Almost Spring

As I mentioned at the end of my last entry, I'm starting to investigate the possibility of creating a children's gardening club. I really feel that gardening is a wonderful life lesson, an amazing unschooling "curriculum". But its potential has remained relatively untapped by us for a number of reasons. First, I lose my focus... I've not been a highly committed gardener. I let the weeds take over and then it's frustrating. Second, our garden was feral from the moment we inherited it, and it's been tough wrestling it back from the couch-grass. Third, our garden is far away in a lonely corner of the yard and provides little in the way of an aesthetic or social draw for the kids. Fourthly, pregnancy and parenting an infant have added to the challenge. And fifthly, we have a relatively short growing season and fairly poor soil (acidic and lacking in nutrients).

At any rate, I would love to inspire my kids to garden. And I hit on the idea of starting a children's gardening club that would have a site in town (where the growing season is longer) and some semi-structured leadership and regular meeting times. None of this can possibly fall into place this spring, so I'm looking to garden more successfully on the home front this year with the kids while getting a club up and running for 2005.

In this vein, I've been putting a fair bit of my own energy into garden preparations and trying to include any kids who are receptive. Sophie and I made little pots made of rolled & tamped newspaper, filled with potting mix. They're waiting for tomato seeds. I started some peppers in some other pots. There's lettuce sprouting in the cold frame. Sophie and I also started a gardening journal.

Yesterday I took the kids to the community garden (maintained by volunteers) for the big work party. The other workers were mostly retirees, though there was another unschooling mom there with her 5yo for a while. Erin had really not wanted to go. She was in her pyjamas, sitting at the computer, and in one of those moods. We told her to bring a book and read in the van, but by the time she got dressed and got on her new sneakers (which she's hardly had a chance to wear because of all the snow at our place) she was begrudgingly compliant. And then within twenty minutes, all the kids were totally hooked on doing real work of real value just like the grownups. They stayed for almost 4 hours and no one wanted to leave when it was time to go home for supper! They carried piles of pruned-off branches to the brush pile. They raked. They trimmed and did some simple pruning. They also did a lot of running around playing hide-and-seek, and throwing stones in the lake. But they kept coming back to work. They all want to go back on Wednesday.

Today, back at home, I did some yardwork in the places where the snow had receded. I had to spend 10 minutes digging the wheelbarrow out of a snowbank first. To say I'm pushing the envelope on spring would be an understatement. I raked a little on the paths and in front of the house where the sun has melted the snow away, put away the skis and sleds, rolled up a bit of the ice rink liner and also did some pruning. It was an amazingly beautiful day. The temperature crept up to about 10 C (50 F), the sun was warming us all, and it felt like spring despite the snow on the ground. The kids were wearing shorts, T-shirts and sandals, playing tetherball, raking, pruning, biking, running around. They haven't come inside yet, except to eat and drink.

They're going to be exhausted. It'll be tough getting the practising done, but at least they've had a happy and healthy day.

I'm feeling really optimistic about the gardening interest.

In the rest of our lives things are mostly clicking along. All three are really enjoying the additional challenge and length of their new, somewhat tailor-made, homeschool gymnastics class. Art class is continuing, with lots of drawing and painting (especially faces) and some paper maché. We went to a marionette puppet show last weekend that was mostly aimed at little kids, but Erin really liked the puppets and wants to make some. The kids performed violin at a Preschool Fundraising Dinner last weekend and briefly became local celebrities. I think that particular dinner included a lot of people who don't normally attend concerts, and so when we were running errands in town on Wednesday six different people made a point of coming up to the kids and telling them how impressed they were with their performance. Noah joined the community orchestra for a couple of the easier numbers last week for the first time. He really enjoyed himself. It's true about Erin's cursive handwriting: I saw a letter she'd written and it's beautiful!

Our main readaloud right now is Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. We've just started book 2, "The Subtle Knife". This is very good. I thought Sophie and Noah might lose interest because it's so deep and complex, but they're following it at their own levels and enjoying it a lot.

Penpals and practising

My kids are on a bit of a penpal kick right now. A couple of years ago I'd tried to interest Erin in penpal correspondence, but the enthusiasm didn't really kick in and the few little bits of effort she expended weren't enough to fire things up. This time things are different, probably for two reasons.

First, the impetus for the projects hasn't come from me, so there was no question of who "owned" the ideas. This is all about the kids, and I'm staying very much in the back seat. Second, we're working mostly with postal mail rather than e-mail. The tangible nature of letters, stamps, treats and trinkets has won the kids over big-time.

Noah has a Dutch pal who is enthusiastic and quick to reply. J.'s mom types a dictated letter in Dutch and then translates it to English and J. sends both copies. The little packets he's been sending and receiving have inspired Noah's sisters. Erin has started corresponding with a former e-pal in Scotland again, through the mail this time. And I've just got Sophie hooked up with a little girl in Japan with a Canadian mom, who wants to know more about Canada and to pick up more English.

I knew having a penpal would provide some learning about languages and cultural and physical geography, and give some writing practice. However, it's also providing some neat opportunities to practice particular types of social skills: some perspective-taking based on limited information ("from what we know about him, do you think he's the type of kid who would enjoy ____?" or "let's be careful not to send so much that she feels she has to live up to our example") and to work on the responsibility of nurturing and maintaining a friendship ("Since we're not going to get around to sending our packet until next week, maybe we should send an e-mail to let him know").

It's been a transitional 2 or 3 weeks for Erin's practising. She hit a big lull in motivation at the beginning of March. For years I've known that she wants to be in charge of every minute aspect of her life. But when it came to practising, although she hates me "making her" practice, she hasn't wanted to take responsibility for it herself. She's ten now, in Book 7, and has occasionally in the past year demonstrated brilliant analytical and problem-solving skills in her self-directed practising. Given that we're always battling over getting the practising done (started, mostly) I really felt it was time to give her not just independence in practising, but responsibility for ensuring it gets done. Yet she seemed to want to refuse to take responsibility. She preferred to stay embroiled in a power struggle with me

Then I thought about it: I try to hand over responsibility when I'm at the end of my rope. I'm saying "I've had enough of this! I am not putting up with it any more! You are in charge, and you can sink or swim."

Invariably, she sunk. And blamed me. She was already in a cycle of resistence, feeling frustrated and discouraged, and of course she viewed my quitting as her practice cop as a withdrawal of support.

Now, for the past week, things have been on an upswing. Conflict is at a minimum. We're in one of those too-rare phases when there isn't much resistence. And I said "You're doing well. I don't think you need me to boss you into practising any more. I'm sure you can handle this."

She's swimming! I've not quit as her practice cop... I've been offered, and accepted, early retirement.

I'm sure there are rough patches in our future. I'm sure she will begin to sink from time to time. But this is the first time I've made any progress in getting her to "own" her success or failure in regular practising.

I have a feeling this is an lesson I should try to learn well and get comfortable applying to all parts of life before ushering four kids through adolescence.

Noah has discovered that he can read the text in reference books, rather than just browsing pictures and captions, and is delighted to be able to teach himself all sorts of interesting stuff. His reading confidence is taking off in a big way with this discovery. He sits near me in the family room and explains what he's just learned. He's reading the "Usborne Illustrated Guide to Greek Myths and Legends" lately.

Sophie is reading quite well now too, simple picture books, easy readers. It was on December 1st that she first read an unfamiliar word ('Montana') aloud and I thought "yikes! she's starting to read! how'd I miss that till now?"

Suddenly I've got three kids reading for pleasure, not just one!

Erin, who has been writing daily in her (locked) journal, tells me her cursive writing has improved a lot. I found a computer cheat code on the desk done in cursive and I have to say it's true. Noah has just about finished Singapore Math 2A and I've just realized I'd better hurry up and track down 2B for him (2A was just an "experiment" to see if Singapore would suit him). Erin is gradually patching up holes in 6A before moving ahead into 6B. She's slowed down with her math again. Sophie has lost her Miquon Red Book, so she hasn't done any formal math in a week or two. She's doing lots of self-directed piano work (setting out rhythmic reading flashcards and clapping them, reading ahead in her first primer book, practising and improvising).

I've made small blank journals using some of the kids' marbled paper for the covers. Now I'm restoring a Beatrix Potter book I read as a child, just for fun. I feel like Mo in "Inkheart". I've also been doing a bit of organizational / feasibility work on possibly creating a Junior Organic Gardeners' Club in our town. And I'm creating a brand-new website from scratch. It must be my spring rush of creativity, arriving early.

Our big readaloud right now is "the Golden Compass" by Phillip Pullman. Must go read now.

Communicating and a new month

I've been remiss in posting blog entries the last couple of weeks, so I'll try to start the new month off on a better note.

Fiona is communicating like crazy. "Nine-nine" means she wants something, and she'll now point or take you by the hand and lead you through the house to show what she wants. "Gah" and pulling up her shirt and patting her tummy means she has to use the potty. She says a few real words, too. But the delightful thing is this recent discovery of purposeful communication: she knows that she can explain to us what she wants. She's also developed a fondness for sitting with me reading and looking through board books.

Sophie is doing some almost-daily preparatory piano work in joyful anticipation of starting piano lessons "soon" (probably not until the fall). She's writing long phonetic notes for "purposeful communication." Left on Chuck's laptop the other night was a piece of paper saying

DADE DOT FORGE-
T TO GET MILC

The kids pooled their allowance for the last four months and found a good deal on a USB steering-wheel-and-pedals control device for their computer, along with "Midtown Madness 2", a simulation of no-holds-barred nutso driving through London and San Francisco. They'd seen it at a friend's house. It arrived about 10 days ago and has taken a lot of their time. The initial obsessive enthusiasm has finally almost burned itself out. Noah has displayed very high levels of intensity. I'm sure I've mentioned before how he hates competitive, score-keeping situations and avoids them at all costs. MM2 allows you to unlock cool new vehicles for winning races. Twice I've found him hyperventilating, red in the face, and in tears trying desperately to win a race to unlock a specific vehicle. He understands intellectually that he's too tightly wound, that he needs a break, that the game is affecting him too strongly, but he gets to the point of emotional crisis without sensing the need for a break.

I have mixed feelings about this game. I think the kids have spent too much time at the computer, BUT they seem to have reached the point of self-regulation without my interference. I think the message about driving like a maniac being fun is not a positive message BUT it's so much less toxic than games of human violence and really, they're many years from learning to drive and harbour no illusions that it's anything like this. It seems to have precious little educational merit, BUT then again their map-reading skills, visual-spatial memory and multi-tasking skills are growing to amazing levels. I'd love to set limits, BUT I know they'll backfire and create conflict, and cause the kids to miss learning to limit themselves. So we carry on.

Noah, who likes to learn in a "Gestalt manner" (getting the whole picture first) has struggled with taking problematic bits of piano pieces apart to work on them slowly, hands separately and in small chunks. He doesn't want to work this way, and his initial difficulty with figuring out exactly what the little chunk feels and sounds like in isolation leaves him complaining that it's harder to play parts than the whole. "I can't start there, it's too hard!" (Of course I know that it's precisely because these little bits aren't well-learned in isolation that he can only get the whole piece to "almost-fluid" status and not completely there, but it hasn't helped hearing it from me. On reflection, it seems like maybe we need a good metaphor here. For instance "when your bike tire kept getting just a little bit flat, we tried just adding air, but every morning it would be flat again, so eventually we had to fix it right: turn it upside down, loosen the nuts, slip off the chain, remove the wheel, pry off the tire, check the tube and patch the leak. Reminder to self to try this explanation.) Anyway, this week at his lesson, thanks to some leading comments from me, he was given clear, unwavering directives that he must work this way in order to continue to progress at this level. I hope this helps.

Noah and Erin have been doing paper making and marbeling and collage at art class. The marbling is really neat. I'd like to use their marbled paper for book covers. I have marbeling supplies at home but I haven't yet got courageous enough to try it here (the mess... the mess...).

Erin has read the Harry Potter books in entirety twice in the past 10 days. She's going through a challenging time. She stays in her bedroom reading until noon, emerges to eat and complain about everything. And she's been adamant she doesn't want to be bugged about doing her practising, so her practising has not been happening at all regularly. Her last two lessons (one each of violin and piano) have consisted principally of just sight-reading duets with her teachers, since it was obvious she hadn't done her assigned work and there was not point in revisiting the same problems. She has an agreement with her piano teacher to practice every day this week at 7 pm, with a maximum of two simple reminders from me. The type of practising that's been assigned this week is right up Erin's alley: lots of playing through easier repertoire for fun. So I imagine we'll have better luck with piano at least this week. I hope she'll discover first-hand that if she wants to progress to new levels rather than coast at her current level, she needs to return to the kind of work she doesn't always enjoy.

On a positive musical note, Erin did a great performance of the Clementi Op. 36 No. 4 Rondo movement last Friday at an honours recital. She'd learned it very quickly and easily and it shows off her speed and agility very well. She even spoke to announce her piece: a first and a real surprise for me. And she's also asked to do a chamber music option this summer on violin when she's enrolled as a piano student at the music summer school. She seemed positively enthusiastic about that possibility.

We still have 14 inches of snow on the ground, despite above-freezing temperatures and lots of rain and melting lately. So, while it's staying light until supper time and we are beginning to think about gardening, it isn't exactly spring yet. It's that icky in-between season. I started germinating some sweet pepper seeds on the window ledge.

We had a great cross-country ski a week ago with some friends. The conditions were great and there were snow fleas (springtails) all over the snow, which was very neat. Afterwards we went to a friend's place and held an informal music-sharing recital in her living room with a bunch of other kids. Lots of food and fun afterwards.

Erin has finished up the last gap in her Singapore 5B book and, despite my suggestion that we might set the formal math aside for a while, has decided to continue filling in the gaps in the 6A book (she's grazed ahead in the past on the topics that interest her the most). Noah and Sophie continue to plug away at their books (Singapore 2A and Miquon Red respectively), probably asking to do math about every second evening on average.

Our current readalouds are "Bud, Not Buddy" by Paul Christopher Curtis (excellent story of an orphan kid during the Great Depression), "Return of the Indian" by Lynn Reid Banks and "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame. We've also been reading sporadically from "Nibbling on Einstein's Brain" by Diane Swanson, a book about thinking critically about scientific claims.

I've been working hard this past week on a couple of website revisions, VSSM and NurturedByLove.ca, so I'm less "available" to the kids and I should acknowledge the role that's playing in their lack of creativity and self-discipline. I'm hoping for better this coming week.

Miranda

Rat and Mole and Midtown Madness

Not much seems to be happening lately. It's February; I guess that explains it. But the house is tidy and the kids are happy and that's enough. It's always helpful for me to lower my expectations in February.

Most of the year I am pulling my hair out about the mess all over the house. A couple of weeks ago I made five "Clean Cards". These are 4x6" index cards with obsessively detailed instructions for tidying the five living areas of the house: dining area, living room, kitchen, bathroom and family room. "Get the broom and dustpan from the kitchen. Put the garbage pail and booster step in the hall. Sweep starting with the corner under the sink and sweeping towards the doorway with every stroke. Sweep the other three corners too. Imagine you're painting the floor with the broom and you don't want to miss any spots. Place the dustpan against the gold strip at the doorway....." Every afternoon we place the tidy cards upside down and someone picks one. Then we choose a reader and the rest of us are do-ers. The kids take turns being the picker and the reader. It takes about 15 minutes, and since we manage this about five days a week, the house is properly cleaned through once a week. We're doing well at keeping this up and the house is so much better: even in between the days we clean a room the kids are now noticing messes and recognizing that the next time we have to clean it will be so much easier if it's kept clean. The enforced regularity of cleaning is helping get this message across. I don't suppose this system will be effective for long (nothing ever is, it seems) but I'm really happy with it for now.

Another new ritual is "Best Thing, Worst Thing". At supper time each night we each explain the best thing that happened to us that day and the worst thing. By doing it at supper we're able to include Chuck which is, I think really important. It's often interesting what the kids choose, and the discussion that follows is often very worthwhile.

Twelve days ago the kids counted their money, did some price-comparisons on the internet, and discovered they could afford to buy Midtown Madness 2 and a Logitech steering wheel/pedal doohickey. I ordered it on my credit card, took all their cash, and they started waiting. Shipping takes a while where we live. They decided they should stay off the computer for a few days before it arrived because they knew they'd be up for a big binge after it got here. I'm not sure why they decided this, but it seemed darned sensible to me. So they spent about a week playing a lot of board games and card games in Noah's bedroom. Hours a day.

Today the long-awaited package arrived. They got all their practising done first and have been taking turns at the computer on and off since about noon. Midtown Madness has astronomically little educational value. There are maps to refer to, left and right turns to learn, there's visual memory to enhance, and a lot of crashing and driving through malls and evading police to be done. They're happy with their purchase. I expect the novelty will wear off in a few weeks. It may be a long few weeks for me.

Erin set up a rule for fair sharing of the new computer game. The way the rule worked was this: she would get the computer for two days, then Noah could have it for two days, and then Sophie. Sophie could see that this was equal, but as Erin's first hours with the game wore on, I could see she was getting frustrated. She said she had too long to wait (sheesh! no kidding!). We talked about how there's often a difference between equal and fair. Erin knew full well she'd pulled a bit of a scam. I good-naturedly reminded her that it was a little unrealistic for her to expect her 5yo sister to be happy about a rule that said she had to wait four days to try out the new game she'd helped buy. Erin flashed me a guilty grin (thinking "well, it was worth a try!") and agreed to split the afternoon three ways.

Of course, then Erin wouldn't budge on which third of the afternoon she wanted (the first, even though she'd already been playing for 2 hours). Sophie and Noah begrudgingly compromised. I had listened to their negotiations and was feeling angry at Erin for taking advantage of her siblings' generosity and good nature. I asked her why she couldn't at least once in a while demonstrate as much maturity as Sophie and Noah. It was a low blow, but she is so tenacious, and I find it so frustrating when it is always her younger siblings and not her "doing the right thing". She stalked off angrily but (astonishingly) came back and asked for the last time-slot, giving a contrived rationale why she preferred it anyway. So I think I must have got through to her a bit. Later I apologized for the dig.

We don't have many of these sorts of inter-sibling issues, but today we had one, and I found it interesting to see it play itself out. Erin did budge for a change, although she needed to find a way to save face to do so.

Erin has been enjoying Calliope magazine (world history), another issue of which arrived this week. Noah wrote a long letter to a new penpal in Holland. He dictated, I typed. He's understandably far more enthusiastic about snail-mail than e-mail so he's hoping to get a letter back in the post.

We've been limping along on our malfunctioning CD player in the van, listening to "Alice in Wonderland" over and over lately. We've owned if for quite a while, but it's only just become popular. We also watched a video version. The Red Queen is now a huge part of the kids' imaginative play. I've been downloading audiobooks from Audible.com, but I'm saving them up for listening in the van if/when we replace the deck. For now it doesn't play CD-R's and it only plays at all for about 20 minutes before needing a "rest" for half an hour. I have "Bud, Not Buddy" and Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy in waiting.

Fiona is doing very well with her toileting again all of a sudden, after a couple of months of lots of pees in diapers. I think we've only had 2 misses in the past 3 days, both of those entirely my fault (misinterpreting her fussiness). I got her a little potty which she can get onto an off of herself, thinking that she might be ready for a bit of independence in toileting before too long. (I've been holding her over the toilet thus far.) She likes the potty, though so far she waits for me to put her on it.

I made another book last weekend, for photos from our fall vacation. I decorated the cover with rubber stamps I'd made with lino-cutting tools. I used some lovely hand-made papers that I'd bought at an import store for the cover and endpapers. The kids are doing paper-making at their Thursday art class. I'm hoping they'll have some hand-made paper they'll want to use for bookmaking. Also at art class Erin and Noah learned a nifty little paper-weaving technique for making tiny baskets shaped like hearts. They were very pleased that I couldn't see how the weaving was accomplished without actually having separate strips of paper. They get a kick of seeing me genuinely incompetent at something they can do.

Readalouds right now are Michael Morpurgo's "The Butterfly Lion", Cornelia Funke's "Inkheart" (almost finished) and Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows". The latter always amazes me, every time I read it, with the complexity of its grammar and its languidly whimsical poetic style. The plotline is very simple but the language is amazing. Out of interest I checked its reading level on an Accelerated Reader database and discovered it rates an 8.2. That seems about right to me. It's very highbrow stuff for little kids. I think I'll consider it an antidote to Midtown Madness ;-).

Questionable Musical Motivation

On Monday, during our Nelson piano trip, we made our first visit to "Changes", a recycling depot that is manufacturer-funded. We'd just heard about it. It will take back packaging from almost any of the store-brand products at our grocery store, plus a pile more. I'm hoping the kids will take an interest in reducing our garbage output. We do pretty well already, but environmental awareness is something I want to encourage in the kids. I'm hoping this will be a big gardening summer for us too. Maybe Fiona will be past the dirt-eating stage; we'll see.

On Tuesday the phone rang and it was our regular Tuesday supper guests (musical friends who stay over between violin lessons and orchestra rehearsal) to say they wouldn't be staying for supper. The girl who is Erin's close friend got on the phone and asked me to "tell Erin that I got to skip Grade 2 piano and go right into Grade 3. Maybe I'll catch up to her some day. Is she in Grade 5 still? Oh, and what's she on in violin? Is she in Book 7 yet? No? Oh, good. I'm trying to get into Book 5 by the end of June."

Sigh.... This child is unschooled, but has such an interest in these "leveled milestones". Now, she's been in Erin's shadow on violin, piano and academics since they met. So I guess a certain amount of this is understandable. But it's still tough for me to know how to react to.

I told Erin that her friend was really excited about being promoted right past Grade 2 piano. I didn't mention any of the rest of it. But Erin volunteered that the friend had told her she was planning to "catch up" to her. And then (another sigh) Erin started asking how long it would take her to move up to the next Grade in piano, and the next level in violin. It was like a fire was lit. She's decided she wants to teach herself ahead in both piano and violin. She started working like a demon.

I was feeling horribly ambivalent about the motivation for her sudden spurt in interest. But as the week has worn on, things have transformed a little. She's discovered a couple of pieces of challenging new violin and piano repertoire that she really loves, and I think she's enjoying mastering them. She's also getting more and more interested in the idea of surprising her teachers with her hard work. I think the idea of "staying ahead of J." is slipping into the back seat. At least I hope so. (final sigh....)

Erin did an amazing violin solo from Suzuki Book 3 at group class this week. Sophie and Noah were the two eager volunteers for playing solos at the next class in 2 weeks' time. I'm so happy that they are turning into keen performers just like Erin. I think it's great when kids can share their music without anxiety. Erin was given the go-ahead to start Suzuki Book 7 at her violin lesson this week and has been working hard.

The kids have been painting a fair bit lately. They now do a good job of getting out and (more to the point) cleaning up the watercolours, so they're getting them out whenever they have some time. Erin's finally kind of figured out some basic techniques and is using them to advantage. She's done a couple of really striking paintings. Sophie seems on the verge of beginning to do more than simply play with the paints on the paper. She did a neat beach painting where the sky had "wind in it". Noah's still life in acrylics from art class is quite stunning. I'm really impressed with how the art teacher is working with them. I hope Sophie will be able to start some sort of art class with her next fall. (Noah's the youngest in the class by at least a year, so I'm hoping the teacher will start a new class for younger kids.) I bought three sheets of colourful tag-board (bristol board) this week and made some simple art portfolios for their larger-format artwork (up to 14x18). They're pretty pleased with them, and they each cost less than a dollar.

Erin and I spent some time looking at internet resources today. We discovered a really excellent Harry Potter fan-fiction site called FictionAlley. It includes peer-editing and peer-review and has a terrific sense of community from the look of it. But you need to be over 12 to use it. We're looking for other options. Erin writes so well, but doesn't want to share her writing at home. We both feel she'd benefit from some feedback and inspiration, and an internet community would be a terrific possibility. We also looked at BoxerMath which I suggested might be worth subscribing to for a while after she finishes Singapore Primary Math (probably before the fall). I'd really rather steer her clear of Singapore's linear, leveled workbook approach for a while. I like it, but she's still so young, and the NEM series (the high school stuff) is really challenging. I want her to relax with math for a while. She's worked through so much in the past year. A BoxerMath subscription wouldn't be cheap, but it would let her graze on math for a while, following her interests, rather than relentlessly heading towards Calculus.

I've talked so much about Erin this week. I should post an update about Noah's math. He's capably mastered the regrouping algorithms in addition and subtraction after a switch to Singapore a month or so ago. He's losing some of his initial enthusiasm for the program. I think he's only doing it about once or twice a week, but he keeps plugging away slowly. Sophie has finished up Miquon Orange and is enjoying the first part of the Red book. I'm sure she'll hit a bit of a wall before too long, but I've been saying that since the beginning of Orange and it hasn't happened yet, so I may be wrong.

Today we went cross-country skiing. It was fun, even though the skiing wasn't great (it warmed up and got sticky). We went with another homeschooling family and a couple of tag-along and very fun adults.

Noah has recently been reading aloud from picture books and other short stories with comical commentary interspersed to amuse his sisters. It's great to hear him reading aloud so confidently and unaffectedly. Sophie seems to be reading more and more; she isn't choosing to read aloud much yet, but she's finishing short picture books easily for her own pleasure.

Tonight the kids are watching "The Lion King" on network TV, a rare treat. They're making lots of fun of the advertisers' marketing ploys, which is great to see. Their dad goads them on a bit. Call it "developing healthy media skepticism and critical thinking skills." They seldom watch regular TV and I'm glad to see that they see through the shallow consumerism. They had a good laugh over the "Kid Cuisine" TV dinners. "Bet mommy will buy us lots of those! They sure look sooooo nutritious and I bet they don't cost very much either!"

Snow and worms

Snow and worms don't go together very well most of the time, but when the worms are cozy inside and the snow is outside, the two can touch our lives at the same time.

It has snowed a ton here in the past week. We've probably had almost three feet of snow. Fluffy deep white pristine stuff. The kids have been outside at all hours playing in it. They create pictures against the windows with packed snow. They dig into treewells to find secret forts. They pretend to be Atlas, carrying giant snowballs on their shoulders. They throw snowballs at each other and at snow-laden trees. They dig tunnels and caves. They build totem poles and snowmen. They sculpt their own lands, shovel and pile, explore and create. They just love the freeform creative control they have over their environment when it's made of snow. Sometimes they'll only come in to eat or sleep.

Today it rained, though, so the snow is compacted a bit and very heavy. The beautiful pillows on the trees are gone and there's lots of tree-crud on the surface of the snow. Today was an indoor day. It's snowing again now, but not quite cold enough for it to accumulate. Hopefully overnight we'll get a layer of fluffy stuff again.

On Monday we made a detour on our way to piano and bought some red wigglers from a lady who vermicomposts. We have had a problem with bears in our outdoor compost bin for years, and I decided it made sense to try composting food scraps indoors rather than outside. We found plans for a layered bin system on the internet and had fun constructing a home for our worms. The kids got to use the power drill, always a hit. We don't have very many worms yet but are hoping they'll reproduce well and by summer we'll be able to dump all our compostable food waste in our bins in the basement.

Erin and Sophie have been keeping very late hours, and this is starting to interfere with family things, so we've discussed shifting things back a little. They're making an effort. It's been hard to do our bedtime readalouds when Noah needs to hit the sack hours before the girls are ready to stop doing whatever they're involved in. And it's been a challenge getting Erin up in time to go places. So she's asked me to awaken her an hour earlier each morning over the next while, and she's going to try to go to bed a bit earlier.

Piano went very well this week. Erin is gobbling up challenging new Sonatina movements in a week or two all of a sudden. They're well-learned and pretty fluid, though not musically completely polished, in very short order. I think this must be due in part at least to the hours she's been spending lately just sitting at the piano playing through hours of easy pieces just for her own entertainment and relaxation. Both her sight-reading and her new-repertoire-learning have really jumped a few notches in the past month or two. Noah had a pretty good lesson too. He's handling the Grade 1 repertoire capably, which is a big jump in difficulty level since this fall. Violin isn't as much at the forefront lately. The balance shifts back and forth... I don't worry.

We've been playing Carcassonne, an interesting strategy game from Germany that I just picked up. It's medieval- and map-oriented and very flexible for imaginative play too. Using the proper rules and scorekeeping, it's a complex game for ages 10+. Without scorekeeping, or with various home-made co-operative rules, it's fun for younger kids. Sophie likes it. Fiona wants to eat the followers and chew on the map tiles, so that's a bit of an issue.

The watercolour paints are out this afternoon. Noah has done a painting of Poseidon. Erin is making a carefully-planned painting of an Egyptian city. Sophie did something bright and mostly non-representational. It's been a quiet day.

The rest of the week has included a visit from a "traveling mascot" from a friend of ours (we are journaling his stay with us and will pass him on to someone else), a swim at the hotsprings pool north of us, dentists' visits for the kids (no cavities, and always a fun experience for them... we have a great dentist), a special lunch out at the local café, some creative cooking, and the usual music, math and reading aloud. I'm trying to get some sewing done but Fiona is not co-operating. Life goes on.

Potluck dinners and finding the middle ground

I had to work this morning and Chuck had an all-day meeting, so my mom stayed with the kids for the first time in months. Fiona was quite okay with her which was a pleasant surprise. When I got home I helped the kids get some lunch. Erin and Noah did violin and piano practising respectively and then it was time for them to head out to art class. Erin balked at first. She pulled out the familiar whine: "But I didn't get to do anything today." Meaning, all she'd done was play since she'd got up at the crack of 10 or whatever.

In the past I reacted to the "get to" part of that statement defensively, perceiving an accusation. I assumed she meant "I wasn't allowed to" or "you didn't provide me with the time or opportunity to." Erin has a dreadful tendency affix blame onto others for anything in her life that doesn't make her happy, so she probably did actually mean to imply that it was my fault, that I somehow prohibited her from doing anything worthwhile or memorable. But that's not actually what she says, and reframing this complaint, if not to her, at least in my own mind, has been helpful.

She, and the others too, often don't "get around to" doing the things they wish they would. They have a tendency to get locked into one particular activity and resist the transition to anything else. It can be K'nex, snowman-building, imaginative Playmobil play, quest games on the computer, acrobatics in the living room, a bath, you name it. Worthwhile stuff, to be sure. But they stay at it so long that they really do regret not fitting other stuff in their day. They get mad at themselves for not "remembering" to make cookies, which is what they call it if I ask them if they'd like to make cookies three times and they say "not now, later."

The ability to enjoyably pursue any activity for as long as it holds the kids' interest is really what drew me to unschooling in the first place. But, especially with Erin, probably because she's the oldest and the most ambitious at this point, I'm noticing that the tunnel vision she gets while engaged in an activity is a problem for her. I wonder whether she needs someone to help her disengage from time to time and maybe structure her life with a bit more formality. And so I wander back into the middle ground between top-down schooling and child-structured unschooling and take a look around for something that makes sense right now.

Someone on an e-mail list I'm on put forth the metaphor of the potluck dinner. "I'm not fond of potlucks. My kids never eat anything at a potluck, being far too busy doing other things. Once the potluck is over, they'll chime "What's for supper? I'm starved!" " This is my kids too, and I think the metaphor explains where I'm at right now with unschooling.

Sometimes simply "strewing their path" creates an immense, chaotic potluck dinner situation. There are so many possibilities and so much freedom that they don't eat and later wish they had. That's what today was for Erin.

I've got picky eaters for kids. What works best for family peace and balanced nutrition is to put a small selection of healthy food choices on the table at mealtime and let the kids load their own plates. Maybe I should be doing a little more of this when it comes to education with the kids, especially Erin. I don't mean sitting her down at the table and saying "okay, time for school; want to do math or grammar or spelling or handwriting?" I mean asking her if she'd like some help setting up some goals or guidelines for herself, some help structuring her days and sticking to the structure.

Today Fiona turned 1. She's got what we think is a hip inflammation. After learning to walk around Christmas she was walking everywhere, but then suddenly stopped 5 days ago. She wouldn't bear weight on her left leg and it was mighty sore if manipulated. We Xrayed her and the films looked fine (needed to rule out an occult fracture and developmental dysplasia of the hip), so we're assuming she'll be back on her feet in another few days. She's not in any pain when crawling or sitting, so we're happy to just watch for now. I still worry a bit; she's getting lots of hugs. She loves us to sing "Happy Birthday" to her, which we've been willing to do about 20 times already because she's doing the ASL sign for "more".

Tonight we'll help her open some simple gifts, eat some fruitcake, finish the practising, and hopefully have a relaxing pre-bedtime family time for a change. Noah's been asking for "happy time in front of the fire together before bed" but his physical energy level (and Erin's too) has been getting in the way. I'm tired and wanting to get to bed before they're ready to settle down, so I nag them into pyjamas and announce I'm too tired for anything other than a short story. Since I'm up at 7 and a couple of times through the night with Fiona, I need to head to bed before they do. We'll try again tonight.

Comparisons

More brushes with the age- and ability-leveled world. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting stranger, more radical, less mainstream, while the rest of the world is busy becoming increasingly conformist. Some of the kids' unschooled friends, who seemed incredibly sheltered and naive two or three years ago are now jubilantly bouncing into tween-dom, complete with a burgeoning awareness of achievement milestones like grade levels and popular culture.

Tonight my kids have a friend staying overnight. She spent a lot of time explaining how great her competitive gymnastics program is. When Noah said "maybe when the weather is better we could do gymnastics outside together like we did last summer." And the friend replied (I kid you not, this is a direct quote) "Hmmm, well.... I'd be open to that I guess. I wonder how I could coach you on grass. Well, I guess I could try." Honestly! Eight months ago she and Noah and Erin were in the same program and all doing very well and loving practising handstands on the lawn together.

The questions of so many of the kids' friends have to do with sizing up other kids' rank in the pecking order:

What piece are you working on in piano? I'm going to be starting Grade 2 piano soon, my teacher says so. Do you know how to multiply yet? I know all my timestables. How long are the books you can read? I read one that was 200 pages. Yeah, well, but mine had really small words. And an advanced vocabulary. So who is your best friend? And your second best? Hmmm... she's my fourth-best. My second-best is so-and-so.

I guess I'm just surprised that this comparative orientation is so obvious even in the kids who always seemed so out-of-the-mainstream to me. We meet it at art class, at music recitals, at orchestra, on playdates.

Fortunately it just seems to roll off my kids' backs. I ask them about it later, and they don't even remember the comments or think them no big deal. So I guess it's my hangup.

We got our water back about five days ago. Hurrah! Life is back on an even keel.

We had a successful piano recital today. Erin and Noah played both violin and piano. Erin's violin piece got a special "whoop!" from the audience. Noah did a quite amazing thing and spoke aloud to announce his violin piece when his teacher forgot to do so. Clear, confident voice. He forgot to mention the composer, but this was a spur-of-the-moment thing, so I was really impressed anyway.

Noah and Sam connected again. They'd met at the Christmas piano party. Sam is a more recent piano beginner than Noah, having started this September (Noah last February) but they seem like two peas in a pod... both are very talented and serious pianists, verbally precocious, 7 years old and budding composers. And boys! Someday they'll be great duet partners, I'll bet. Apparently there's a boys' piano event coming up. Sam may or may not be there... his family will be trekking through Central America for three months this spring.

Tonight the kids listened to about two hours of East Indian folktales on audiotape. Erin did some math (multiplying decimals). Sophie blew me away with her math, spontaneously sitting down with her Miquon Orange book and working through one of the "putting it all together" pages without batting an eye. I thought she was still needing help verbalizing math problems to make sense of them, but she was managing 13+2-4 and (3x2)+(2x3) and 11x0 and 15-2 and (3x5)-5 with no help at all. And enjoying the challenge!

Noah declined to do any math today. He has been adding double-digit numbers in his head for a long time, and has reached the point in Singapore where the regrouping algorithms are taught. He's balking a little. He doesn't like the "cookbookish" approach. What he does with 78+17 is to add 8+17 and get 25 and then add that to 70. This bit about disciplining yourself to start with the ones and regroup anything over 9 into the tens column bothers him for some reason. He understands it but it seems like a "long boring" way to do the problems. He resists memorizing an algorithm with the same energy that Erin leaps to do so. Anyway, yesterday I finally showed him how learning the algorithm in its simple form (double-digit addition) would allow him to use it for complex problems that wouldn't be suitable for mental math. I showed him a four four-digit numbers in a stack and showed him how the algorithm let me find their sum. He liked that. Suddenly the algorithm seemed useful and he leapt right into problems of that level of difficulty. This kid definitely needs to see the big picture first, before dealing with the little details.

We started making our worm bin. This entailed measuring and drawing dots on the bottom of a Rubbermaid bin and then using the power drill to make about 200 1/4" holes in the bottom. The kids had fun with the power drill. One bin almost got done before Fiona started crying. This will be a stacked three-bin system for vermicomposting in the basement.

At bedtime I read a chapter from a pretty good, pretty funny book about composers, "Why Beethoven Threw the Stew..." We read that because we didn't want to subject the sleepover friend to chapters from the three novels we're in the midst of. This week's novels are "Inkheart" by Cornelia Funke, "The Monsters of Morley Manor" by Bruce Coville and "The Bronze Bow" by Elizabeth George Speare. I'm totally enthralled by the first and last of these. We'd never read anything by Speare before, but "Sign of the Beaver" and "the Witch of Blackbird Pond" have jumped right to the top of my wishlist. (Of course my wish list is relatively uninfluential, as the kids choose the readalouds. But I can influence subtly!)

Contagious Music Woes

We're still without a permanent water supply, though we did manage to pipe a couple of hundred gallons into our resevoir today. My mom (who is having a renovation done this week while she's away) has her water main back on again, so even if she doesn't have a toilet or shower for us to use, we can do laundry there. So things are looking up a bit.

We've discovered a simple pleasure: doing dishes after supper while Chuck reads aloud. My kids seem never to tire of water play, and washing dishes seems to count as a form of water play. Normally the dishes mostly go through the dishwasher, and Chuck or I wash a couple of the big pots. But this week we're conserving water. So in the afternoon I melt a couple of gallons of water from snow. After supper Sophie, Noah and Erin share the washing, drying and putting away, I carry Fiona and putter around cleaning and tidying tables and counters, and Chuck reads aloud to us from the new Cornelia Funke novel. We are all just loving this ritual.

Today the kids spent the bulk of their day with K'nex. About three hours in the morning and two or three in the afternoon. Lots of building, and then lots of imaginative play combining K'nex constructions with Playmobil characters. It went on forever. About half of what they make is from schematic instructions and about half is creative. Sophie does more free-form stuff than the older two, probably because the more complex schematics are still beyond her a bit. We have a motor kit and a solar kit, and combined it's a lot of K'nex. We've had most of it for 2 or 3 years and it's never been this popular. In the past one or two kids would play with it for an hour or two a few days in a row and then it would get ignored for a couple of months or more. But lately the stuff is very hot around here.

I've started making smoothies for lunch as often as I can. Before Christmas I bought an ancient VitaMix off eBay and gradually I've been getting more and more radical with what I put in the smoothies I serve to the kids. From frozen banana, milk and chocolate instant pudding mix, we're now doing a tutti-fruiti thing with rhubarb, berries, apples and some citrus fruits and today I sneaked a carrot and a beet in and no one complained. Erin's a very picky eater, so this is terrific. I managed to pull the kids away from the K'nex briefly with smoothie and cheese.

I spent some time at my mom's doing laundry. Chuck and I did some water-line work. I took down the Christmas tree finally. The kids watched two episodes of David Attenborough's "The Life of Mammals": "Chiselers" and "Meat-eaters".

Music was terrible today, which is one of the reasons I chose to write a blog entry. You get the good, but also the bad and the ugly.

Noah happily settled down to do some piano just before supper. After supper he went to finish it and had two major meltdowns over new pieces. He's at the same stage on the piano where Erin was afflicted by the same thing. The complexity of new pieces is increasing a lot, and he doesn't seem to access or trust his fairly decent note-reading skills in this context ... he just shuts down and gets upset. I need to be a little more pro-active at "chunking down" his new pieces so that he doesn't tackle too much at once and get overwhelmed. He's quite good at chunking down on his own when he's polishing up a previously-learned piece, so I think it'll come but he needs help now. But once he's melted down he really resists any of this sort of direction. Anyway, I helped him settle down and make some decent progress through his new pieces. But his fuse was already short, and when he went off to do violin, he didn't want any input from me, even though we'd both agreed his new piece needed a look-see from me badly. The best we could agree on was for me to watch and listen but not comment, reserving my suggestions and corrections for the start of tomorrow's practising. Okay. I listened, made note, and kept my mouth shut. He wasn't very happy, but when I left after hearing his new piece he decided to keep practising and did, it seems, some good work.

But this stuff is contagious. Erin started at piano and had a huge meltdown over her scales. She'd been asked to review all 12 melodic minor scales this week and to practice them upside down (which is really quite different for both the ear and the hands) and once she got into the first one with non-standard fingering she had a little trouble and as she repeated it, it got worse and worse as her frustration escalated and I could see the black train rolling into the station. She wouldn't let me leave, wanted my help, but covered her ears or said "you're rude!" every time I said anything. I suggested she just skip today's practising but she wouldn't agree. So I sat there, and she sneered at me and said "well, HELP okay?" and started pounding on the piano, two low notes together, about 100 pounds per minute. I sat there for a couple of minutes and then left for a time out for me. She carried on pounding the piano like a machine, the same two notes at 100/minute for almost 20 minutes, until her boredom outweighed her anger and then wandered off for her own time-out and eventually emerged chipper. Whew.... intense kid!

In the meantime I went off to remind Sophie to practice and that we were going to work together on some things. She said she didn't want to practice (first time she's ever said that!) and that I could give her violin away because she didn't want to play it any more (ditto). I told her it would be sad if she quit because she's put lots of work in and is playing very well, and that if she changed her mind she could let me know. In a few minutes she came out crying and said she'd changed her mind and wanted to start violin again tomorrow. I said that was fine and that if she felt like doing some playing on her own today that would be fine too. She did... she went off and played for quite a while in her bedroom.

Erin got out a piano practising board-game that she hadn't used in ages and spontaneously sat down at the piano and did all her practising except the scales. Then she went and did her violin without any reminders. Go figure.

So in the end everyone did all their practising. I can't believe it. Sort of reminds me of alcoholics going into recovery after "hitting bottom," LOL! I really expected all three kids to leave at least some of their practising today. What a nutty day.

Fiona will be a year old in a couple of weeks but has I think officially entered toddlerdom already. She's now walking most of the time and crawling only occasionally. It's been a change just in the past couple of days. Noah is about to lose his two front teeth. Erin turned 10 this week. Milestones, milestones.

Water troubles

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. First to January 3rd. Things were going well yesterday morning. We had plans for crafts and expeditions and social events. We wanted to meet my mom to go XC skiing. We got up, dressed, fed, bundled up, and set off. When we go to the trailhead near the lake it was way too windy. Windchill factor pushed the temperature way below the minus 13 Celsius we were dressed for. Noah had his hood, but had forgotten his hat. We drove home, got his hat, and set off for a different trail. By the time we got everyone out (the van hadn't really warmed up) Sophie was too cold from all the sitting around. She wanted to go home. I knew she just needed to get moving to warm up, but it wasn't to be. We went to my mom's place for hot chocolate.

Then we went home and had lunch. The kids did some imaginative play in the loft. Erin started work on yet another notebook of names and characters and an imaginary language. Noah and I tidied a bit. The kids did lots of playdough play. Then we started a major tidying/cleaning because we'd invited a friend of the kids' for a sleepover the next night. We phoned and made the driving/visiting arrangements for today.

For the previous couple of days we'd been flooding our ice rink. Our downstream neighbours had been having water supply problems, so we'd despaired of being able to flood the rink this winter. Then we were told they'd got a secondary line functioning and weren't relying on our overflow for their homes, so we started flooding. After 2 days (very slow flooding because we don't have much water inflow into our reservoir this winter) we were about halfway there. But then Ken from down the road dropped by yesterday afternoon and said their secondary line had quit functioning. So I shut off the tap and brought the hose in. Chuck checked our water inflow after supper ... very slow but still coming. I washed some diapers. Erin worked on planning our as-yet-imaginary future European vacation using atlas and some travel books.

Noah and Sophie did some math and practiced. Erin started her piano practising. We had supper. Erin finished her piano, did her violin and some math. We lost power and internet for a while. It came back on. We did the bedtime reading. We talked about doing some marbling on paper today.

This morning Noah got up early with me. He did piano practising and math and helped me do a bit of tidying. We used coins for place-value work with regrouping and he really enjoyed this, as he's recently become a fan of money. Fiona awoke. I did a bit of work on Erin's birthday gift (a custom-printed hand-bound journal with lock). She woke up so I tucked that away. Then the sleepover friend phoned to say she was feeling sick and they had no water, so they needed to stay home. Then Chuck phoned to say he'd checked our water on the way to work and it had stopped and our reservoir was only 2/3 full thanks to the load of diapers.

Argghhh...

So today has been entirely focused on figuring out how to deal with the water situation. We need to bypass 350 feet of frozen pipe. Chuck is on call so it's hard for him to find the time and even if he finds it he can be called away at any moment. We have signs on the toilet and the faucets ("Think Water!", "Don't Flush!"). We talked about why spaghetti is wasteful of water but soup is not. Called the friend who runs the hardware store and put our name on a 300-foot coil of 1 1/4" PVC which we might be able to put in tomorrow. We talked about what mess-free, water-free crafts we could do.

It's really cold here today. About 0 Fahrenheit (minus 17 C). For us that's really cold and it's led to lots of physics-related conversation. I've lived colder places but our house and water supply are not really built for this temperature. We have large frost-cicles growing on the hinges of our front door. So we talked about the water-carrying capacity of air at different temperatures. We talked about the new low-e double-glazed windows we put in and how well they're working... our kitchen/dining area is actually habitable right now if you don't get too close to the front door. We talked about the drying and warping of the door that's causing the air leaks. We talked about possible ways to solve this problem. Settled on shoving towels all around the jamb for now. We worked out how many gallons of snow we'd have to melt to do a load of laundry (just hypothetically!). We discussed rate of flow vs. surface area considerations in choosing a diameter for a bypass water line that hopefully won't freeze (it'll all be above ground).

At least we can bathe at my mom's. At least I have half a pack of disposable diapers on hand. Small mercies worth being grateful for.

Sophie drew a neat picture this morning using the math set (protractor, compass, etc.). The kids have been cutting official-looking graphics out of discarded medical magazines and gluing them onto cardstock to make "credit cards" and "club cards" for their wallets. Erin is really into the idea of a European vacation and the possibility of actually seeing Venice and Rome and London.

I wish to announce a New Year's resolution. I've never made one before. I'm going to try to do 20 minutes of housekeeping every morning before going on the internet.

Yeah, it's not much, but this won't be easy for me. I am not by nature a productive morning person. I love sitting down at the computer with my coffee for a relaxing me-centred time but I don't like getting busy during my magical hour before the kids are up. But if I'm going to get a handle on the housework enough to keep me happy I need to change something, and I think I have to sacrifice some of that time. If I'm consistent, it will be over 2 extra hours of week devoted to tidying and laundry. It should make a difference.

The New Year begins

I got up abut the time Chuck went to work. Usually Erin hears Fiona wake up from her bedroom and brings her out to me. So this morning when I heard Fiona babble from the living room I assumed she and Erin were there. When Erin didn't respond, I went out. There was Fiona, alone. She'd woken up in "our" bed, crawled down to the end of the bedrail, slipped out, headed out of the room and down the hall, come down a flight of stairs, navigated another hallway, and come into the living room before announcing herself. Wow! Half and hour later after Erin and Sophie got up, she climbed the ladder to the top bunk. She's 11 months, just starting to walk. We have to start being a bit more vigilant about closing doors and keeping an eye on her.

I got a call from a friend saying that the kids' cross-country program ("Jackrabbits") was starting in an informal way, and that we should be at the golf course at 11 if we wanted to be involved. By this time it was 10, so we made porridge, got everyone dressed and equipment into the van and headed out. Sophie had a meltdown. I blew it because we were late and I got really angry. Turned out she had to pee and was feeling guilty that she hadn't peed when I'd encouraged everyone to do so before we left home. Erin and Noah joined the ski group. Sophie and Fiona and I stayed in the parking lot until it was empty and then did a long involved pee-thing, getting her naked in the snow, then dressed again... longjohns, sweats, snowpants, jacket, mitts, boots, the whole deal off and then on again.

I put Fiona in the backpack and Sophie and I skied off to find the group. They were having a ball, but Sophie didn't feel up to joining in, so she and I just skied around a little together for a while. I introduced her to a new friend, mom to a new local unschooling family of four kids, 2-11. In a village of 600, it's amazing to find another family like this. Sophie, Donna and I hung out and watched the rest of the kids. Noah loved downhilling and trying jumps like Nicholas, the 13yo coach and competitive racer. Erin had a blast skiing the flats as fast as she could with Annie, yet another local homeschooler who is just 7 but a phenomenal nordic racer (little sister to Nicholas).

After about 2 hours of skiing, Erin and Noah headed off to Annie & Nicholas' place for the afternoon. Sophie, Fiona and I went home. Fiona was exhausted and fell asleep on my shoulder, so I did some website work. Then Sophie and I got out some Sculpey clay and made some stuff.

We made hot chocolate and then drove out to pick up E & N. Also picked up Bob, one of the new unschooling kids in town, who is 11. Nice kid. Drove him home, necessitating a 20 minute detour. Noah told jokes for a while. Then we listened to some of "Mozart's Magical Voyage" or whatever it's called: the "Classical Kids" music&audio CD about Mozart. Then we were home.

At home I got supper ready. Erin, Noah and Sophie made some more Sculpey things. We discovered the kids had won their first eBay auction, for a CD-ROM they'd owned before, scratched and missed having. I beamed a Paypal payment and they coughed up $8.60 from their piggy bank. We ate supper.

Noah and Sophie played Age of Mythology on the computer. Fiona practiced walking. Noah and Sophie watched a bit of a show about free-diving. The kids ran around playing some silly hide-and-seek-rescue game. Erin and Noah looked through some Usborne "Great Search" books.

Nobody wanted to do their violin practising, but Erin had promised to do her violin every day until her birthday, so we did that together. Noah did a pretty good piano practising on his own. Erin just did some sight-reading, playing through selections from a book of "Best of Bach".

Everyone did some math. Noah did a Singapore exercise on double-digit subtraction, Erin one on rates (multiplication and division word problems), and Sophie a Miquon page combining addition and multiplication. She noticed that multiplication gives a larger answer than addition except when one of the numbers is 1 or 0.

Erin got out a book the medical clinic was given by a forestry firm about "Our Working Forests" and showed incredibly good critical thinking and skepticism. She kept saying sarcastically "They say that because a forest fire killed a lot of trees it's okay to kill more from logging. Like, a forest fire killed ten million trees, so hey, let's kill five million more!" She picked holes in a ton of the PR smear.

The kids helped Fiona practice walking. They're so excited, and sit around in different corners of the living room delightedly summoning her from one of them to the other. She loves it.

Pre-bedtime readalouds right now are:

"The Monsters of Morley Manor" by Bruce Coville (Sophie's pick)

"The Assasins of Rome" by Caroline Lawrence

"The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke

Generally we read two chapters of the first, one of the second and three or more of the last.

Christmas Preparations

I'm feeling a fair bit better about what's happening around here. We've had a bit more productive time, less sitting in front of the computer all day, less conflict over things like practising and tidying.

Fiona has cut three premolars in the past couple of weeks, so neither of us are sleeping terribly well at night, and I think that was sending me towards a bit of panic. But for whatever reason (not that we're sleeping better, but maybe just reduced expectations?) I'm doing better.

I've got all the Christmas gifts that need to be mailed into the post and most of the made gifts are finished. The kids and I have put by some Christmas baking. The kids have been drawing and painting, playing outside and playing creatively indoors.

Noah has been devouring easy chapter books for pleasure. His decoding is now easy enough to give him the fluency he needs to read longer books without fatigue. He is very pleased with himself and has joined the ranks of readers-in-bed. The Magic Treehouse and Boxcar Children books are all back on the main shelves and being loved all over again. Today when we were in Nelson, Noah mentioned that he can't not read any more. "I'm eating my lunch and looking around and the words on signs are just there, in my brain. I don't have to try to read them. They just come into my head by themselves."

Sophie can read a ton! Almost any word using basic short-vowel sounds, regardless of length, and some long-vowel words too. I first wondered a week or so ago when she read "Montana's" off a restaurant sign. I thought to myself "this kid is learning to read!" I posted in another thread about making a little book for her of words she can read. We sat down for 20 minutes and I wrote down a hundred or so words, and if she could read them we wrote them in her little book.

Erin has read the LOTR trilogy twice in the past 2 weeks. Now she's working on the Lost Years of Merlin Trilogy by T.A. Barron. We only have the first two; she's on her second time through them. Erin, Noah and Sophie spent about 3 hours one morning this week building a big snowman. It's considerably taller than the tallest of them and they were justifiably proud of it.

We don't have our rink started yet :-( . It's been either too warm or snowing. Today it's the latter. This week I met an unschooling family that is new to our area. They have 4 kids, ages 2-11 and seem really nice. For a rural village of 600, this is a terrific boon to us. We promised to have them up for some skating as soon as our rink is made. So far I've only met the parents, so it remains to be seen whether the kids "click" or not socially but the chances are pretty good, I think.

Monday this week was our regular Nelson routine, with gymnastics, grocery-shopping and piano lessons. Piano lessons were productive. Our regular teacher will be back next Monday. Sophie (all 5 years 0 months and 30 lbs of her) was asked to join the competitive stream at gymnastics. Egads! Noah was invited into competitive after last year's session. That wasn't so surprising to me... he's a boy (I guessed they wanted boys), had been attending for over a year, and was clearly very accomplished compared to the mostly older kids in his recreational class. I guess it was flattering for Sophie to be asked, but competitive at age 5, a mere 6 sessions into her gymnastics "career"? I don't put my kids in competitive situations, and the comp. stream practices on Thursdays and Saturdays, so it was a no-brainer for me. Still, I couldn't believe how quickly she was pounced upon. Maybe they need the enrollment?

For the past 4 years I've put together a CD of the kids' musical output as a gift to extended family. The first two years it was just Erin. Last year Noah was ready to play a few easy violin pieces. He hadn't really started piano, but he played some melodies for fun on piano too, and Sophie did a 15-second sampler of her violin skills (she'd just started practising violin a couple of weeks before). This year Noah has some pretty impressive piano offerings, including a couple of nice compositions, and Sophie has plenty of violin to play. Erin's piano tracks are partly collected... we have a couple more to do over the next week. In the past, finding a decent accompaniment for the violin stuff has been a challenge. I can do the simplest stuff, but by Suzuki Book 2 I'm starting to feel out of my depth on some pieces. This year we found a good accompanist for the first time... Erik, the substitute piano teacher, who plays so well, likes the kids, is an excellent and enthusiastic accompanist, and needs the money. What a luxury! Noah, Erin and I made a special trip to Nelson today in the middle of a snowstorm to spend a wonderful relaxed 2 hours chatting and playing with Erik and in the midst of it all catching enough good takes on the Minidisc Recorder. Chuck stayed with the younger two for 3 hours this morning and then my mom came up and stayed with them for the last couple of hours. Sophie apparently talked my mom's ear off the entire time she was here and read all hundred words to her out of her little handmade book.

After I collect the last of the piano tracks from Erin and Noah, and Sophie's Book 1 violin pieces (probably this weekend) I'll have to get started on the liner notes. These are always great fun for me, and this year we've got a colour printer. I compile photos, artwork, track listings and "biographies" of the kids.

Readalouds lately have been "Winnie the Pooh" (which of course we've read in the past, but it's been a couple of years), "Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger" by Louis Sachar (very weird and funny), "Eragon" (which we finally finished!), "The Golden Goblet" (author escapes me... set in ancient Egypt and very well-written and enjoyable) and we're about to start "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke.

A couple of weeks ago Noah expressed some interest in the Singapore Math program. Erin has been using it for a couple of years. I've had the Miquon books available for my kids at the earlier levels, but didn't have Singapore except beyond the 2B level. Noah, who has a ton of math smarts, simply didn't seem to be moving along in Miquon the way I expected. It wasn't getting him fired up. He was seldom interested in doing formal math. That was fine with me. But he looked at a Singapore 3A book we had from when Erin worked through it and decided it looked "fun and easy". I had him do bits of the SingaporeMath.com placement tests, because I figured his working level was probably more like 1B. But he tested out a solid 2A or a weak 2B. So I ordered the 2A/2B levels for him, figuring we'll use 2A for review and to adjust to the program and fill in any holes. We've had it for 2 days and has done 7 exercises and is really enjoying it. So far so good. It definitely seems to be his kind of math program: clear and logical and bare-bones with a nice presentation. Sophie's continued to do a couple of pages a week from the end of Miquon Orange. Erin, who was enthusiastically finishing up the stuff she'd skipped over previously in Singapore 5B, has given up on math for December, it seems. Okay. She's got other stuff on the go... lots of reading and crafts, most of it very private and self-directed. And she's been relatively easy from an interpersonal standpoint during the last week or two. That counts for a lot around here.

Today started with the snowy 90-minute-plus drive to Nelson, the accompaniment session, lunch and then the drive back. This afternoon is practising and a bit of play. We're having supper at grandma's house, followed by the annual ritual of a sleepover by the older kids after they help her decorate her Christmas tree. So Chuck, Fiona and I will have a quiet evening together. And then Fiona will keep me up all night again :-). Ah well.

Unproductivity

I'm feeling like we're being very unproductive, so it's definitely time to start observing and documenting what's happening in a bit more detail.

Right now the three kids are improvising together on the piano. Sophie's got a bass vamp going, Erin is playing a chromatic sequence in the middle of the piano, and Noah is noodling some odd arpeggios up in the upper register. They're having a hoot.

Today was an orchestra day. Erin got a chance to play her Haydn piano concerto movement with the string orchestra accompaniment. She really really enjoyed this. In the past she'd always rather stay with the violins in string environments, rather than sticking out as a pianist. But she's quite confident and comfortable in the orchestra now and was happy to be the "star soloist on a different instrument".

This morning Chuck and I had to pick up a sofabed for my mom at a local catalogue store outlet and move it into her house. We paid Erin $5 to run interference with Fiona for the 45 minutes it took to heave it into and out of the truck and get doors at mom's house off their hinges and back on again. Erin and Fiona came with us on our errand. We let Sophie and Noah stay home alone together. I gave Noah clear instructions about using the phone if he needed to, about looking out for Sophie and about not taking risks. He did very well. He was dying for the chance to use the phone... he's really taken with the phone lately. So when the phone rang at my mom's I knew it would be him. He just wanted to tell me that he might want me to help him with one of his piano pieces later when I got home. Okaybye. .

Sophie got sick while we were gone. When I came home she was quietly sobbing in her room with a puke bowl. She'd retreated there without letting Noah know she wasn't well. It didn't seem likely that she had been worried about being at home alone, or that she was lonely, but I wondered anyway if that was it because it had come on so suddenly in the 45 minutes we were gone. But then she spent the morning vomiting bilious stuff. So she really was sick. But by lunch time she had an appetite and felt a good bit better by the afternoon.

Noah and Erin were outside on the driveway hill sledding with the new snowsled for about 4 hours. Erin had trouble doing her piano practising because she kept wanting to sight-read through the new Grade 6 repertoire album. She did some practising, but skimped a lot.

I hope we can get some of the things on our "to-do" list done in the next few days. Gingerbread houses, the rink set up and flooded, some Christmas gifts made, maybe get back at some math games, historical fiction, painting, crafts. We shall see. I feel myself getting frustrated and short-fused about the aimlessness and wasted time... I feel the clock ticking down towards Christmas and want all my ducks in a row before then. I think I'm spending too much time on the computer myself. That's part of it. The laundry is piling up, the toy room is a mess. These are my issues, not the kids'.

Neopets

Town day. Gymnastics and piano lessons with "Eric", the substitute. Eric worked both kids a good bit harder than he had the first time they met. Good, productive lessons. We had extra time at lunch after grocery-shopping, so I read a chapter of "Eragon" aloud to the kid on a bench in the mall. We bought fixings for gingerbread houses. Erin has discovered the Neopets site and wants to join a homeschoolers' guild. We talked a bit about the fact that the site serves a marketing purpose and decided that so long as she was aware of that, the educational value was worthwhile. So I printed out the parental permission form to give her access to message boards. She'd love to spend hours a day on the neopets site. Fortunately we have a dial-up modem, a single phone line and a dad-guy who needs access to the phone line when he's on call. That will hopefully keep things in balance.

Weekend in Kelowna

Chuck had a medical conference in Kelowna (a small-to-medium-sized city) on Saturday and we decided to tag along. Originally we assumed it would be Christmas shopping weekend, but I worked really hard to simplify our Christmas gift-giving this year and am making almost everything and cutting back, so there was no shopping to do. We decided to go anyway, because the kids have been dying for the chance to swim, and we know a good motel with 2bdrm suites and a nice pool.

So on Thursday we picked Erin and Noah up at art class and headed out. Chuck just got himself a laptop with a DVD player, and we plugged it in in the back of the minivan so that the kids could watch "Blue Planet" episodes throughout the 4-hour drive. This was a huge hit.

True to predictions, the kids spent 3-6 hours a day in the pool. Noah went from being a "barely swimmer" in the shallow end to doing proper dives in the deep end on the first day. Erin was a little frustrated that it took her longer to learn to dive but she managed. This has definitely been Noah's year to shine. Lots of things are coming easily to him all of a sudden, including piano, composition, reading, gymnastics and now swimming.

We did the usual juggling of needs and priorities when it came to choosing venues for meals out. We spent a great couple of hours in a mega-bookstore. Sophie got lost, though, which was sad. She wandered out of the children's section when she lost sight of me around a bookshelf. I thought dh, who had gone off to wander through adult non-fiction, had her. Then I got paged. She was a little teary but none the worse for wear. We had a reiterative discussion about rules for staying together and about what to do if you think you're lost. I'd forgotten to go over that one in a while. Noah and Erin know it all, but Sophie's still just barely five. She needs to hear it regularly. Anyway, I tried to stay low-key. She was a bit upset and already knew she'd made some mistakes.

We got some great books. Can't wait to get started on Cornelia Funke's "The Thief Lord".

I went shopping consignment clothing. I stopped at the music store to get Grade 6 level books for Erin and Grade 1 stuff for Noah. They were both very excited. They're being "promoted" this month by their piano teacher. We bought some dishes and did a warehouse store stop.

On the way home the kids watched LOTR "The Two Towers" on DVD (a new purchase).

Piano takeover

Recently our home has been taken over by the piano. It has crept up on me but it's quite astonishing, and is perhaps the most persuasive argument for a monolith of a real, acoustic piano rather than a more portable digital one. It's always there, en route between the bathroom and the computer, between the toys and the kitchen, between the dining room and the bedroom. It's always on. It has an inviting two-person bench, good lighting and the warmth of the woodstove radiating from across the room. You can't miss it, and it wants to be played.

My guess would be that it gets played at least once an hour by someone in our household. Noah probably sits down and tinkles away on it at least four or five times a day. He's there for a couple of minutes playing through a new piece he's working on or running through an old one, or dabbling away at improvisation or sight-reading for ten or fifteen minutes. Sophie is often right there, or taking turns with him, trying out melodies, imitating what she's heard the other kids do. Erin is there at least two or three times a day, often for long stretches of playing through old pieces or sightreading through supplementary stuff. Then there's the daily practising.

It's a delightful state of affairs. I feel so lucky. We have a lot of violin music around here too, and sometimes the violin catches a bit of momentum from piano, but piano is definitely a different kettle of fish. It's relaxing and sociable and inviting by its physical presence in the living room, and maybe because I'm not a pianist, the kids are free to have a greater sense of "ownership" over the piano than they do over their violin studies.

Sophie and Noah participated in the regional Suzuki Group Class last weekend. Noah was the more reluctant of the two, but he was fine once he got going. They were the two littlest kids there and held their own very well indeed. The event was mostly for the benefit of a group of 11-18-year-old violin students who will be participating in a youth exchange program to Ottawa, Canada, this spring. They've been meeting to rehearse for a couple of months already. This class was their chance to include, and also show off a little to, the younger students who aren't doing the exchange trip. Because Erin hasn't been involved in the (competitive) music festival or the youth orchestra in Nelson (she does our community orchestra in New Denver instead), she'd had little to no contact with these "older, more advanced" students. It was nice for her to have a chance to play her more advanced repertoire in a group. In our local group classes we focus on the Book 1-3 repertoire because we have so few students beyond that level. Anyway, there was a lot of ogling and pointing at all my kids, but Erin especially, because she's considerably more advanced than many of the teens who thought they were the "senior students" in the region. And she's so petite. Fortunately she was having fun during the snacktime afterwards with some of the younger kids she knew, and seemed pretty oblivious to the attention. I hate hearing "yeah, well, they homeschool, so that's why" muttered defensively by other parents and students. Honestly... yes, she practices more than she would if she went to school. But on the other hand, we chose to unschool in large part so that our kids could delve deeply into things (like music) that inspire them. And just because she has more time to do more work doesn't negate the fact that she actually does more work. It's not an "unfair advantage"... anyone else is free to homeschool for the same advantages. (Sorry about that little rant.)

It's snowed a fair bit here this week. There's been lots of outdoor play and lots of great discussions. Olives aren't a good choice for a snowman's eyes, because their salinity melts the snow. Who would have thought that a snow day would lead to "science lab"? Well, I'm sure it comes as no surprise to those of you reading this board. We have about 15 cm of nice fluffy stuff on the ground, with more falling today. We've starting packing snow and levelling a surface for our annual outdoor skating rink. If the weather is cold enough after the weekend, we might start flooding then.

Today we're heading to "the city" (Kelowna) for a whirlwind weekend. We'll be there Friday and Saturday, returning Sunday. Chuck is doing a medical conference part of the time we're there. The main reason we're going is to do a holiday-stockpiling bulk grocery shopping, get to a big bookstore (where Cornelia Funke's novels are at the top of my list) and to hang out at a nice motel where the kids can swim in a pool for 8 hours a day! Chuck will have the vehicle Friday and part of Saturday, which is just fine since I don't relish packing the kids around department stores and malls by myself. I hate shopping anyway.

Our current readalouds are "Eragon" (finally almost finished! and it's great!) by Chris Paolini, "The Golden Goblet", set in ancient Egypt, and "Winnie the Pooh" (which we last read in its entirety when Sophie was too little to remember much of it). Bedtime has been slipping later and later as the kids demand more and more reading. We have to start sooner in the evening! I'm falling to sleep by the time we get to the second chapter in the third book!

Noah has become a "read in bed reader". So I guess he's quietly crossed the threshold into "independent reading for pleasure". He still prefers stuff with pictures but is comfortable with smaller and smaller fonts and more words per page as the weeks roll by. He's feeling really good about his skills.

Must go pick Erin and Noah up from art class and head across the mountains to the big city!

Snow

Tuesday night was orchestra. Erin is playing very well now in the first violin section. It took her a while to feel comfortable there (she was a 2nd violin last year, a 3rd the year before) but now she's got confidence and is playing nicely. Wednesday was violin lessons. I mentioned the difficulty I've been having getting Erin started on her practising, and her occasional categorical refusal to practice. My mom (her teacher) asked her what the trouble was and Erin said "It takes too long." So my mom, bless her, made up a little schedule for this week's practising that has every minute mapped out, and is so completely bare-bones that it only totals 20 minutes of practising (Erin's been expected to do ~an hour a day for the past 2 years, at least on "good days"). She drew 6 circles at the bottom of the schedule and said "Fill one of these in every day you practice. But only do 20 minutes! And come back with all circles filled."

So since Wednesday, Erin has done two twenty-minute practicings a day. She's quite delighted at the idea of surprising her grandma with the extra work. Hurrah! Something is working on the practising front this week!

It snowed here this week, and the snow has stayed on the ground. The kids have been outside for long hours every day, sledding, throwing snowballs, playing games. Perhaps the added light and activity have helped make Erin a more agreeable member of the family.

We've been teaching Fiona to say "cat". She now says "gha!" or "kha!" with considerable delight when she sees our cat (or, I confess, our dog). She knows it's a crowd-pleaser. She says "Kha!" and then looks for a sibling or parent with a big grin on her face, waiting for the smiles and squeals of approval. Our little performing seal. Way fun!

Art class this week was paper maché. We've done lots of that at home, so it was less exciting than usual, but Erin was pleased with how much faster she was getting her layers on than the less experienced kids.

Erin read "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King" (2nd and 3rd books of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy) in less than 24 hours. She slept about 6 hours, had a violin lesson but otherwise read almost straight through. Then she wanted to watch LOTR1 on video again... twice. So more screen-time than usual this week, but with all the outdoor play that seemed okay. We've agreed we'll buy LOTR2 on DVD while we're in the city in a week and watch it on Chuck's new DVD-equipped laptop. Erin also wrote a neat opening paragraph for a novel. I can't remember every word exactly, but it was more or less this:

My name is Esel Isingdorot and I am the last of my kind, the race from which all others are descended. Father used to tell me I had the courage and strength of the dwarves, the beauty and spirit of the elves, the wisdom of the wizards, the caution and speed of the horses, the humour of the hobbits and, when provoked to anger, even the firey temper of Sauron himself. And well it may be so.

I laughed at the temper bit. Yup, that's Erin . The nice thing was that she hand-wrote this in a spiral notebook. Her handwriting is finally getting to the stage where it doesn't derail her creativity. She did some dedicated work on handwriting a year or so ago which I guess gave her enough of a foundation for further gradual improvement. (Her printing was extremely primitive before that, especially for a kid who had all sorts of strong literacy and fine-motor skills.)

Noah asked about starting Singapore Math. He found Erin's old 2B workbook and loved the pictorial stuff. He's been struggling a bit with Miquon at the Red Book level. We went through a Singapore placement test. I was expecting him to place somewhere around 1B since Miquon hadn't touched on a lot of the stuff in the placement test, but he got almost every questions and is easily at a 2A level. Not only that but he loved the way the problems were presented and really grasped them easily. So I wonder if Miquon, much as I love its manipulative-based "fuzzy math" approach, isn't the right program for him. He never wanted to use the rods, and I think sometimes Miquon's efforts to make the computation simpler (through manipulatives or patterns or arrays) stymied him; they were like clutter in the way to him. He seems keen on bookwork lately... sits down with a music theory book all on his own every day ... and is asking for Singapore 2A so I think I'll order it for him this week.

Erin's making envelopes out of recycled orchestral scores. Together we made a trace-around template (discarded X-ray films from the hospital are great for this!). She's cutting, scoring, folding and gluing. We found a recipe for licky-sticky paste on the internet. It uses white glue, vinegar and oil of peppermint. I thought "eww... licking white glue?" but when we mixed it up it smelled (and tasted!) just like the real thing. So she's using it. Our white glue is non-toxic, after all. These will be a Christmas gift for her grandma. She's made a dozen or so. The pages we're using are from nicely yellowed 50- to 70-year-old orchestra parts, the last page in each part, which is blank on one side. The music is printed on the inside of the envelope; the outside is blank for the address and stamp. They look really nice.

Sophie's done some really hard work on violin with me this week, practising getting the double-up-bows in "O Come Little Children" working consistently, as well as the bow division and finger independence. She's doing so well! She's taught herself the upcoming few pieces by ear. It surprised me when Erin did this, at about the same stage. But now I've watched all three kids suddenly "click" with the by-ear learning on violin, and it's no surprise. Still it's fun to see it happen. She feels confident and happy about what she can do.

I dyed some wool that I'd drop-spun earlier this month... my first foray into both ventures. It turned out fine and I didn't accidentally cause it to felt up. I'll try to knit Fiona some mittens and maybe a hat for Christmas. I'm not so great at finishing knitting projects, but this one is small enough to be achievable I hope.

Tomorrow is a regional Suzuki violin group class out of town. It will be interesting to see whether Sophie and Noah are interested in participating. They've both become comfortable in our home group classes only relatively recently.

Canadian Composers

We had a Canadian Composers Workshop this past weekend and it went fine. Noah played very very well. In some ways he's shining brighter than his ever-so-precocious sister these days. Erin played fine but Noah's compositional skills and his cute extra-small size won a lot of hearts. (He's not as small for his age as Erin is for hers, but being almost three years younger he is still a good bit smaller than she.) There was a game-show-like format to the "learning about Canadian composers" component, and that made Noah a little stressed. He hates winning-losing games. But he coped okay... in some ways better than Erin, because he is willing to speak in public. He asked a question or two out loud. His team "lost" but he liked the losers' prizes better than the winners' anyway, and he found that funny. It was only very gently competitive (sit down if you get a right answer, keep answering if you don't, team against team, no score kept, a fair bit of silliness) and I think it was probably a good demonstration for him of how competitiveness doesn't necessarily have to be emotionally toxic.

Sunday was the composers' dessert recital we were hosting in our living room. We cleaned the house like crazy, made some food and got everything organized. Lots of people came and the kids and grownups all had fun. Afterwards Sophie "composed" a little piano melody and wanted me to transcribe it into written form. I did and she was pleased.

Everyone was really tired for our regular Nelson drive the next day. But we made it to gymnastics and once we got there we were all glad we went. During the little kids' class, a few of the older kids (7-13) got a little rowdy in the waiting area and on the floor of the gym. I wasn't really comfortable with the social stuff that was happening. There's one rather high-energy family of three kids who have been bringing a couple of cousins with them to hang out. The older brother and sister get into verbal sparring (words like b%&ch and f*%k come up as well as gestures) and they draw a number of other kids into a boy vs. girl thing. At one point the older boy told Noah that he was going to punch "his girlfriend" (i.e. Erin) in the face when she came out of the changing room. Noah came and told me this in tears. I went to find Erin and she emerged grinning like she was enjoying this fun boy vs. girl game. The boy had run off somewhere with his buddies and was probably totally unaware he'd upset Noah. I asked Erin if she was having fun and if it was all "just kidding" and she said yes. I told Noah that he was right to be upset, and right to come and get me, but that he didn't need to worry about Erin getting punched, because it was just a bad joke.

Afterwards we talked about the aggressive energy and the lack of respect for others' feelings. Erin didn't feel strongly either way... she was just playing along with the running and chasing and thought it was "sort of fun", but clearly it was too much for Noah. Some of the other parents weren't comfortable with it either. As a family we're going to make an effort to prevent the pack mentality from taking root... step back or take a walk outside if things start getting rude or aggressive or disruptive. Sophie (who is in the gym in her class during this time) is now comfortable enough that she doesn't need me in the gym, so we are free to leave if that proves most sensible. This is the first time this has happened. Mostly the social time has been very respectful and positive in the waiting area at gymnastics.

Piano lessons were fine. Sophie played her composition for Erin and Noah's teacher. Noah taught his teacher how to use the recording feature on the digital piano she has in her warmup room. She was pleased to have someone show her how it worked. Erin had a very good lesson, having pretty much mastered her new Grieg Waltz in one week, and "passing her Grade 5 technique test" (a little formality her teacher likes to use before moving into the next repertoire level).

On the way home we got talking about the roots of English words in Latin and Greek and what English and French share with each other and with these classic languages. We tried to tease apart the meanings of classical roots by brainstorming words that shared those roots (eg. television, teleport, telephone, or contract, tractor, traction, intractable). I told Erin about the Rummy Roots card game and she expressed a lot of interest. Might be a birthday present.

In the evening I finished my first bookbinding enterprise. My first book looked brilliant but Erin noticed that page 2 came after page 5, so I had to pick apart the sewn binding and re-do it. Grr. Ah well, a good lesson in comfort with mistake-making.

Today we spotted the weasel that's eaten all our hens :-(. Except he seems too big to be a weasel. So we're thinking fisher or mink. Now that we've looked in the guidebook, we need another peek through the binoculars to figure out exactly what we were looking at.

Chuck had a long housecall to do this morning so he wasn't able to take Fiona for the hour or so we normally count on in the mornings for "getting stuff done". So we've been very unproductive. I should get off the computer now and help get the last of the practising going.