First teas

Tea packaging proceeds. Two herbal blends have been bagged and labelled. She's going to start out with just these two, plus "pot-sized teabags"of green sencha / wild-ginger intended for iced tea.

She's decided to sell six teabags or 20 g of loose tea for $2.50. The origami paper was her idea and I think it looks lovely.

New shoes

Fiona had outgrown all her shoes from last year and for some reason those in the hand-me-down box were mostly too big. And of course my sensibilities about footwear have changed in recent years. The clunky high-support traditional running shoes I put my big kids in when they were Fiona's age no longer seem like the best option.

Last weekend Fiona came and ran a 5k race with me. She did phenomenally well, and she ran with the unadulterated great form of a mostly-barefoot kid, even in the clunky shoes she had to don for the event. I sure don't want her losing that form, or her enthusiasm for running.

In light of her need for new shoes, her nice natural form and her interest in running, a couple of weeks ago I took the plunge and dropped a lot of money on shoes untried and unseen, but which seemed from my research to be the best of the very slim pickings in kids' minimalist shoes.

These Vivo Barefoot Aquariuses from Terra Plana arrived this morning. They are very impressive, exactly what I wanted for her. They fit nicely, feel comfortable on the inside, have thin, zero-drop soles with grippy treads and a puncture-resistant membrane. And they're wonderfully flexible, very much like the little siblings to my New Balance Minimuses.

We're going to squeeze in an inaugural run together this afternoon.

Tea progress

Fiona's tea business is taking shape. Some organic ingredients have been purchased. These have been combined with wildcrafted ingredients like rosehips, peppermint and wild ginger. The wild ginger in particular has entailed several trips along trails for collecting but we now have heaps of the stuff.

Two herbal blends are shown. On the left is Ruby Red, a combination of hibiscus, goji berries, dried apples and rosehips. On the right is the Kootenay Wildcraft tea, a blend of wild ginger, rosehips, peppermint and lemon peel.

This morning the teabags arrived!  We'd ordered 500 heat-sealable teabags. She will sell some tea loose-leaf, but most of it will go into teabags. Two grams of tea goes inside each bag, and then a few seconds with the iron along the open edge seals it up for good. She enjoyed making up a few today.

Next she's going to have to figure out packaging. She could just put 10 teabags in a ziploc bag, but somehow that seems a little conventional and dreary. She's had thoughts about labels and origami boxes.

In the meantime, it's fun to test out the teas, and to serve them up to guests for feedback. The Ruby Red is really lovely to behold in a glass cup.

And she's carefully tending all sorts of other herbs in flats and in the garden: lemon bergamot, peppermint, marigold, chamomile and lemon balm are growing, and lavender and anise hyssop starters are on their way to us by mail.

Schedule thoughts

So here's the thing about me. I have a terrible ambivalence about schedules. I love their tidy organizational clarity. I like fussing around making lists and spreadsheets and calendars. But I know that when it comes to living my life I much don't like clocks, and I much prefer freedom to structure. So I rarely schedule anything in my life, because it seems so pointless. My mantra throughout my years of parenting has been "a rhythm, not a schedule."

Outside activities impose a certain amount of scheduling on us. Today for example, I had to run Erin to town at 8:45, there are violin lessons from 10:30 to noon, I teach from 4:00 - 4:45 and pick Erin up at 5. But other than those fixed elements I've always thought "rhythm, not structure," the sort of rhythm that says that creative time tends to happen in the early afternoon, and practicing is usually in the early evenings, and tidying fits in just before and just after supper. Theoretically.

The problem is that the rhythm isn't working very well with six people in this family whose needs and desires are increasingly divergent. The reality is that while I tend to envision daily rhythm as being like a confluent ebb and flow of waves on a seashore, our rhythm is like a confused set of wakes overlapping and resulting in splashes, peaks, troughs and unexpected forces pushing us all this way and that, occasionally threatening to topple us into the drink.

Evenings chez Burkholder, for example. Chuck likes to chill and watch TV and play guitar (yes, often simultaneously). I like to run. Fiona prefers to practice violin, which she should do with my help. Noah is just getting going for the day and would prefer that I be available to facilitate his academic work in the evenings, but not until after he has practiced, which is usually after a bit of time on the computer. Sophie likes to practice and then get busy in the kitchen. Erin uses her evenings for schoolwork, practicing and an early-ish bedtime. Fiona likes doing math or science with me after she's done her practicing. And we're all living in the same relatively small space. And then somehow we forget that two or three evenings a week are devoted entirely to rehearsals, work or other such pursuits. Since supper doesn't usually finish until at least 7 pm I can't possibly ensure that I do all the necessary inititation and facilitation in the same three-hour window every day.

So running gets squeezed out. Fiona often practices alone. Noah rarely gets the academic facilitation he prefers, so he's not getting through his coursework. Fiona's bookwork is hit or miss. The kitchen is a mess. And particularly as reporting for our DL program looms I realize that we're not doing terribly well at fitting in the things we want to do.

Last week I signed up for a running program. It handed me a schedule. Wonder of wonders, I am fitting in the running. And it almost feels as if there is more time in my life, rather than less. Is there a lesson to be learned here? Is it time to admit that while our family doesn't like schedules, we need to impose one on ourselves to ensure that we are happy and productive?

An further object lesson presents itself in the likes of Erin, who for years seemed as resistent to schedules as anyone in this family but but now as a self-sufficient self-motivated older teen has opted to impose on herself some pretty rigid scheduling. She doesn't like being tightly scheduled, but she has discovered that it's a necessary evil as she juggles in-class courses, independent study courses, provincial exam deadlines, dozens of assignments, endless sets of rehearsals and performances in various ensembles, exercise, learning endless NYO orchestra and quartet parts, eating and sleeping and other necessities.

I suppose it's time for a family meeting.

Barefoot running

Just for fun. A presentation I put together about barefoot running, pulling together a variety of resources. There's a lot more interest around here than there was a year or so ago. Be patient while it loads, and then use your > arrow key to move through the slides. There's one quite long video embedded near the beginning which I find fascinating, but you may feel differently ... feel free to click past it. Obviously this is intended to go along with additional explanations and demonstrations in places.

Barefoot Running on Prezi

Making hard candy

Here is Sophie's system for making hard candy. Her basic recipe is from the LorAnn Oils site. They make great concentrated oils and dozens of awesome flavourings, though natural foods stores are a good source of basic essential oils as well.

Ingredients

2 cups granulated sugar

2/3 cup corn syrup (use clear or amber as desire: only colour will be affected)

3/4 cup water

5 – 15 drops of liquid food colouring

1 tsp. essential oil or other concentrated flavouring (use half as much for clove, cinnamon or peppermint oil)

For dusting: 1 cup of icing (confectioner's) sugar

Equipment:

Small to medium sized clean, heavy-base pot with heat-proof handle and lid. (Mixture will bubble up to approximately twice its initial volume, so you need to have a good bit of room to spare.)

Accurate candy thermometer (We use our laser infrared digital thermometer which works great but a decent analogue one will suffice.)

Heat-proof spatula

Molds (sprayed with light cooking oil) and lollipop sticks if desired

Dough scraper (lightly oiled)

Marble slab or other heat-proof surface (lightly oiled)

Heavy-duty scissors or kitchen snips (lightly oiled)

Pan or rubbermaid container in which to toss candies in icing sugar

Basic metal kitchen sieve

Damp cloths for quickly wiping up spills.

A source of water for rinsing hands as needed.

A well-organized workspace that will not risk a person carrying a pot full of extremely hot sticky syrup tripping over a child, a stool or a dog whilst moving to counter area to pour candy.

The beginning of the Butter Rum candies

Place granulated sugar, corn syrup and water in the pot. Stir gently just enough to dampen the sugar. Put the spatula aside and resist any temptation to stir again until mixture is done cooking. Heat on medium heat on stove until mixture starts to simmer. Put the lid on the pot and let it simmer away covered for a couple of minutes at least. The condensation on the sides of the pot will was down any lingering sugar granules and help prevent crystallization later on. Remove lid.

Monitor temperature periodically as the mixture boils. It will likely hang around 212ºF (100C) for a while until the water boils off and then beginning climbing gradually. The rate of increase may increase as the temperature increases, so be vigilant. 

A deep red for Cinnamon candies

At 260ºF (125C) add drops of liquid food colouring as desired. Just sprinkle them on the boiling syrup. Don't stir! The boiling action will mix the colour in.

As soon as the syrup hits 300ºF (150C) turn off stove and remove pot from heat. Wait for boiling to subside. Measure out your flavouring and pour on top of syrup. Use spatula to stir it in. Warning: some flavourings, especially the natural oils, let off a lot of harsh sinus-penetrating volatile aromatic hydrocarbons. Stand back while stirring!

Lovely shiny ribbons

Pour one to three ribbons of syrup onto your heat-proof oiled surface and then place saucepan back on stove on lowest heat to keep remaining syrup liquid. Don't touch the ribbons at first. 

Use dough scraper to fold them over on themselves once or twice. After they begin to hold a more rolled, three-dimensional shape, they are ready to start handling. 

Work quickly! Touch lightly with clean hands and keep your hands and the candy ribbons moving so as to avoid burns. We like to twist ours a dozen or so turns and then roll the twisted rods like snakes a bit between our palms to compact them. 

Snip into candy-sized lengths into icing sugar while still warm and pliable. Toss to cover with icing sugar. Repeat until all the syrup has been turned into candy. Sift off excess icing sugar.

Alternatively you can pour all your syrup onto a rimmed cookie sheet lined with lightly oiled foil, wait a couple of minutes and score your clear lake of candy into bite-sized bits with the back of a lightly oiled dinner knife. If the scores fill in, the candy is still too hot: wait a couple of minutes and repeat. Allow scored candy sheet to cool completely, then break into bits along the scoring lines.

Sophie gets three beautiful lollipops and this
many candies from a single batch

Or you can use lightly-oiled candy molds. (Not the kind made just for chocolate: they won't stand the high heat of this syrup. You need the kind intended for hard candy.) Pour. Cool. Turn out.

Candy should be stored in a cool dry area, inside something moisture-proof.

Candy shop

Sophie has been busy making candy. From left to right:

Root beer, mint, anise, maple, tangerine and lemon.

Next up: butter rum, raspberry and cinnamon.

She's also making lollipops which are turning out very nicely. She can do three large lollipops from each batch of candy, leaving the quantity shown in the lemon drop jar for lozenges. Each batch takes about 45 minutes from start to finish, including clean-up.

Mother's Day Run

There was a notice in the paper about a 5k run in a town to the north of us. There's haven't been running events up there in as long as I can recall, so it seemed like something worth going to. I figured I'd use it as my first official barefoot event. I haven't been running a lot this spring, or particularly hard, but I'm doing it all minimalist style and feel like I'm finally past all those niggling calf and foot troubles and have completed the transition to barefoot and barefoot-style running. Time to do something official totally barefoot.

Yesterday I was picking Erin up from the gym, where she had also done a bit of running on the streets around town, and I said "Oh, hey, there's a 5k I'm going to run in Nakusp tomorrow. Want to come and do it with me? We'd need to leave by about 8:30." She said yeah, sure, and would I please make sure she got up in time to eat something and get changed.

So I woke her up this morning and she ate breakfast and got her running stuff. And I mentioned that she should bring some warm stuff to cover up with, because we'd probably end up standing around for twenty minutes or so and that would make us cold.

"Standing around? Um, what are we doing?" she asked, clearly very confused.

"We're going to run that 5k Fun Run in Nakusp," I said. "We'll have to register when we get there, so we ...."

"A race?" she interrupted, laughing. "I thought there was just some 5k trail you wanted to run. You never told me it was an organized run!"

"Oh. Oops, sorry. Want to do a race?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever."

So we went. We ran. The weather was lovely. I managed barefoot. My lack of shoes slowed me down a bit on the downhills and on some of the gnarly chipseal asphalt, the kind you don't really pay any mind to unless you're barefoot. My feet were a bit sore by the end but nothing that won't be back to normal by tomorrow. All in all it was a successful barefoot run. My Garmin didn't triangulate until after the first long straight stretch, so it didn't record my time, and neither Erin nor I noticed that there was an official race timer at the finish line. Duh! We were definitely in the "fun run mindset," I guess. Extrapolating from what my Garmin did record, I think we both finished under or around 28 minutes, she about twenty seconds ahead of me, which was a pretty reasonable pace for a fun run for us.

It was a great way to start off the day.

Mother's Day Concert

Need I say more? It was a great concert. They are great kids. The music was fabulous. And then after it was over, Erin and Sophie did a quick presto-change-o and became choral accompanist and soprano and did the community choir performance as well.

Soccer

Sophie is our only soccer player this year. She hadn't played in a couple of years but was keen to go out this year. Her team has an awesome coach. They're actually learning strategic skills, and practicing using them in scrimmages.

There's no league per se. Just one local team for Sophie's age level. The organizers called around to similar small-scale community soccer programs in nearby villages and arranged a short roster of Saturday morning games. So far there are five games scheduled. In past years our local soccer teams have been part of the main roster of the larger town 40 minutes north, where there's a big soccer program. That meant games every single blessed Saturday, most of them up there. For a family whose May and June tends to be packed with end-of-year musical performances the weekly out-of-town games and twice-weekly practices were an onerous time commitment. This feels much more managable.

Sophie has come so far in the first three weeks of practices! It's amazing to see her digging in and handling the ball and running and really kicking. Age-wise she's "Grade 7" on a Grade 5/6/7 team, albeit one of the youngest Grade 7's, so even though she's small for her age she is no longer the tiniest kid on the field. She is really in her element skills-wise as well: challenged, but not over her head by any means.

But as an aside: how come my kid of all people has a heel strike like this?

High school

Erin returned from Corazón tour to a whole slew of English assignments. National Youth Orchestra starts before the school year ends because it's built more around the university academic year than the high school one, so somehow she not only has to get caught up in English and her other courses, but she has to get a couple of weeks ahead so that she can do school final exams and the provincial exams before she leaves.

She has a couple of performances on piano and violin this weekend, rehearsals for the pit orchestra of a full-scale musical production in Nelson kicking into high gear, and 60 or so pages of NYO repertoire to learn too. Plus Suzuki, quartet and several more Corazon performances to round out the year. And hopefully enough time to do some serious work on her solo repertoire.

And for all these reasons I am feeling exceptionally grateful for the open-minded flexibility of the K-12 public school she's enrolled in. I say "enrolled in" rather than "attends" for good reason. Over the past three weeks a combination of tour, choir rehearsals, school special events and such has meant that she has attended exactly one double block of English and that's all. This is less school attendance than usual for her, but even at the best of times she goes to school less than half the time. In a typical week during the winter she might have attended for Tuesday morning and all day Wednesday. Some weeks she might have gone two other full days, or another morning, but often not.

She is not scheduled into classrooms for most of her coursework. In fact, only English 12 is a classroom-based course for her this semester. That means that technically she is scheduled to be in the Facilitated Learning Centre at the school, where students who are doing on-line courses, individual project-based courses or teacher-directed independent study courses with teacher supervision and assistance as needed and those school attendance rules satisfied to a tee. But the reality is that she is a de facto homeschooler, and the school recognizes this. She has so many musical/travel commitments, and works so well when away from the school building, that they see no reason to impose rules that make no sense for her. Why would you take a teen who submits one to three Social Studies assignments a day during Christmas holidays so that the entire year-long course is more or less wrapped up in two months, and force her to attend school to prove that she is working and learning? It would make no sense. And the school recognizes that. They're not worried about rules for the sake of rules. They're not concerned about "setting a precedent" by allowing this. They want to serve the best interests of this particular student. How refreshing!

And so here is what she did to catch up on schoolwork during a precious warm sunny school day this week: she sat on the deck at home. This is how she works best. She took her poetry textbook out with her, and she wrote poetry and interpretive essays. Spending a day like this within the walls of the school would give some people the satisfying sense that she was "being schooled," but fortunately Erin, her parents and her teachers all recognize that her learning is far more efficient like this. Independent immersion-like work in comfortable surroundings.

Next year she won't be doing any classroom based courses, and she'll do her last few credits exclusively through on-line courseware. So she will be enrolled not through the bricks-and-mortar school but through its Distributed Learning program, which is administered through the same building and by, as it happens, the same two people who have supervised the bulk of her in-school courses. So little will change.

Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep

Our new batch of Ameracauna chicks arrived via the post office this morning. While we had had success breeding our own stock in the past, we lost all our chickens when we left the homestead undefended by both human and dog while Sophie's appendix was bursting on our non-vacation last year.

So we're starting from scratch again, if you'll pardon the pun. This batch is nicely varied in colour with a number of lovely coppery chicks as well as the standard yellow-black stripey sort. Our basement is full of cheeps and chirps and it glows with the red of the heat lamp.

Corazón

The recording above was made at their first performance of the season, a couple of weeks ago in Silverton. That's Erin you see in the title frame, second from the left in front. Noah figures a few times in the course of the video, one of the guys in the front row. The performance was pretty good considering where they were in their preparations i.e. just starting to pull things together for their tour and main hometown concerts next month. Zulu Mama is one of their "just have fun" songs; even though it's not one of the most polished or impressive ones, I put this one up because it shows their happiness so clearly.

Over the past week they've been through some really intensive rehearsing, workshopping and participating while on the road at the Banff Festival. They sang one of the Showcase Concerts, as their reputation from previous years secured them this honour. By all accounts they were tremendously successful.

I got an email from the manager shortly after picking my kids up off the tour bus in Nelson and driving them home. "Your funny, bright, caring, responsible kids made the Banff trip really amazing," he wrote. "There was a really remarkable session with an adjudicator which I am sure they will tell you about." Indeed, they had told me right away. The adjudicator had been brought to tears during their main festival performance. During their adjudication session she mentioned how moved she had been earlier, and how special the dynamic within the choir seemed to be. "Tell me about your director," she asked. "Who is this Allison?" And members of the choir began pouring out comments with all the warmth and love and caring they feel, speaking about how strongly they feel bound together by her leadership in this endeavour. And before long Allison was in tears, and so was half the choir. Including, I suspect, many of the guys.

This is a youth choir in a small rural town of 10,000. Not a city of a hundred thousand with a robust system of feeder choirs where the senior choir skims off the cream of the crop of scores of experienced singers. Allison accepts almost any teen who is keen and can sing in tune. No prior experience is required, no note-reading is necessary. And somehow, out of this  motley and unseasoned crew she pulls together a group that produces a sound in turns so joyful, tightly honed, caring, emotive, austere, attentive, exhuberant. My kids are so blessed. This will be Erin's last season with Corazón. Next year may be Sophie's first, and one more of Noah's many. I hope the choir is still going strong when Fiona is a teen.

More market research

Now it's Fiona's turn. She has been persistent in her desire to create teas to sell at the market this summer. So far she's working on two blends.

The first is a tropical chai featuring organic black assam tea, red pepper flakes, toasted coconut, cardamom and cinnamon. Don't snicker: it's inspired by a boutique tea blend we love and Fiona's version 2.0, with the cinnamon toned down, is remarkably good.

The second is well on its way to being a winner. It's a Kootenay herbal blend based on wild ginger and rose hips. It needs some citrusy overtones, and so far she's used lemon peel; ultimately the hope would be to use organic lemon balm from our garden, but with the snow just barely gone it isn't exactly ready for harvest yet. I think it might also benefit from a hint of our peppermint, but we'll see. The wild ginger was fresh-picked in the forest today, but we went through the bother of drying it to test out how it would retain its flavour and release it in the tea. It works really well with the rose hips.

Sophie's Sweets

The Friday Market in town will be starting up again soon, and Sophie has identified a market niche that she wishes to fill. She has been busily researching candy-making and doing various experiments. She decided that although kids would probably buy a few lurid-coloured lollipops at a dollar apiece, there's likely a broader market to be tapped into if she appeals to adults meandering around appreciating the quaintness of the market and the simplicity of its mostly natural products.

So her plan is to focus on old-fashioned hard candy, using simple and mostly natural ingredients: sugar, corn syrup, natural flavours where possible and a bit of vegetable-based colouring where warranted.

She's made three test batches so far. The first proved definitively that our candy thermometer is not accurate unless deeply immersed in large-volume recipes: some heavily carmelized (i.e. somewhat burnt) peppermint candies were the result. The laser thermometer has been perfect. The root beer flavouring produced a divine result, and though the maple she tried today was a little too subtle (add more next time!) it otherwise worked nicely. We've tried a few approaches to shaping the candy. So far the best method, in that the syrup remains workable long enough for a 12-year-old to complete production, is to drizzle it in powdered sugar, let cool slightly, then roll, twist and snip the cooling candy into individual pillow-shaped candies. The final product has a nice, rustic look to it that fits with her marketing plan.

Today she and I have been talking about and experimenting with packaging and presentation options. Kraft paper gives a nice look, I think. Wetted down it can be easily tied over old jar lids. The matching labels look lovely. The smaller 8 oz. jar shown in the photo is about the right size for a large gift jar and holds about 170 gm of candy. She'll also need smaller jars: we hope to recycle 4 oz. baby food jars. We have a pump'n'seal thingummy that does a great job of evacuating air from jars and sealing out the moisture that makes the candies get sticky and soft over time. So far the jars we've sealed have kept their candy nice and dry even in our warm humid kitchen.

Fiona's plan is to blend loose-leaf herbal teas and exotic chai blends to sell at the market. She is hoping to grow a lot of herbs and before too long we will be heading into the forest in search of wild ginger to harvest.

Festival Week at School

Last week Sophie and Fiona went to school. It was the week of the Arts and Writers Festival at the local public school, the one that umbrellas us as homeschoolers under their DL program. So they were invited to join the school classes for the week. We looked over the line-up of offerings and the girls were keen. There was felting, and pottery, and puppetry, and an aboriginal story-telling event, and an art workshop. Monday and Tuesday were fully-scheduled days. Wednesday and Thursday the festival comprised just an hour or two. Wednesday evening was the Coffee House, an exhibit of artwork and roster of music and puppetry performances and readings of creative writing. Tuesday afternoon and evening included two local performances by Corazón, one at the school and one at the hall, which we all attended of course. Soccer practice and violin lessons had to squeezed in there somehow too. It would give us a taste of the time constraints school would place upon us if they were attending full-time, though as Sophie pointed out, we we would be trying to fit school into a pre-existing homeschooling life, which would make it more of a juggle.

This was the first almost-full-time taste of school for both girls. Way back in 2004 Erin gave school a try for a couple of days in order to find out if it was something she'd like to consider for herself full-time the following year. I quietly spent a couple of days worrying that she might be keen on enrolling, but it turned out she wasn't. With Fiona and Sophie attending last week I wasn't at all worried that they'd decide they wanted to attend school. I don't really worry about that sort of thing any more. But I was curious what they would think about the whole experience.

Fiona joined the Grade 3/4's for the week. With her January birthday she's "old" for Grade 2 and a much better match socially and intellectually for the 3/4 class than the K/1/2 group, and fortunately the teachers knew her well enough to recognize that. She got along famously with the group and had a lovely time, especially enjoying the puppetry and pottery. She would love to attend something like that every week but recognized that normal school is not like the Festival week. She said "If I ever did school it would definitely just be for the socializing." While in the past I've tried to keep my kids out of most grade-levelled curriculum materials, in some ways it is nice that Fiona is aware that she's doing Grade 6 science and math content: she realizes that a regular school classroom would not allow her the flexibility to pursue these areas of passion at a level that challenges her.

Sophie and her best bud (also unschooled) joined the Grade 5/6/7's for the Festival week. They had fun together, typically working side by side and pairing up for collaborative projects. I'm not sure Sophie would have enjoyed it as much without her friend there. The social dynamic in the older portion of that classroom has a strong peer-oriented girl culture running through it, and Sophie doesn't resonate terribly well with those kids. Still, she had a good experience with the activities, though not compelling enough to pine for even the social and enrichment-activity-related perks of school.

The coffee house was long, crowded and tiring after a number of long days, but it was a nice way to cap off the week. And I admit that it is nice to feel a bit more connected to the community of other families and children. Fiona followed up with a playdate on the weekend with a new friend, and I saw a lot of nice people I don't see very often.

Children and computer use

Written in response to a mom of a 5-month-old who was asking for advice on how much and how early to encourage computer use by her child as she grows up:

I love what technology does for us, but here's the thing: its pull is relentless. There is no way bright kids today with computer-literate parents and even basic technology in the home will not grow up frightenly capable with computers. What I fear they may lack is the sense of connection to the real. I don't mean this in a spooky Ender's-Game-like sense of living a virtual life. I mean that I think that humans are hard-wired to learn from direct experience with the physical world, and that if especially when they're young (say, under 12 or so) they don't get copious experience with the direct consequences of their actions they will not develop fully as empathetic, responsible, moral beings. So I think it is pretty cool to play with virtual farms and learn how protecting a breeding stock of poultry will promote strong meat and egg production over the years. But I think that this is not nearly a substitute for incubating eggs in your laundry room, carefully monitoring the heat lamp to nurture those chicks through their tender first weeks, hauling water out to the henhouse twice a day in the depths of winter, and cooking the eggs and meat you harvest. (I realize this is just an example: most urban kids won't have the opportunity to raise hens like mine have. But I hope you get my point.) In the real world if you mess up you don't can't click "Menu>>New Game" and your characters don't automatically respawn after 20 seconds. Your mess-ups result in dead chicks, or time-consuming and exhausting damage-control, or stress on relationships and loss of trust that needs work to be put to rights.

It's tempting to think that you can have both: the clean and easy virtual experience and the chicken-poop-on-your-boots type. And I do think you can. I'm trying to create a balance for my kids that allows them to have both. But what I've seen over the years is that the virtual, disconnected-from-the-real-world experiences have much the greater attraction for kids (and, I confess, for parents) because they're so tidy and readily available and easy and low-risk. And so in keeping a balance for my kids I've found that my parental effort needs to favour the real-world experiences. I need to work very hard to keep my kids engaged in the dirty, messy, risky, hard-working business of real life, and I need to do absolutely no facilitation at all, and if anything sometimes create obstacles, concerning their engagement with the virtual. When I do that the balance seems to come out about right.

Falling Sand

Way back in 2006 Noah discovered Owen Piette's "Falling Sand Game." These silly little desktop diversions were quite the rage at the time. You sprinkle virtual coloured sand in a little window on your desktop and it falls, slowly or quickly, depending on which colour you choose. Lovely zen-like patterns form in the heaps at the bottom of the window.

WXSand, Piette's version, was the first open source game that Noah started tinkering with. The script containing the definitions of the various types of sand was infinitely modifiable. We went on a lovely computer-free vacation to Texada Island that fall and the whole time we were there, tide pooling and kayaking and playing family games Noah's little 9-year-old brain was turning as he amassed ideas for new elements he intended to code for WXSand.

Fast forward to this year. Noah has been attending Community Gaming Night, a biweekly open session at one of the community halls where several computers and a gaming console or two are set up and kids, teens and adults are welcome to drop in and play and learn and socialize. I practically had to drag Noah to the first session last fall (he's still incredibly resistant to new things) but he quickly became Gaming Night's biggest fan and a major motive force. The organizer has increasingly put him in charge of portions of the evening. He's now choosing most of the games for the children's portion (the first three hours, devoted to games suitable for all ages) and providing input for the teen/adult session that follows. He's been granted admin privileges on the computers and does much of the installing and configuring.

And because he's providing software for the younger set, recently he has been pulling out some of the really old games he enjoyed when he was 8 through 12. They're mostly available for free now, which is great for a community program running on a shoestring budget. They run on old machines. And some of them are remarkably unique and clever, considering the limited computing power they require.

For old times' sake he pulled out WX Sand a couple of weeks ago. And he decided it would be fun to do some scripting for it again. He discovered that he's many times more efficient and effective at coding than he was back then and is much more adept at devising logical workarounds for conceptual problems (like, trying to use a game devised as a pretty diversion made up of falling pixels into a simulation of a steam engine, or an electrical circuit).

He had such fun creating funky new elements to perform weird functions in the game that I suggested he take the script in to show our liaison teacher at our monthly meeting where we report on what the kids have been busy learning. According to the DL course structure that we set up for Noah this year, he's enrolled in high school courses in the InfoTech subject area. I figured it would be useful evidence of learning, and Noah agreed. He loaded up is thumb drive with the game and his home-made script, and headed into the school.

You need to understand that our DL teacher is a science and math guy. So this was right up his alley. Using code and mathematical parameters to simulate physical and chemical reactions between various substances? Couldn't have been more his kind of thing! Noah loaded the program and the script and started explaining, demonstrating, tweaking code on the fly, commenting on his approach and logical problem-solving strategies, highlighting, using metaphors and simplifications to describe for his DL teacher how and why he had used certain approaches. They huddled together, talking and trying things out. The teacher was clearly very impressed.

Finally, after about twenty minutes, it was lunch time and they sat back to kind of wrap things up.

"Do you want a copy of the coding I did?" Noah asked, unsure as we all are about how much hard evidence of learning this new DL program is required to amass.

"Actually," the DL teacher confessed, smirking conspiratorially ... "I'd kind of like a copy of the whole game."

And so Noah loaded WXSand and his vastly appended script file of physics elements on the school laptop. I am pretty sure this has nothing whatsoever to do with Evidence of Learning. I think it has to do with one pretty nifty DL teacher whose gaming and scientific interests were genuinely piqued by what Noah had showed him.

Car Free Day

I wonder why we haven't done this in forever?

The Sienna gets a day off to enjoy the spring-like sunshine.

Our biggest challenge in trying to reduce our environmental footprint has always been in the realm of transportation. We live miles (or depending on how you define it, hours of miles) from anything. There is no public transit to speak of here. One day a week, which is the wrong day for us for any number of reasons, if you have the entire day to spare, there's a bus that will get you to Nelson and back. But we've never been able to use it. Buses to Calgary, which Erin does make use of regularly, require us to make a 6-hour round-trip drive just to get her to or pick her up from the bus station: and cost almost double the price of gas to drive the whole distance in the van. And even the short distance to town (3.4 kilometers to get to the top of main street) is along a winding mountain highway with scanty shoulders, with a 6-8% grade. It's not a walk for the faint-of-heart.

As anyone who reads this blog will know, our village of 600 has a lot going for it, but when it comes to several of the things that my kids are interested in there simply aren't the numbers and activities here to support them. So we travel a lot. Playing a soccer game against another team requires a 40-minute drive. The aikido dojo we were a part of was 30 minutes south. Corazon Vocal Ensemble rehearses 90 minutes away. And of course violin and viola lessons for the older two are 8 hours away in Calgary.

So we drive. A lot. Thirty thousand kilometres a year, at least. And feel guilty about it. Six years ago we bought our minivan with an eye to fuel efficiency. (Passing on the 4WD model was a probably short-sighted choice made primarily to reduce fuel consumption.) But it's a minivan nonetheless and it runs on fossil fuels.

Today we didn't drive. Today we decided to be car-free in order to remind ourselves how much we depend on the vehicle, how much we appreciate its convenience and instant gratification it affords. (Out of milk? Wondering if anything interesting came in today's mail? Drive to town! Go back later for something else...)

Wild turkeys, seen crossing the highway yesterday

The three younger kids and I had a meeting at the school with our DL program liaison teacher this morning. We had a bunch of projects, books and bookwork to bring and show off, so we packed them in a backpack and headed out. There was snow on the ground at home, but out on the highway things were clear and dry. We had hoped we might run into the turkeys again today but alas while Sophie heard some gobbling in the woods, they weren't out in plain sight.

We arrived perfectly on time, the walk taking about 43 minutes (downhill being much the quicker direction). While Noah was finishing up his part of our meeting, the girls went to the Post Office and picked up the mail. We went to the bank and then to our favourite café for lunch. Then we headed home, which took about an hour.

After we got home, Erin, who had stayed home practicing for the morning, went to the gym. She jogged down, did her couple of hours of working out, and then power-walked and jogged back home, for a total of about three hours of exercise.

In the meantime the three younger kids had eaten supper and we had given their bikes a spring tuning. They rode off to Gaming Night, a Friday night occasion not to be missed. Held at one of the community halls, this is a chance for kids and adults who enjoy playing computer and video games to get together and play in real time and real space in a social atmosphere. There are 4 or 5 reconditioned computers, plus the organizer's own couple of machines, plus a console game platform or two hooked up to a TV (most recently the Xbox Kinect which my kids love). For the first three hours the games are all rated "E" for Everyone and all kids are welcome. After 9 pm it's mature gaming time targetted at teens and adults (slightly younger kids can stay with parental permission) so all the younger kids leave and the older ones stay on or drift in. Noah attends the entire six hours if he can manage it, and has become kind of the Assistant Tech Guy, granted full admin privileges and recently taking most of the responsibility for selecting and installing games for the pre-teens.

So the kids rode their bikes down and have ditched them at grandma's house for retrieval tomorrow. I'll head out in time to pick Fiona up at 9 o'clock. I'll bring four head-lamps and some water and leave half of my supplies with Sophie and Noah. I'll walk home with Fiona. At a few minutes before midnight, as Gaming Night is shutting down, Noah and Sophie will don their own head-lamps and start hoofing it up the hill. They are have pointed out that according to their logic Car Free Day ends at midnight and that therefore I will be there in the minivan to pick them up before they get too far up the hill. Depending on how cold and spooky my walk home with Fiona between 9 and 10 turns out to be that may indeed be the case. Then again Fiona will have self-transported a total of 15 km today, most of that on foot; should Noah and Sophie really be rescued after 11.5 kilometres? We shall see how benevolent the owner/operator of Mom's Taxi Service is feeling at midnight.

All in all they've taken to it without complaint and with the spirit of adventure and appreciation that it was intended to nurture.

Oh, and Chuck is off at a conference for a few days. We had a feeling he wouldn't have been willing to play along (as his lack of appreciation and respect for No-Screen Days in the past has suggested), so this Friday was chosen strategically to avoid the issue of paternal non-compliance.

Dvorak Symphony

Last weekend Noah, Erin and I, together with another long-time local student and friend, headed off for another weekend at with the Symphony. Noah had done one previous program with this group, Erin and I had done two and it was J.'s first. The program was bigger and meatier this time, though, with two big works by Dvorak: the Symphony No. 8 in G Major and the Cello Concerto.





On Friday we took the terrific and free Osprey ferry across Kootenay Lake, meeting up with a few other orchestra members on board, and then continued to drive on eastwards to Cranbrook where we checked into our truly lovely motel room and headed out to the first of three rehearsals at the theatre. We had a performance on Saturday night in Cranbrook, and then on Sunday headed west and home again, convening that evening at the theatre in Nelson for a second performance. It was nice to play for the "home crowd." Chuck, Fiona and Sophie had never heard the orchestra so this was their chance. 
I put together the above video as part of Noah's virtual portfolio for his Orchestra 10 high school credit through our DL program. Unfortunately you can't see either Noah or Erin in the video; Chuck, who manned the camcorder, was in Row 2, eyes at stage level and with a very minimal view of anyone other than the front-row players. You can see me from time to time (playing 2nd violin next to the white-haired violist in the front row) and I did my best to intersperse some other video and stills of Noah with the concert footage. At least you get to see him in his suit and tie, purchased especially for this orchestral gig! And hopefully you get a taste of how exciting it is for kids who have mostly cut their orchestral teeth in a tiny entry-level community string orchestra to have a first rehearsal on Friday and play a performance like this two days later!