensei very likeable and competent. We came home with a good feeling about it.

However a day later he I asked him how he felt about it and he said he didn't think he'd join. Over the next two days he became even more negative and resistant. Now what? He'd been initially interested, though anxious, yet when I'd got him there he'd decided he'd liked it. But now he'd flip-flopped and was pulling against my pushing.

As the next class loomed, I spent a lot of time and energy reflecting on what to do. In the depths of last night I decided to push him to come to class today and once again see how he felt when it was over. It seemed like anticipatory anxiety was the problem and once he'd worked through it things were good. I figured that he'd need a smaller push the second time and so I decided I was willing to push.

But when it came time to go today, he notched his resistance up an order of magnitude. I felt awful, but I played the parental authority figure. "I think this is good for you, and I don't care what you're saying right now -- you seem to have yes feelings and no feelings all at the same time, and I'm telling you we're going to watch another class to give you a chance to sort those feelings out." It was a pretty dramatic scene; he definitely didn't want to go. He finally got into the van, overflowing with tears and protests. I felt terrible. It was a very silent minivan that headed south towards the dojo.

About half way there he let out a big sigh and then started to join in on conversation with Sophie, Fiona and me. He'd resigned himself to going, finally. When we got there the place felt familiar to us and he was welcomed with a cheerful "Hey, Noah!" by the sensei. We settled in to watch. And as I watched him observe the class it became apparent that he was enjoying himself. Wonder of wonders.

This time when we left, I asked him if he felt any better about things, if his feelings about aikido had changed from before the class. He nodded, smiled, and said "I think I'll come next time and when he asks if I'll join in for tag I will, and the next time after that I'll probably really join."

Sheesh. I hope the sense of vindication I now feel is more than temporary this time. We as good as shook on it today -- we'll go and watch next Thursday's class, and then he'll probably join. Agreed.

Did I do the right thing? I don't know. Noah has a habit of teetering on the brink of decisions that somewhere deep inside himself he really wants to make, working himself up to such a state of anxiety and resistance and eventually paralysis that he's less and less able to take the plunge. An early push reduces the duration of his anxiety and prevents him sliding into a state of paralysis. After being told in no uncertain terms that he must take the leap, he usually feels good about himself. It's just getting him over the hump at the start that's so tough. And really, it's been years since he's tried anything new; I suppose my patience at letting him find his own readiness was wearing thin. I've seen patience become counter-productive (and pushes result in big payoff!) with Noah before. I've never ever pushed as hard as I did today, though. It felt awful even though my instincts were telling me it was the right thing to do.

Breakfast guest

We see deer almost every day where we live, but they're getting hungrier as the winter wears on, and bolder. Even rhododendron leaves are worth eating when you're this hungry, and so this morning two deer were munching away within a metre or two of our kitchen/dining area windows. They were particularly bold today and didn't seem to mind me roasting coffee, clanking about putting dishes away, chopping apples or taking their picture.

One curious fellow moved around to the side window and looked straight inside at me for some time, curious what I was doing with the black thing I held up to my face. Since we live in the woods, well away from town and neighbours, these are wild animals, not habitutated to human presence. But they seem to have got used to our house, and the moving objects within it, and are not only not afraid, but are mildly interested. Perhaps they wanted to be part of breakfast club, apple crumble being more palatable than astringent rhodo leaves. Later today I'll take the apple cores to the compost pile in the corner of the property and they'll enjoy them greatly.

Last week Erin and I spotted a bobcat. Now that was a rare sighting. Deer are a dime a dozen for us, but I always enjoy their quiet gentle faces outside my kitchen windows.

The Breakfast Club

One of the things we've been talking about lately is being a little more intentional in making use of our time at home. We all have good if vague intentions, though they often don't amount to much, and sometimes at the end of the day or the end of the week we end up with guilt or regrets about what we didn't get around to. This has been a chronic, serious problem for all of us.

During one of our informal family meetings at a local café, the kids and I talked about a shockingly novel experiment. The idea was that I would prepare a nutritious breakfast for the family, and they'd get out of bed at the appointed time and come to the table where we actually sit down together and eat it. And furthermore we'd take the opportunity to plan out our day, if we wanted, discussing any fixed activities, deciding on optional out-of-home plans, and putting in dibs on parental time and energy.

So we've been trying it. They're calling it Breakfast Club, a harkening back to the days when they were younger and had Clubs for everything. We've only been at it a few days and so far we've managed to complete an elusive haircut, make adjustments to story time, get to the gym, check out an Aikido class, and fit in more math than we've managed for a long time. And I think we're eating better too!

Sisterly practicing

Monday was nutty. The usual trip to Nelson for piano lesson, the grocery shopping, the grocery-unpacking, a quick meal, a trip to my mom's to look at digital proofs for the SVI 2008 brochure, then home for math-time with Noah, editing some desktop publishing, cooking dinner, making up and cutting appointment cards for my evening clinic, eating dinner and dashing off over snowy mountain roads to my evening adolescent sexual health clinic in a neighbouring community.

I did not manage to do my parently duty and help my 5-year-old practice her violin. I ran out the door calling "try to do some violin review without me, okay?" I got home at 10 pm, just in time for some math with the girls and reading aloud. It wasn't until the next day that I asked Fiona whether she'd managed to do any practising.

"Yes!" she told me with enthusiasm. "Sophie and me, we did it together!" And then she took me to the white board. (Where would my family be without our white boards?) "This is our list," she explained. Apparently Sophie had helped her practice, taking a lot of initiative, totally of her own volition, and very much welcomed in this role by Fiona. They had lit five tealight candles to set a special mood for their collaborative practice session. They had created a list of things to be practiced (I was extra-proud of the fact that "tone-warmup" topped the list). And then they had taken turns at various practising tasks, and finished up by playing different sight-reading exercises simultaneously, with hilarious results, according to Fiona.

Still patterning after all these years

It was many years ago that I stumbled on a good deal for a mega-bucket of wooden pattern blocks. It was, I believe, from a The Shopping Channel catalogue. I remember this only because TSC is about the furthest thing from my normal sphere of awareness, but someone had discarded a printed catalogue at the post office and there, amidst the zirconium necklaces and thigh-masters, was this amazing wooden pattern block set. Erin would have been maybe four.

Here we are ten years later. Those pattern blocks are still played with. Not every day all the time. Sometimes weeks and months go by when they're not touched. But then inevitably out they come again and are obsessed over for a couple of weeks at a stretch. They've been 3-dimensional building blocks, relief maps, snowflakes, Escher-type tesselations and figure-ground optical illusions, trains and trails and pictures, fractions and ratios. Paired up with two duct-tape-hinged unbreakable locker-mirrors, they've been reflected mandalas based on 60- and 120-degree angles. And sometimes they've been story-telling props. Lately they've been collaborative meditative diversions during read-aloud story-time.

Phone call from Ghana

Kitchen Club was celebrating the cuisine of Ghana on Wednesday. Due to our five-day internet outage, we had been unable to do our usual flurry of Google research for recipes. I have a couple of cookbooks that proved somewhat helpful in coming up with some examples of West African cuisine, but I really lucked out when I managed to find some plantains at the large grocery store in Nelson. We'd never tried them and this was the excuse we'd been looking for. We sliced them, deep-fried them at 350 F, and then garnished them with salt and tabasco. We managed to get them golden brown, crispy on the outside and still tender on the inside. They were delicious!

But the odd thing was that the other family we do Kitchen Club with got a phone call from Ghana that morning, just before they headed up to our place. It wasn't a total out-of-the-blue coincidence (we chose Ghana in part because their gift shop sells baskets imported from that country, and the fellow who does the importing was calling about business stuff), but it was still pretty neat. "What do you eat there?" D. asked him, doing some last-minute research. "A lot of starch and a lot of fat," he replied. "There are a lot of great reasons to visit Ghana, but food isn't usually one of them" he said with a sigh.

Ah well, we enjoyed our deep-fried plantains, peanut bread and ground-nut stew. And filled the rest of the afternoon with skating. Incongruously enough.

The face of rinky exhaustion

Hat-headed, sweaty, rosy-cheeked, exhausted to the point of giddy stupidity, with lips that are half-numb with cold resulting in dysarthric speech and a flaccid half-smile ... this is a boy who has had a thoroughly awesome day on the rink.

Next year's rink

Quick tally of the last couple of days. Wednesday: Two kids, 3 1/2 hours. Four kids, 2 hours. One kid, 1 hour. Thursday: four kids, 2 1/2 hours. That's 26 kid-hours of enjoyment in the past two days alone. Kind of puts my 12 to 15 hours of preparatory work in perspective.

Next year I will look back on these last few rink posts and I will remember why I do it.

But first I'll buy a new liner, one without holes all over the place. The last week and a half's skating has made it clear that the kids will get enough enjoyment, exercise and fresh air to justify the expense several times over.

Root cyclonic action

We've owned two mid-range vacuum cleaners over the past ten years or so. The motors on both died, leaving nasty guilt-provoking plastic skeletons behind to be disposed of. While I'm on a campaign to rid our house, at least the living area of it, of carpet, it's a slow campaign, and in the meantime there's no doubt that as a family we are extremely needful of a vacuum cleaner. Extremely needful indeed. And so when our Bissel died two days after Christmas, we started dreaming of purchasing a unit that would be the last vacuum cleaner we'd ever buy. One that would endure until we were hauled off to the nursing home. One that our children would quarrel over when dividing up their inheritance.

While I was off in Calgary, my mom came to my house and brought her vacuum cleaner. Do the math... it had been thirty long days of heavy-duty debris-generating living that had happened since the last time we vacuumed. I expect there was a good fifty pounds of stuff she sucked up. It was a mercy-cleaning, bless her.

But while in Calgary I had gulped, pulled out my credit card, and in one swift transaction, got us a Dyson. A lovely copper-coloured DC-14 with Root Cyclone Technology. I confess I was at first heartbroken to see the clean carpets that greeted me on my return. But then I came to my senses. This was a gift -- the clutter had all been picked up and put away to facilitate vacuuming, and now I could take the opportunity to engage in some smug Dyson-driven one-up-man-ship. I ran my new machine in a cursory way over the centre of the very floor my mom had painstakingly vacuumed the day before.

And look what it came up with. A good half pound of deep-down disgustingness. Now I get what annika fox was talking about ... the all-consuming thrill of subjecting accumulated disgustingness to patented cyclonic technology. In general I'm not much interested in cleanliness or home-making, but this ... there's an allure here, I confess.

Rinky kids

We are just so lucky to live in such a beautiful place. This is a shot of the rink from the up-hill side for a change, looking down towards what would be Slocan Lake if you could see it for the trees. From this side you can appreciate the way our yard really is nestled in the forest. Above the camera and out of view are the half dozen gigantic red cedars that grace the north side of the yard. The house is to the left, the garden off the frame to the right.

The rink survived in fine form while we were in Calgary. There's still that "high corner" (off beyond Noah's out-stretched arm) where the liner still isn't properly covered with ic yet, but that's a small area and the rest is terrific, and there's enough of it for four kids to skate at the same time without colliding with each other unnecessarily.

Here's the view from the kitchen. The rink is just a hop, skip and a jump from the house. We now have leftover strips of carpet across the concrete stoop and the kitchen floor, meaning that the kids can get their skates on and off in front of the wood stove and just walk to and from the rink in all their gear.

Not that the jackets and hats tend to stay on. Here you can see that Erin's just in a t-shirt, and Sophie has tossed her jacket aside as well.

This is universal, isn't it?

I did this as a kid. Erin did it copiously. Noah did it too. And this is the array Sophie and Fiona worked on together the other day, and then photographed. Taking one's vast pencil crayon collection and sorting it into different parts of the spectrum and then creating the "best" order for the different shades in each part of the spectrum, agonizing over where to include the silver, the white, the black, the shades of taupe and terra cotta, experimenting with the different start- and end-points that allow one to best integrate the odd-ball colours .... it is something all children do, isn't it? Tell me it's not just something weird that runs in my family.

An uneventful trip

Sweet! We got to Calgary and home again without a single white-knuckle moment, set-back, mistake or stress. There were no prolonged waits to meet up with someone who didn't show. There were no wallets left behind three hours back. There were no closures of the TransCanada highway due to accidents or avalanches. There was no rainstorm, no blizzard, no unexpected night-driving, no mad dash for the inland ferry, no terrifying descent down the pass with the road-lines all obscured, no fog. Nothing.

We made the drive east during daylight and rolled in to the cheapo motel we like an hour this side of Calgary, and it was (as usual) virtually empty so we got the best room again. The next morning we had a leisurely ramble into the city for Erin's first lesson. We did some shopping, easily found what we wanted, skated on the lagoon in beautiful warm sunny winter weather, checked into our hotel, swam, enjoyed a healthy meal in our kitchenette room, headed back for Erin's other lesson, and had a nice early night of it.

The drive west started after breakfast and proceeded smoothly all the way. We beat the impending snowstorm on the pass by an hour or so, and rolled into the carport at home at dusk.

We're finally getting the details down pat on this operation. I've already reserved "The Room" at the hotel for next month.

I got to listen!

We're in Calgary again. This time Erin had two big blocks of lessons, one with T., her "regular Calgary teacher" and one with T's husband, whom Erin knows quite well from music summer school and from our relatively frequent visits. J. is solely a violinist and knows the advanced violin repertoire better than T., who is a violist by profession. So after a 2-hour marathon lesson with T. in the morning focused on technique, the Kreisler Praeludium & Allegro and the Haydn C Major concerto 1st movement and its cadenza, we went off and spent the afternoon engaged in fun stuff and then returned in the early evening for another long lesson, this time with J., with a bit of time spent on the Bach E+ Partita Preludio and a good hour on the Bloch Nigun. Erin was willing to let me sit in on her lesson (and Fiona wanted to stay), so I sat and listened.

I should point out that Erin is pretty private about her practicing. She practices in the basement, which is in the frame-constructed bedroom-y part of the house, rather than the living-area log-wall part of the house, an area that is quite far removed from an acoustic standpoint from where I typically am. She does whatever is required to make sure that when she's playing I can barely hear her. The only time she practices in the living-area part of the house is on Tuesday afternoons when I leave, taking all the other kids to their lessons. So I rarely hear her play. I had never heard the Haydn of the Bloch, for instance.

Well tonight I heard the Bloch. It's the most technically challenging thing she's ever played. Zowee! She's doing really well! It's not too much of a stretch for her, challenge-wise, that is clear. And even more impressive was her responsiveness to suggestions during the lesson. She was playing it twice as well, and twice as Hebraically (Mozilla tells me that's not a word, but I'm using it anyway) at the end of that hour as she was at the start.

That's all I need ... a little snippet every once in a while ... so that I can see that she's thriving despite the less-than-ideal music study circumstances. It reminds me why I let her own the whole process, and uncomplainingly drive her 8 hours one way across the continental divide in the midst of a Canadian winter.

(Oh, if you're curious about the Bloch, here's a recording of Joshua Bell playing it.)

Mindful practicing

These days you'd never guess that I spent the better part of four years (from the point at which Erin began practising violin entirely independently) despairing that she would ever do more than hack sloppily through stuff. She was always very receptive and conscientious at her lessons, but once she left her teacher and came home, it would be back to the same mindless bashing through. It was a wonder that any progress ever happened. I think that 90% of her effective practising was actually occurring during her lessons. It was a good thing she's a quick learner!

Yesterday she changed her plans and didn't go back to the basement studio for the third hour of violin practising, and as a result left this practice plan on the whiteboard for me to discover when I arrived to teach a couple of students this morning. I have no idea what all of it means, but it's obviously carefully thought out and well-organized. She probably even used the metronome a few times. Wonders never cease.

We've had our struggles with violin since we began monthly trips to Calgary. At first she was incredibly highly motivated to work, and she blew her teacher away with the amount of progress she made from one month to the next. But by the November trip, the challenges of maintaining focus and motivation for those long weeks of no outside accountability, no external challenge, were starting to wear her down. And then came the busy holiday season, and there was a longer-than-hoped-for gap between lessons. And then with the lesson after New Year's, there didn't seem to be a re-ignition of passion. It began to look to me like she was mostly going through the motions. The spark was missing again.

We planned our next lesson trip for a mere three weeks later in an attempt to boost her motivation. But it didn't seem to be happening. There were more than a few missed days, and several where she presented the impression of diligent practicing, but there clearly wasn't much actual good stuff happening.

So I explained to her that she was trying to do something that I was nowhere near being able to do even by age 18 or 20 ... maintain self-motivation and drive without the structure of weekly lessons. I'm really in awe of what she has managed to do. She spends a lot of time on the violin, she keeps plugging away, even when she's struggling with notation she doesn't understand, technique that is new to her, difficult and confusing. She does this work without a peer group, without the sense of belonging to a studio of fellow students, without knowing any other teen who spends this kind of time and energy on music. And she keeps it going for weeks at a time, all on her own. Well, she more or less keeps it going.

So she is doing something quite amazing, and I told her that I know and fully appreciate this. But still, I said, how can I justify spending 10% of my life and several hundred dollars a trip getting her to a lesson if she hasn't squeezed every last bit of mileage out of the last one? It's a big expectation I have ... but given the family sacrifices this arrangement entails, I need to ask that of her. So I told her exactly how much heavy-duty practicing I felt she needed to cram into the five days before the next lesson to justify the trip. And darned if she didn't decide that the lesson was important enough to her that she just hunkered down and set uncomplainingly to work. With a big red plan on the whiteboard.

I really am very proud of her.

Another foliage hat

I made one a couple of weeks ago for Erin, and here is Fiona's. I did one fewer rows of leaves, and used slightly smaller needles to size it down for Fiona. I used a slightly heavier yarn, because that was what I had on hand. I'm lucky, I guess, since I didn't really know what I was doing and fits her just as nicely as Erin's full-sized one fits her. I think I'm addicted to this pattern. I can do a hat in a day or so and the lace is so gratifying as it magically takes shape.

This is five-year-old Fiona. She's seemed five for so long now, it's nice to have her chronological age catch up. She's such a sweet little girl. Sharp as a tack. Fun to be with, plucky, affectionate, chatty, funny, emotionally resilient and adaptable. What more could a parent ask for? What more could her siblings ask for? They love her and are so kind to her. And she repays their kindness with bubbly joy and adulation.

At her violin lesson today she was finally able to pick up and play the 1/10th-size violin that has been awaiting her for the better part of a year. She's not quite big enough, but she's moving up anyway. She was thrilled -- what a birthday present! My favourite part of her receiving the new violin was seeing her older brother watch her. He stood a metre or so away, watching her intently, excited by her excitement, and exuding pleasure at seeing her happiness.

Nocturnal rinky bliss

This is what it's all about. At 10 pm the kids are outside, whizzing around the rink in the dark, noses running, cheeks glowing, hair flying, voices shrieking and laughing. A backyard rink is indeed a magical thing.

It's Fiona's birthday, an auspicious day to inaugurate our night-skating tradition. Hot chocolate and story-time await.

Chuck has finished the rink rake. Tomorrow morning I'll try it out!