DL program thoughts

We had our mid-year meeting a couple of weeks ago at the local public school to discuss how the new Distributed Learning program they created for homeschoolers is working out. If you're new to the blog, or an occasional reader, and want some background on the creation of the DL program, you can read this post.

The local DL program hasn't fit us as smoothly and comfortably as a well-worn glove. The SelfDesign program was like that; we slipped right in and we felt at home. Their staff shares a common philosophy, very much aligned with ours. If we bristled at the Ministry of Education's expectations, the SelfDesign staff would bristle right alongside us. They seemed to have a lot of latitude in how they satisfied the Ministry requirements and administered the program. They were very skilled at figuring out ways to turn natural learning into the kind of documentation that would keep the government happy.

With our local DL program we've got good, open-minded people on our side here. That's a huge bonus: real people whom we get to know very well, who interact regularly, face-to-face and personally with the kids, rather than some internet-mediated substitute. But they're totally new to this sort of learning, and to being the interface between homeschoolers and the government. They want to make us homeschoolers happy, and they see the value in what we're doing, but they're not necessarily going to go out on a limb for our philosophical beliefs, especially when the Ministry of Education is doing its tough-guy posturing with this new program. They feel a need to play by the rules. And they're also sensitive to appearances within the local community. For instance, we are requested to spend our learning allowance money discretely, to avoid provoking ire or jealousy in parents of schoolchildren.

For Fiona things are working quite well. She enjoys academic work even when it's challenging, and tends to accomplish it in ways that provide ample documentation and evidence of learning. She loves making things, and filling in worksheets, writing and doing projects. Our liaison teacher finds it a breeze to document her learning in all areas, so there is no tension between her natural learning and the government's expectation that specific subject areas and content be covered. Fiona actually really enjoys having seeing the liaison teacher face-to-face a couple of times a month. She likes saving stuff to show him, enjoys blogging knowing that he reads her blog and is interested to know what she is doing and learning. She's liked having access to the BC Science 6 curriculum materials and website-based quizzes through the school and I can see her really enjoying the independent study courses that will become available to her at the Grade 8 level and beyond. She has also been really pleased with some of the opportunities she's had to be involved in the bricks-and-mortar school. She will likely attend the Arts & Writing Festival in April. She loved the month of downhill ski instruction and Wednesday ski days. She's enjoyed field trips, being part of the Reader's Club and participating in the Science Fair. For Fiona the DL program is entirely unintrusive, and offers her a few extra-curricular perks.

Sophie is fitting the program pretty well too. She is young enough to be part of the ski program, which she has loved, but old enough to be able to take advantage of independent study courses which she also enjoys in moderation. She has benefitted from using the animation facilities at the school. She recently wrote the Grade 7 Foundation Skills Assessments with the Grade 7 class at the school (she'd done this type of testing in Grade 4 as well) and I think in a lot of ways it was easier and more enjoyable doing so with a crowd of kids. She is neither here nor there about the interface with our liaison teacher; she likes him, and is willing to jump through occasional small hoops to make his job of documenting her learning a bit easier. But she's not one to produce a lot of written output, nor is she so much the eager pleaser. I find myself having to nudge her into doing an occasional bit of writing (a book review or an explanation of a mechanical project on her blog), to keep clearer records of her math learning, to persist and document the Rosetta Stone work she's doing. The reporting requirements of the DL program are minimally or mildly intrusive with her, and the advantages feel like they're worth it. I can see Sophie enjoying more independent study academic courses in the next year or two, and benefitting from being able to easily accrue high school credits by completing those courses, as well as being awarded credits for her learning in other areas: foods, music, PE, etc..

Noah is considered a Grade 9 student which means that he is sort of a high school student, but the diploma credits for high school don't start to accrue until the Grade 10 level. He's got a few Grade 10 courses on his roster, including a couple of structured academic ones, and because they're diploma credits the expectations are higher. We're running into a little difficulty with respect to his reluctance to write. He types well, but the structured courses (math: mostly algebra and geometry so far, and science) are pretty much paper-based, using written exercises, workbooks, quizzes and tests for documentation and evaluation. That's proving to be a consistent hurdle. It's awkward or impossible to use the computer for most of this written work. As a result he procrastinates and resists. He's done very well on the math tests, and is halfway through the course. But really, it was all review ... he should have been able to fly through the material in a few short weeks. The writing resistance has slowed everything right down. Science has been even more problematic: again, the content is easy, but the first unit on ecology was full of tests with short-answer questions and that got put off and put off. By both of us. I share the blame, certainly: I find I dread nagging and coddling him through the writing. He is not at all motivated to do it. It honestly feels to me like high school academic course work is not right for him at this point in time, not unless we find ways to deal with the expectation of written work. We are considering having him undergo an assessment to formally identify his areas of challenge and elucidate any additional tools and/or accommodations that might be helpful.

Noah is also not interested in taking advantage of extra-curricular offerings at the school. He is too old for the ski program, not interested in the high school electives or field trips. He is definitely not a pleaser who enjoys generating and then showing off output to our liaison teacher. They have a nice relationship, but it is not compelling Noah to produce school-like output to make Scott's job easier. Noah likes the fact that his string ensemble work and his computer capabilities are being validated through advanced credit in Orchestra and InfoTech. But there are few other advantages to him for being involved in the DL program. I hope that he ends up feeling successful in Math and Science. His grades are very good: I just hope that the struggle over the written work doesn't leave him with a bad taste in his mouth.

Next fall he'll probably have to make at decision to work towards a Ministry of Education Graduation Diploma, in which case the DL program will be very helpful, and has already enabled him to have advanced standing, or else to dispense with the DL program. I'm fine with either option. At this point I expect he'll choose the latter. But a lot can change in six months, so I'm not making any predictions.

So there we are. It's a mixed bag. Not a great big headache, some clear advantages, but a few things that aren't necessarily a perfect fit. Overall I think we're all glad to be affiliated with the local school rather than an out-of-district program.

Science Fair

Another perk the result of our affiliation with the local public school and school district -- the kids were invited to participate in the science fair. We didn't have much notice, but Fiona was keen and we lucked into a terrific idea. She chose to investigate the changes in rhododendron leaves in response to cold temperatures. We have a large rhody bush in front of our dining room table, and enjoy using it as an informal thermometer. Over the last couple of weeks the outdoor temperature has swung wildly between -10 C and +2 C, which made for some very impressive leaf changes.

Fiona photographed the same leaf cluster at a range of temperatures over a couple of weeks. We printed the photos and she used a protractor to measure the angle the outer leaves formed. Yesterday we worked to plot a graph showing the relationship. We also found an article on-line which postulated several explanations for the phenomenon. Fiona typed up her summation of some of these explanations. She also created illustrations. We topped it all off with a fake rhodo plant in a pot ... really just a recently pruned branch stuck into some dirt.

The science fair itself was fun and a little wild. Projects were presented by children from age 6 to 18. There was everything from baking soda and vinegar volcanos to frog dissections and metal alloy demonstrations. The primary teachers had created some simple hands-on science explorations for the younger kids. Fiona was just getting over a nasty cold so she faded quickly, but she had fun. She ended up with a "gold" penny from one of the secondary demonstrations, and enjoyed the activity tables.

The highlight was bumping into her DL liaison teacher who had finally managed to procure a copy of the textbook to go with her BC Science 6 workbook. She was thrilled, as she had been waiting patiently for a long time. We had to dash home and set to work with it.

Seventeen years of awesome

You may have noticed that as the years roll by I post less and less about my older kids. That's because I sense that they don't necessarily want every moment of their lives chronicled in public through their parents' eyes. They're their own people, and they have strong sense of privacy about things that are personal and important to them. I don't want to intrude on that.

The other day Erin asked me (with a smirk) why I hadn't done a post around her birthday, "You know, the one you do about each of us on our birthdays about how awesome we are and everything?"

I don't actually do birthday posts like that, at least not anymore, but that sounded like invitation to me. And it got me thinking about how awesome my big girl really is. Especially in the past few months. So here we go...

She's still tenacious and driven relentlessly to pursue her own precise agenda. Things were very foul indeed around here when her violin was misbehaving due to sound post issues. When she accidentally oversleeps, or gets blisters, or can't find something, or runs out of time for practicing, or someone walks off with the black wet-erase marker (never mind that the other 14 colours are sitting right there) she is no fun to be around.

But so much is truly sweetness and light around here with her lately. She gets up early of her own accord. She is working diligently at coursework for school, knocking off courses quickly and efficiently.  She earns amazing grades. She is fit and healthy, spending up to two hours a day at the gym and/or running. Lately she eats vegetables like they're going out of style. She's working hard on the violin. She's been accompanying the local Suzuki students in their performance pieces and is the (well-paid) accompanist for the local community choir and does a fabulous job for them. She comes cheerfully to Suzuki group class to support the younger less advanced students. She's got a pretty nice relationship with each of her younger siblings. She doesn't do drugs or hang out with wayward friends. She's sure of who she is and what she wants to do. She's confident and capable but humble, and she doesn't look down on people who are less capable than she is. She writes short stories that leave her Writing 12 teacher's mouth agape in awe.

How sad that just when they become easy, fun and helpful they want to move away from home...

Suzuki recital

Yesterday was our winter Suzuki recital. All the kids who study locally with my mom or me played. For the first time we were able to "hire from within" for the accompanying. Erin hasn't had a piano lesson in two years, but she continues to enjoy accompanying. She is making pretty good money as the accompanist for the local community choir, and is doing a great job. When accompanying Suzuki students she is a natural: she knows every piece intimately as a violinist and therefore can anticipate and react in a split second to common stumbles. She knows the tempos inside out, and recognizes when to push a student a little for a steady tempo and when to respond to the student's preferences.

A friend of mine video'd Sophie's and Fiona's performances. Sophie just got her violin back from a three-month stay in the violin hospital where it had a bunch of old repair work and some niggling cracks set to rights. She had been playing on a cheap factory-made instrument in the interim, and was so happy to have her Mittenwald 3/4 back in time for the performance. She put out a huge confident sound!

I think slow movements are SO challenging to play on eighth-sized violins and bows, so I take my hat off to Fiona for fitting six slow beats into her bowstrokes in this piece. Her shifting and trills have come along really nicely in the past couple of months.

Sophie at the wheel

Sophie has been coming to Nelson with us on Tuesdays for the past month. The older kids have Corazón rehearsal on Tuesdays, so I end up driving four teens to rehearsal and back. Fiona likes to come along for the pleasure of being out and about. I do the grocery shopping and run errands. Sophie usually likes to stay home and enjoy afternoons alone or with her friend Ali. But recently she's been taking some pottery classes at Kootenay School of the Arts, so she's been coming along on Tuesdays.

Sophie really likes working with clay. She'd done a series of kids' clay classes four years ago and had always wanted to do more. She'd particularly hoped for a chance to learn to use a pottery wheel. The course for 8- through 13-year-olds at KSA seemed perfect. With a dozen or more pottery wheels on site, they promised to let the kids try out using them. The 8 - 13 age range proved sticky, though, since it included both Sophie and Fiona. And while Sophie had decided this class was definitely her thing, Fiona naturally wanted to be part of it too -- Fiona is always keen to try anything! This is the one little corner of sibling rivalry in our family right now: Sophie really wants her out-of-home activities to be ventures in independence and a life apart from family. Having a little sister, even a precocious cheerful one whom you love, tagging along kind of ruins that feeling.

How fortunate, then, that it turned out the set of classes was being offered twice: once in January/February and once in March. Sophie took the first session. Fiona's classes start next week.

Sophie's instructor was very impressed with her work, but we hadn't really seen what she was turning out until today. Here are the finished products:

I'd really like to see her continue with this interest. She obviously loves it. I think her pieces are awesome! The question is how we can support her in it, short of spending thousands of dollars on wheel and kiln. We have a couple of ideas. Time will tell.

A Thing About Tea

Behold, our tea cupboard!

We seem to have A Thing About Tea. We are hopelessly addicted to loose leaf tea. We have done five big orders from David's Tea since early last fall, supplemented by Two Hills and Teaopia purchases now and then.

We're don't have sophisticated tastes. We probably couldn't definitively identify an assam vs. a lapsang suchong. We like weird herbals and party teas as much as traditional blends. But we do love the freshness and variety of boutique store loose-leaf tea. The cupboard currently contains fourteen different varieties of loose-leaf tea. You would have thought it was Christmas yesterday from the excitement that erupted when Chuck came home from the post office with the latest mail-order.

In this photo you can also see the three volumes that comprise our kitchen reference library. For curious and creative cooks, these are fabulous resources. First, the bible of kitchen science, Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen." If you want to know what copper bowls do to egg whites and why, or what "double-acting baking powder" really is, or why you need to punch down bread dough part-way through the rise, this book will explain it all. Next, "The Flavour Bible" by Page and Dornenberg, sort of like a thesaurus for flavours. Look up feta cheese, or figs, or garbanzo beans, and you'll find a huge long list of complementary foods and common and unusual combinations of flavours that include that ingredient. If you have a bunch of dried apricots, or a dusty packet of wild rice, or someone gave you an armload of mizuno and you want to experiment and make up new recipes which include your ingredients, this is the place to turn for inspiration. Finally, the book "Ratio," by Michael Ruhlman. This is pretty much devoted to baking, and to the basic ratios that most common baked recipes rely on. How many parts fat to sugar to liquid to flour to leavener in a cookie recipe? How does the ratio change if you want a chewy cookie rather than a crunchie one? What is it about the proportions that changes if you're making a quick bread, or a muffin? If you like to invent or radically modify baking recipes, this book helps you understand which proportions are required and avoid costly mistakes.

Wheel of Misfortune

When your family generally runs as a democracy, when everyone has good intentions but busy-ness and inertia get in the way, sometimes the best solution is an old-fashioned parental proclamation.

"Here's the chore rotation for after supper clean-up."

I guess when you don't tell people they have to do work very often, they are pretty likely to heed you when you do.

Every night we spin the wheel one stop counterclockwise and everyone switches jobs. And almost every night the kitchen ends up spotlessly clean in the space of about ten minutes.

Ski Day

It was a family ski day. Chuck had to go to Nelson but the rest of us headed to the ski hill 30 minutes north, a small family-friendly hill. It has a handful of runs (one easy, a few intermediate, a few expert), a short steep T-bar and about 500 vertical feet of drop. No lineups, so you can get dozens of runs in in a day.

Believe it or not Erin hadn't been skiing since she was a tyke, and Noah had never ever been. With Chuck on call so much, it was pretty much going to end up being me and three beginning skiers on the hill with a toddler to also look after ... and that didn't seem humanly possible.

And then the years just slipped by. Life got very full -- so much travel, so many rehearsals. Any free day was needed for recharging, and somehow we never went skiing.

Finally this year Sophie and Fiona started skiing, initially with the school's ski program. During this program they had instructors on hand so they got lessons and progressed quickly. They were soon skiing well and managing the T-bar just fine together. So I figured it was time to get the big kids going.

Erin got her ski legs back pretty quickly, and Noah, daredevil that he is, did some lovely wipeouts trying to go faster than any beginner should ever go, but eventually saw the wisdom of learning to control his speed. Which he did, quite capably.

Sophie got confident enough to try the t-bar solo and discovered it was easy. Sophie and Fiona enjoyed a combination of beginning and intermediate runs, and especially the trails through the forest.

Unfortunately Sophie got a migraine in the afternoon so we cut the day a little short. But not too much ... I had some viola teaching to do, and we were expecting company for dinner, so we weren't going to ski until closing anyway. But we'll be back I think. And Sophie has already decided she wants a season's pass for next year. (I think Fiona will be lined up right behind her.)

Unschooling in a nutshell

"But what, exactly, would I do?"

1. Involve your child in your life. Cooking, cleaning, running errands, fixing the toilet, looking after little siblings, working in the garden.
2. Talk. Just natter on about interesting things. Listen to the questions he asks and ponder them aloud with him. Share your thoughts and experiences.
3. Be an interesting person. Model being a curious, impassioned life-learner yourself. Pursue your own interests.
4. Strew around your home a few interesting resources that you think might interest him. Don't get yourself attached to the idea of him doing anything with them, but put them out there. Watch to see what catches his interest. Strew more of that sort of thing.
5. Read aloud to him. Visit the library. Choose books that are at a level beyond what he would likely read to himself and read for at least 45 minutes a day. Historical and cultural fiction are a great way to spark new interests.
6. Don't assume he won't want to do sit-down bookwork, but make this completely optional and be flexible about the level.

That's about it: facilitate, support, include, talk, model.

Planets, updated

The Planets

Paper maché over styrofoam craft balls. (Except in the case of earth's moon and Mercury, which are paper maché on dried peas.)

Fiona is on a bit of an astronomy kick. She really enjoys stargazing, though we don't do nearly enough of it. Which really is inexcusable, since we live in the midst of such deep dark skies, hundreds of miles from the nearest city's light scatter. This summer we will make more of an effort. She loves her bed stars. She likes the Basher Astronomy book we got for her last spring as a consolation for not being able to find the Biology one. And she is looking forward to the space exploration unit in the BC Science 6 curriculum she's recently begun following. (She begged. Sophie and Noah are doing high school science courses and she wanted something just like what they were doing. I was skeptical, but she went on-line and tried some of the self-evaluation quizzes for Science 6 and scored between 60 and 80 percent without studying the material. So we ordered the program through the school. She loves it. Workbook must be this girl's middle name.)

The planets are drying over the wood stove tonight. Tomorrow they'll take on their distinctive colours courtesy of some acrylic paint. Eventually they'll get hung from the ceiling of her bedroom. First I'd like them to participate in a planet walk. We did one a few years ago but Fiona was only a wee thing. This time it'll be for her. This time the scale is bigger, so I imagine we will only be walking as far as Mars or so.

With Earth being 4 cm in size, our size and distance scale would be thus:

The sun will be imagined as a large sphere 4 metres in diameter. We'll place our imaginary sun on the highway at the top of the driveway. Be careful if you're planning on dropping by for a visit!
Mercury, which is slightly larger than a pea, will be placed 200 metres up the highway.
Venus will be 180 metres beyond Mercury.
Earth will be 140 metres further out. Its moon will be placed about 60 cm away.
Mars will be 280 metres further along.
Jupiter, should we choose to go there (perhaps we will drive?) will be situated almost 2 km away from Mars.
Saturn, Neptune and Uranus will be 2, 5 and 5.5 kms respectively beyond their nearer neighbours.

And perhaps we will listen to Holst as we travel along.

Four for four

It was a proud mom day full of accomplishments.

Fiona and Sophie spent their third day on downhill skis with the school's field trip program. This time I went along. They're skiing fabulously! Sophie got moved up to the intermediate group after only one day and is carving nice parallel turns. Fiona is zipping all over the place fearlessly yet under control. Both skied part of a black (expert) run and a couple of different intermediate runs, loved zipping through the trees and tried out some deep powder. It was a great day.

Noah had been procrastinating on writing his Math 9 midterm for a couple of months. The course is mostly review, but he easily gets anxious and unsure of himself, and having never written a test that actually counts for anything, he was not keen to dive in. I finally pushed him to do it. He heard from our liaison teacher today -- he scored 96% with just a couple of little "brain fart" errors in the arithmetic: he nailed all the conceptual material.

And Erin, who couldn't think of anything better to do today, decided to go to school to do a bit of work mopping up some of the peripheral grad requirements. How fortunate. It turned out that her English 12 exam, which she was sure was tomorrow, was actually today! She wrote it, it was marked, and she scored 100%. On an English exam. How is that even possible?

Bed stars

My little one has turned 8. What an amazing person she is. So affable, curious, capable, thoughtful, resilient, incisive. Easy. And bright. Wow.

I made her a couple of gifts. One was a hardcover journal modelled after the books in her favourite TV series ever, the 21st-century re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. That was fun to make. I hadn't made a book with a case binding in years and I had to look up a few of the details. I was pleased with how it turned out. Erin's reaction was priceless. (She's the other huge BSG fan in the family.) She saw the book, her eyes lit up with recognition, she blurted out "Hey, that's a ... Why didn't I ... hmm..." and then drifted off into good-humoured but envious silence. Yup, kiddo, this one's for Fiona. You got your mom-made BSG military fatigue shirt set for your birthday a couple of weeks ago, don't complain. She didn't. She laughed as hard as the rest of us at her reaction.

What Fiona loved best was the stars. She sleeps in the lower berth of a bunk bed in the room she and Sophie share. She stares up at the slats beneath Sophie's mattress and told me a while ago that she wished she had a picture of the sky to put up there. I decided it should be a night sky. I bought a huge black sheet of foam core board and got out at star chart and a bottle of glow-in-the-dark paint. (Every creative family should have a bottle of phosphorescent paint. It's what we used to make Fiona's butterfly costume glow in the dark last Hallowe'en, and it's been fun in a few other applications too over the years. I don't know where you buy it; our bottle is so old I've forgotten where we got it.)

I put the stars on as dots of glow-in-the-dark paint. I didn't go for mathematical accuracy. I tried to reproduce most of the major northern hemisphere constellations in recognizable shapes and in the correct general orientation, but scale isn't accurate, nor are their relative positions totally proper. Fiona likes looking for constellations, so I labelled the constellations using a silver-grey pencil crayon. With a flashlight pointed at the board you can spotlight a group of stars and see the configuration and name of their constellation. With the flashlight off you see just the "stars" and you can practice picking out the constellations. The photo doesn't do it justice: it only shows half the area and it's blurry due to the 30-second time-exposure. It's quite lovely to look at. (I can say that because it's not my design. I just copied what's writ across the heavens.)

It was a successful birthday. She was so excited all morning that she had to resort to jumping jacks and practicing her violin to contain some of the energy she had. She had chosen to have an afternoon tea party at her grandma's house as part of the celebration. This entailed a lot of snow-blowing and shovelling to release the van from its tomb of snow. It has been impossible to get up and down our laneway for more than a week, so the poor van has been parked up at the highway, not used much and bombarded with the sprayed snow of the plows and with the relentlessly falling-from-the-sky stuff too. There was a good 40 cm of depth covering it, and more than that on the ground around it. After we'd got rid of all that, it was left sitting on a sheet of ice and a bit of icy snow and it took a fair bit of sanding, digging and pushing (by the three older kids) to get it unstuck and able to move forward. Finally we made it to grandma's. We drank tea, ate pumpkin gingersnap cheesecake (adorned by marzipan pumpkins made by Sophie and Fiona) and she opened gifts. It was nice to get out. We've been at home a lot since the driveway got un-navigable. We then returned home for a dinner of Shepherd's Pie -- one pan with meat for the three omivores and one vegetarian version for the three vegetarians. And now it's time for bed, and a view of bed stars.

A Nook for Sophie

Our home was originally built as a 15 by 30-foot log rectangle with vaulted ceilings and two rooms. It's seen three separate additions over the years, the largest and latest of which was ours, put on when Noah was an infant. But the main living part of the house is still that log rectangle with the vaulted ceiling.

At some point, probably very early on, whoever built the place decided that a loft would give some much-needed storage space. So they slung a low ceiling over the larger of the two rooms and created a crawl-space of a loft above. The engineering is rather interesting. We assume it's safe, since it's lasted several decades already without incident. The floor of the loft isn't supported on proper joists as far as we can tell. Part of the load is taken by the roof joists, through a funky arrangements of chains and turnbuckles. It's not pretty but it seems to work.

Anyway, Sophie has been craving a bit more privacy and quiet for her academic work. From her perspective I don't think Erin can move out soon enough. She would love a quiet room into which she could retreat for reading, bookwork or just chilling out. But not only does she share a bedroom with Fiona, but that bedroom is so tiny that there's barely room for the bunk bed and clothes. You can hardly walk around the bed without shuffling your body along sideways. So there certainly isn't any space for a desk.

So we looked at the loft. It was packed full of junk. The remains of hobbies past, broken furniture, baby clothes, toys for toddlers, craft supplies no longer desired, projects built by younger children, archived sheet music, medical diplomas, Christmas decorations, photographic slides, I'm sure you can imagine. We spent some time organizing, reshuffling, recycling, tossing. And we ended up with a nook just big enough for a kneeling desk made out of two IKEA Trofast bins (still containing their Playmobil castle parts and Brio train bits) and a piece of plywood. It's a little bit like Harry Potter's cupboard under the stairs, but hey, it's warm -- the heat from the wood stove rises, of course -- and it works for her.

She has her dad's old laptop up there to do Rosetta Stone French, her math book, her science textbook and workbook, some writing utensils and Larry Gonick's "Cartoon History of the Universe" series. Fiona's jealous. We'll be working on her nook next. It will be even smaller and with even less head room. Small living, growing kids, it has its challenges.

The halfiest

Fiona is getting really handy in the kitchen these days. Today she baked up a batch of chocolate chip hazelnut bars all by herself from a new recipe. She got help with the mucky job of spreading the dough in the pan, but otherwise the entire recipe was assembled by her.

Oh, and she likes me to cut the pound of butter when the recipe calls for half. She doesn't have good luck cutting the brick in even halves. So I am happy to do the cut for her.

The first time I did this job for her I said "Okay, I did my best. I don't think it's perfect, but you just pick the halfiest part for the recipe."

She didn't miss a beat. She laughed. "That's impossible," she cackled.

Math humour. I love that she gets it.

Breakfast

We've tried this a couple of times in the past. And we're trying it again. Starting the day with a "together meal," a breakfast at the table for the homeschoolers. Their request. Rather than rules and reminders about going to bed at a reasonable hour, they'd rather just have the expectation that I'll be getting them up at a reasonable hour. For a meal, and a few thoughts about planning out our day.

So I'm doing my best. I missed today but otherwise my track-record is pretty good. The family is doing a complete deep-cleaning of the kitchen every evening after supper, and that's fantastic. It means my day doesn't have to start with 45 minutes of damage control on the mess and dirt and filthy dishes and crumbs and unmentionable sticky patches. I start with a glistening clean kitchen, and it actually makes me happy to bake and cut up grapefruits and brew tea.

Speaking of tea, we've all become addicted to David's Tea loose-leaf teas. We've been ordering on-line for some time, and last weekend Erin and I had the pleasure of visiting a real actual retail store in Calgary and smelling all the lovely tins of funky blends with our very own noses. We spent more than I care to admit.

(I have a feeling that Erin's desire to move to Montréal stems partly from her desire to live in close proximity to the flagship David's Tea store. That's okay with me, so long as she sends regular care packages home.)

In our tea cabinet, just counting the tins of David's products:

Saigon Chai -- assam black tea, peppercorns, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, clove; probably my all-time fave
Cream of Earl Grey -- earl grey tea with vanilla and osmanthus petals; almost a London Fog by itself
Citron Oolong -- jasmine, oolong tea, lemon myrtle, citrus oils; this week's most popular chez nous
Raspberry Nectar -- raspberry, lemongrass, honeygrass, citrus oils; good anytime tea
Read My Lips -- mint, chocolate, black tea, peppercorns; I was skeptical at first, but I'm won over now
Coco Chai Rooibos -- rooibos tea, coconut, spices; Noah's favourite
Sweet Dreams -- chamomile-based, with hibiscus, lemongrass, licorice, citrus, rose petals; great bedtime tea
White Tiger -- white peony tea, blueberry, pomegranate; light and energizing

Every day starts with a big pot of one of these, or else some straight earl grey, jasmine, genmaicha or green tea. And usually some fruit and something baked. So far it's working well. We're more likely to use our days intentionally if we do this. We'll see how long I can keep up the routine.

Touch-typing game

Erin and I used to play this touch-typing game in chat windows.

One person touch-types a message but with their hands shifted outwards one key on the keyboard. Instead of having your index fingers over F and J, they'll be over D and K. Touch-typing will produce a certain amount of total nonsense on the screen. For instance if you type "hello there" with your hands shifted outwards, you get "jw;;p rjwew."

Then the other person, in order to decode what has been written, touch-types what they see in their message window, but with their hand shifted in the opposite direction, inwards. Try it. If you touch-type jw;;p rjwew with your hands shifted to centre one key so that the index fingers are over G and H and it will show up as ... hello there. Magic!

After you've translated what the other person has said, you then type your own response using the hands-out position. Erin is amazingly skilled at this. Me, while I'm an awesome touch-typist I find myself having to close my eyes and will myself into a zen-like state of focus, or else I start trying to type what I think the actual word is rather than the letters on the screen. Erin seems to be able to completely turn off that part of her brain and simply use her touch-typing physical memory.

Tonight we use a variation on this trick with our various names, shifting the left hand, right hand or both by one key in or out, touch-typing it and choosing from among the several possibilities our favourite new names.

Noah is now Nosh.
Fiona is Guibs.
Sophie is Siogue.
Erin is Erub.

and I am Nurabda.

Chuck, who went to bed early being on call, has not yet chosen his new name, but he largely ends up with an unfortunate collection of words with unpronouncable consonants.

Nostalgia

While helping purge mess and clutter from the attic and coming across a sheet of once-used tropical fish gift wrap that she recalls from a birthday gone by, Fiona quips:

"I'm feeling pretty nostalgic for being only 7 years old."

Goodbye holidays

Erin emerged from the basement yesterday and asked "When can we go somewhere?"

It takes a lot to get that introvert to the point where she's wishing for a social outing of some sort. It's been that kind of holiday break, though. We all needed a dose of home-bodying. We had a lot of travel and a lot of performances last fall. After a full week of little other than being home together I guess we're feeling recharged and ready for something more.

The three older kids were all sick in succession, which was a bit of a bummer. But still, it was a nice time. We skated on the rink. We played board games. We worked on jigsaw puzzles. We talked and laughed and drank egg nog and ate treats and stayed up late and read stories. I started knitting again. I'm currently mid-way through my Alto Clef Chullo, a warm hat for a violist. Chuck was on call most of the holidays, but things were relatively quiet.

Erin is practicing up a storm for her National Youth Orchestra audition which we just found out is next weekend. (We hadn't heard anything, so had assumed it would be later in the month. Luckily we were planning to travel to Calgary next weekend anyway.) She's been practicing hard for a couple of weeks, which means she'll be pretty well prepared I think. Still, she hasn't managed to have a lesson on any of the audition repertoire. Too bad, since 80% of it is orchestral excerpts, which she's never had to prepare before. She's also madly trying to complete her Canadian History course, doing two assignments a day. The course is very heavy on assignments: about 65 in total. She's now more than three quarters done. She dislikes the course intensely for all its touchy-feely "creativity-nurturing" assignments. She's of the "where's the beef?" persuasion when it comes to required coursework. She's also taken on the piano accompanying gig for the local Suzuki recital in February, so she's working on some of that music. She spends her free time dreaming of living in Montreal on her own.

Noah has been doing some awesome virtual robotics stuff, scripting something he's called "Followbot v3.0" in Garry'sMod / WireMod, building scripts and virtual logic gates in a virtual physics environment that allows him to test everything out. Even better, he's been writing about his process, explaining everything in detail in a blog he keeps in order to report to our DL teacher. He's an amazing technical writer, but hasn't had much interest in writing this year. To have him write in great detail in a clear and incisive way about his projects takes a lot of heat off me and his liaison teacher in terms of providing proof to the school system that he is in fact highly literate. It also functions as a de facto major project for the Grade 10 and 11 InfoTech courses the school hopes to give him credit for. And he got totally stoked by some new viola repertoire he was given just before Christmas: the magnificent Schubert Arpeggione sonata in particular. He's taught himself the first two pages and is now chomping at the bit waiting to receive the last two in the mail from his teacher with her fingerings and bowings.

Sophie has been taken under her Noah's wing in the programming and gaming department for better or for worse. She's learning some basics in WireMod and playing "mature" games on-line, or via LAN with Noah on the other computer. She's also been doing some awesome artwork on RateMyDrawing.com -- using a laptop touchpad, for heaven's sake. She recently acquired a digital pen tablet, so that should simplify things. She sewed some really brilliant gifts up for Christmas, figuring out how to do all sorts of nifty stuff with the sewing machine in secret and is finishing up some fair-isle knitting for a little cushion she's making. She seems emotionally on a much more even keel and is happy. For a 12-year-old girl anything else is a bonus.

Fiona is as always an energetic and passionate renaissance kid, interested in anything and everything, game for whatever she's presented with. Her ice-skating is coming along wonderfully, she can make scrambled eggs, and soup and cookies from scratch, she's puttering her way through her current math workbook, reading chemistry and biology textbooks for fun, mastering "Treasures of Montezuma" on the iPad, reading for hours a day, enjoying blogging and photography and knitting, working hard at the tail end of Suzuki violin book 5, and making pithy little observations in the course of daily life that make me laugh, or my jaw drop, or both.

And now I've got a few little odds and ends to do on the computer (music arranging and meeting minutes to type), and then it's back into the fray after one more cozy evening knitting in front of the fire.

Putting Christmas "away"

Yesterday we took down the tree and the decorations. Sort of. Inspired by Erin's approach to décor in her cabin we hoisted the strands of Christmas lights to the ceiling of the living room. We don't have enough light in this room anyway. And it's easier than putting the lights away. Who knows how long they'll stay there. We quite like them.