Poetry on the Fly

One of the reasons it was so easy for me to become a school dropout (i.e. homeschooler) is that I realized, during three years of preschool and one and a half years of elementary school, that I have rather strong opinions about what Bean (and Boo) could be learning and Dr. Yap and I wanted all of us (that means the kiddos too) to have more of a say in what our kids were learning and how it was learned.  It drove me nuts to have to go along with whatever the teacher thought was important when half the time I didn't know what that was and the other half of the time I didn't think the teacher knew what she was doing.  ( Oh yes, I am one of those parents.) I remember one of many frustrating conversations in particular.  I think the teacher (who will remain anonymous because I live in a small town with lots of internet access) and I were talking about spelling/reading confusing words.  She said "Well, I just tell the kids that English is a weird language and doesn't always make sense."  I tried not to blanch visibly and said, "I've always taught her that many of the words in our language originally come from other languages, which is why they seem to have unusual or phonetically awkward pronunciation and spelling.  I also remind her that language is constructed and much of American English was codified by Daniel Webster when he compiled his dictionary and decided what the standard spelling should be for our words."  I think the word gobsmacked was invented to describe her reaction.  I also think I can read minds because I distinctly heard her say, "Smartass" and "No wonder the kid is having a hard time" without seeing her lips move.

Well.  Now that the choice is ours, Bean and I choose poetry.  This is a very clear case of parenting by projection: I'm unabashedly making up for a lack in my own education by immersing Bean and Boo in verse.  Christmas gift volumes of Shel Silverstein poetry aside, I don't remember reading anything more poetic than a Shakespeare sonnet until boarding school (not that kind of boarding school, this kind of boarding school.) I spent much of my sophomore year of high school moping around the cavernous building, avoiding physics by reading  "Howl" by Allen Ginsburg and discovering Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton in the Norton Anthology. It was revelatory.  I added the absence of "real" poetry in my life up to that point to my long list of adolescent grievances.  That same angst fueled my own stereotypically overwrought poetry.  In college, I took a class titled "American Women Poets," which finally taught me how to read and write poetry.  (And, incredibly, it is still being taught by the same amazing professor nearly twenty years later.) The lessons I learned about writing in general and reading poetry in particular, and about listening to women's voices have stayed with me throughout my life.  Not a draft gets written that I don't remember the professor's admonishment to cut out that first paragraph full of beautiful, prosaic, egotistical garbage. (Yeah, I often ignore it though.) The book covers for Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Sharon Olds, and Rita Dove are still lodged in my mind and many of their words still burn bright.  Some of these poems became the ceremony when Dr. Yap and were married the first, poetic, illegitimate time. (The second, legitimate time had a poetry all its own that could only be captured in an official marriage license.)

So I think poetry is important.  It is probably more important for an 8-year-old to be immersed in poetry as the art of language, verse, and writing than it is for a self-absorbed 20-year-old.  I've always read poetry to Bean and Boo, whether it was a picture book made up entirely of one poem or a volume of children's poetry.  It didn't seem at all odd to Bean that it was part of our curriculum when we started doing "fourth grade."

Rebecca Rupp suggests two books for the study of poetry in the Fourth Grade Section of Home Learning Year by Year.  I rarely buy homeschool books new, sight unseen, but I feel pretty comfortable with most of Rupp's suggestions so I ordered Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? from Amazon after reading the favorable reviews to go along with Rupp's description: "A superb program for teaching great poetry to children. The works of many famous poets serve as jumping-off points for student projects." (Rupp, p. 187)  Reading the word "program," I expected step by step instructions, or at least a bullet-point layout.  Instead, Kenneth Koch's instructions for "Teaching Great Poetry to Children" (subtitle) are embedded in his narrative description of introducing ten classic (read "usually inaccessible to anyone but grad students") poems to various grade levels, along with numerous examples of the children's work.  The second half of the book is an anthology of sorts, providing more good poems to use in a grade school elementary class.  Most poems have suggested exercises to go along with them.  The book is fantastic but after stumbling through three of the classic poems without reading Koch's narrative first, I decided it requires a level of preparation that I just can't commit to right now.  I don't mind buying it, because I know that Rupp suggests the book again in a later grade.  Hopefully, I'll be able to manage a little more prep time at that point.

The other book Rupp suggested, Poetry From A to Z: A Guide for Young Writers, by Paul B. Janeczko, is available at our local library.  Bean and I immediately took to this book.  The order imposed by the alphabetical premise and the whimsy with which the mission is carried out appeals to both of us.  Sometimes the connections between the letter and the poetry are obvious: "A" is accompanied by the poem "Autumn Beat" by Monica Kulling and a suggestion to try writing an "acrostic poem." Some of the connections require careful reading and bit of deduction: "E" is accompanied by the poem "The Animals Are Leaving," by Charles Webb, which turns out to list endangered and extinct species; and a comment from the same poet about using ones own experiences in writing.  Bean doesn't always want to write the suggested poetic forms when we are reading, but I know she likes the book, partly because she never complains when I bring it out.  I also know she likes it because when the book was checked out of the library for two months (Blankety-blank book hogs! Probably another homeschooler) she took the unprecedented step of not only telling Dr. Yap about a school topic - a word-related one no less (not the engineer mom's area of expertise) - but she asked her to track it down for her.  And track it down she did: less than a week after Bean made this request, a discarded library copy out the out-of-print book, still wrapped in plastic, arrived from North Carolina.  Bean is a bit chagrined that anyone would do something as base as discard a library book, defacing it with DISCARD stamped inside the front cover. She keeps reminding me that it is not actually a library book in active circulation and warning me not to accidentally return it.

The other, even better reason I know the book is having an impact, even though she doesn't always do the writing for each section is that she writes poetry completely unbidden.  I find scraps of it around the house.  This poem, written in red marker, was composed on the top of the monkey bars at our park:

Marigolds

Marigolds are pretty in Spring.

Cherrys Blossoms flicker in summer's light.

Ice ickles gleam in winter's wing.

But you crumple crisp like fall's leaves.

There is nothing overwrought or self-absorbed about that.  With her permission, I entered it in our county fair. 

A Stretch of Grass, A Patch of Sand

Homeschoolers quickly get really good at sussing out all their local resources.  We find new ones and figure out how to make the most of old ones.  Libraries are an obvious place to start.  In this age of the ever-shrinking welfare state - which a homeschool friend from Norway says is non-existent in the first place- I fear the extinction of the local park almost as much as I worry about libraries.  We visit many local parks, but the one that's a block from our house will always be our family favorite.

There is no bathroom, but there any many suitable trees for the purpose and no one will bat an eye, as long as you dispose of number two the same way dog owners do.  One of the three families with kids who live directly across the street may even send you over to their house if they're in the park.  The playground itself can be hot during the middle of the day in the "summer" (also known as October), but there are many shade trees on the periphery, right near the patches of grass best suited for practicing cartwheels.  For those young and nimble enough, there are also the trees themselves, many of them perfect for climbing.  The trees that aren't meant for human athletic pursuits, sport fascinating lichen, ladybug communities, and a few squirrels - all available for inspection.

The playground itself is meant for the younger set, but older siblings quickly learn how to shimmy up the swing set poles, turn the infant swings into circus trapezes, send sand down the slides to put them in turbo mode and generally parkour the play structure.  There are plenty of sticks lying around to build castles and battlements in the sandbox and usually plenty of helping hands to build a highway system.  Off to the side, Bean is usually the chief baker of mud pies and finds plenty of berries, flowers, and leaves to turn into "paint" for sidewalk art.

It's not just the stuff that makes our park so special.  It's the people.  One of my favorite groups of moms was a loose-knit group of women with at least one kid each around Bean's age.  Things have petered off in the last few years, as we've had our last babies and older kids are more involved in school and other activities, but I used to count on several baby showers and birthday celebrations a year from this group.  One friend with kids a little younger than Bean didn't have a formal playgroup, but knew all the families who showed up at the park daily between 9:30 and 11:30 am.  She put off nursery school for a long time because they had the park.

We have always tended to be part of the late afternoon/early evening crowd.  Veggie Booty and strawberries were shared, dads and Dr. Yap came home and immediately met everyone else at the park.  Plans for big kid bedrooms, birthday parties, vacations, and school were shared and compared.  Because we are around the corner from a state university campus, visiting families imbue our park with a very international flavor.  Families from Greece, Italy, Colombia, Germany, Israel, China, Korea, Russia, and many other places congregate on the recycled rubber playground surface, speaking in halting English but sharing the common languages of parenthood and childhood.

Beyond the confines of the playground, out in the great open space of grass - the only lawn or "yard" most of us know in our crowded, overpriced slice of paradise - we witness many ephemeral wonders.  In the last three months I have seen soccer team  and sword fighting practices, flag football, frisbee, games of catch, remote controlled airplanes, a rather fanatic dog owner training his retriever for some kind of competition, a phalanx of two-year-olds chasing a soccer ball half their size, birthday parties, college fraternity/sorority mixers, sunbathers, gophers popping their heads out of holes, and a lone, majestic blue heron gracing us with its presence.

One magical summer morning, before the fog had lifted, the kids and I were about to whiz past in the car on the way to Somewhere Else when I stopped suddenly to witness several young men walking across temporary slacklines, as if they were gliding along in the air.  Four lines stretched like rays in a geometry textbook, from trees near the playground to the tennis courts on the other side of the meadow, some 500 yards away. Two men were expertly walking separate lines - each about four feet off the ground - while others silently watched on the ground, in the shadow of an oak tree.  We sat in our car, watching from outside the park, in awe, until one of the men jumped off his line, and we suddenly remembered we had Somewhere to be.

Right now, with a toddler and a homeschooler, I can't imagine not spending at least five hours a week at Our Park.  Someday though, I will no longer see the familiar strangers playing the never-ending pick up games on the basketball court and won't ride or scoot with Bean and Boo along the paths that skirt the canyon-side dog run.  One day, I won't find sand in my knitting and when I drive by the park I'll have no idea who's bike or stroller is parked at the playground.   Right now though, it's an inextricable part of my social life and my kids' childhoods.  I sometimes beg for a day off from the park, but I know I'll miss it when the time comes for my kids to move on to other feeding grounds for their young minds.

Milestones, not Millstones

It seems like my life as a parent has mini-seasons that have nothing to do with the weather.  May was about travel and June was about processing and starting our summer.  July has been all about milestones.

Has any modern parent not come to dread that word?  Somewhere between the second and third trimesters with Bean I realized I better not purchase What To Expect in the First Year or I would go nuts.  It didn't matter though because at every well child visit from about six months on, I sat in the waiting room of my pediatrician's office and filled out a milestone questionnaire, sometimes blithely checking off the expected Yes or No, and sometimes filling out qualifying mom-notes in the margins.  I wasn't sure if our first pediatrician even read the forms.

I remember when I filled out a form for Boo sometime in the first year and said No, he wasn't rolling over.  When I asked our current pediatrician if he was concerned about that, he said, "No, that's just one of those things we have to ask, but I always say that I'm only concerned if a kid sees a hill and doesn't immediately want to roll down it."  So Kid Doc admitted that milestones are relative, not meant to be a millstone on our parental necks.  At some point, some of the milestones become non-negotiable and something to sweat.  Or an accumulation of missed milestones hints or screams at trouble.  We are very fortunate that all of our kids' missed milestones have fallen well within the zone of relative normal.

Our health care provider has the well child forms online now, so (slightly) Type A parents like myself can worry ahead of time, er, I mean, be prepared.  If July had not become Milestone Month around here, I might not be able to check off Yes, is potty-trained, when Boo has his Three Year well child check up in October.  It would have meant nothing other than his moms hadn't gotten around to it yet and had become well-versed with this second kid in knowing which developmental stuff to sweat and which stuff we just don't want to deal with.  Months of wet pants and pee on the floors was pretty high on the second list.  I figured if we waited, I could sit down and have a nice little chat with Boo and let him know what the new, diaper-free program would be and maybe, in my wildest dreams, that would be that.

We've been introducing him to the idea since he was about 18 months, but as far as he was concerned, the underwear was for extra warmth on top of his diaper and the Elmo potty chair was a far better place to store toys than bodily excretions.  For a long time, I knew that if I pushed it, potty training would be a whole lot of work for me and a whole lot of stress for both of us.  Boo wasn't insisting, as Bean did at barely 2, that he would no longer wear diapers and we weren't planning to start nursery school anytime soon, so I just left it.  Sometime in the spring he started to seem more interested and aware, but we were about to start our travel season and knew he'd be having his tonsils out during the summer.  As soon as we had the mid-June surgery date set, I decided that June 30 would be the last day for diapers and July 1 would be the start of underwear.

I started an informal count down with Boo, letting him know in advance that he'd be saying goodbye to diapers in two weeks, a week, on Friday.  (Apparently, I forgot to send the same memo to Dr. Yap - oops.) When the day came, I followed my plan, had a nice chat with Boo, and proceeded to put on and change about 10 pairs of nice thick, soaking wet training underwear throughout the day.  We continued on for two weeks, with more wet underwear than success and had yet to reach the point that Boo trundled off to the bathroom of his own volition when he and Dr. Yap were looking at the Toys R Us circular from the Sunday paper.  A set of trains from a popular TV show (not Thomas, the other show about trains) was on sale, buy 2 get 1 free.  Instead of saying no, Dr. Yap said lets go take a look.  I gave her one of my raised-eyebrow what are you up to partner looks, which she pointedly ignored.  I followed my better instincts and ignored the parent-child interaction on the other side of the breakfast table right back.

That afternoon, Boo picked several multiples of three trains and Dr. Yap told him when he peed in the toilet instead of his pants, he could have one.  That's right, outright bribery of the kind we've been taught to avoid if we want a well-adjusted, unspoiled, productive adult on our hands in 15 or so years.  I made a rare showing of good judgement and for the second time that day, I said nothing about the negotiations between Dr. Yap and Boo.  What do you know, about 15 trains later, we have toilet training success.  If there is any behavioral fallout from this one, you'll have to talk to Dr. Yap.  I didn't know any of this was happening after all.

On the other end of our age spectrum, Bean has been working on her own milestone, in her own way.  Two months after her 8th birthday, she has mastered peddling and steering a bike with training wheels.  I remember penciling in a qualifying reason why she had missed this milestone when it showed up on the 5-year well child form: we hadn't really encouraged it because our driveway was a little steep and our road a little curvy.  Since Bean was two we'd tried introducing tricycles and small bikes with training wheels, all of which she outgrew without mastering either pedaling or steering.  She would show sudden bursts of interest, followed by a frustrating attempts to pedal and steer herself down a few feet of sidewalk in front of our house.  After a day or two, she would give up and move on.  We usually let it go, a little bewildered that she just didn't seem to be catching on.

Maybe there are specific developmental reasons why riding a bike has been difficult for Bean, or maybe her milestone is on a different timeline.  Whatever the reason, the three of us understood without discussion that she could happily get through childhood without this skill.  Then she decided she wanted a skateboard this spring.  After all, she reasoned, a skateboard is like a balance beam on wheels and she has pretty good balance.  We didn't say anything to her, but thought learning how to skateboard might be her gateway back to a bike.  She quickly decided that skateboarding was harder than it looked and set it aside to practice her long-abandonded scooter.

With very little practice and no provocation from us, Bean became a scootering pro, an "expert scooterist" as she put it.  She is using a three-wheeled scooter that sits low to the ground which means balance is no longer an issue.  It seems that not having to worry about balance or pedaling isolated the mechanics of steering and allowed her to master that piece of the equation.  After a few months of scootering back and forth to the park and around the basketball courts every day, she announced that she was ready to try a bike with training wheels.  A few weeks ago, we hunted down a 20 inch bike with no gears, a rear-wheel hand brake and training wheels.

In the beginning, pedaling was as frustrating as it had ever been for her, but it was clear that she had a handle on steering.  We walked beside her, putting a hand on the foot that needed to push down and helping her push the right way.  This helped, but she still struggled with figuring out how to get her feet started if we weren't using our hands.  Dr. Yap told her to push down whichever foot was up and that seemed to click.  After about 15 minutes of practicing she was able to steer and pedal herself to the park a few blocks away.  The next day, she repeated the feat, with only a few reminders about how to get her feet going properly.

Bike riding went so well, I'm ready to dust off the idea of swimming lessons for her again.  Then again, maybe she knows more than we do about her milestones and her internal timetable.  As for Boo, I'll take a questionable parenting tactic over pee-saturated clothes and floors any day.

Phenomenally Unforgettable

The trouble with reading hundreds of picture books in a few months time is that no matter how charming the text or delightful the illustrations, unless it is on your child's constant rotation list it has to be phenomenally unforgettable for either good or bad reasons.  Otherwise, you will forget all about it's charms and delights and only remember, that it had both (or horrors, depending on the book).  This is all compounded by the fact that I am often sleep-deprived and actually do manage to cram non-children's literature into the crevices of my brain.  So this group of books from the New York Times Parents Guide to the Best Books for Children are our absolute favorites so far.  These are the finds that surprised us with their existence, charmed us in multiple readings, and delighted us with sequels.  Above all, they are phenomenally unforgettable.

The Holes in Your Nose
Written and Illustrated by Genichiro Yagyu
As soon as I had the faintest whiff of impending toilet training when Bean was a toddler, I went out and bought the companion volume to this book, Everyone Poops, which I knew from my younger days as an itinerant bookseller in various emporia.  I would only give that book minor credit for its role in the process of bodily function awareness, but I was so impressed with how simply and thoroughly the book dealt with defecation for a juvenile (and juvenile) audience that I bought (new!) as many of the other titles in this series of Japanese origin as I could get my hands on, including The Holes in Your Nose, The Gas We Pass, All About Scabs, and Contemplating Your Bellybutton.   Seriously, a set of these books would make as good a baby shower gift as the perennial Good Night Moon/Pat the Bunny combo.  (Indeed, I can think of some people who'd appreciate them more.)  Each book is about exactly what the title states, and a little bit more.  Everyone Poops is aimed directly at the toddler set, but the others can wait until preschool.  They can be introduced at opportune developmental moments: instead of reminding your child over and over not to pick their nose and eat the contents in public, read The Holes in Your Nose, with its description of booger ingredients, "Boogers are made from dirt, so they're dirty" and it's instructions to "look up and show the person reading this book the holes in your nose."  The Gas We Pass, may not actually deter public flatulence from a five-year-old (or their urge to use the word FART in as many ways possible), but at least they will know exactly what they are doing.  All About Scabs is equally good for scab-eaters and junior scientists/doctors.  Contemplating Your Bellybutton is great for a preschool start to the "where do we come from" discussion, as well as a good one to pull out if mom's pregnant.  A little bit of old-fashioned hygiene is also thrown in for good measure.

Horace and Morris But Mostly Dolores
Written by James Howe
Illustrated by Amy Walrod
This is a grand girl -power book written for an intended audience of girls, boys, and mice.  Its message of inclusion comes across loud and clear (without feeling like you're being hit over the head with a soap box) to kids from about three up.  Older kids (6-9) will also enjoy the story and may want to go out and start their own club, complete with a clubhouse.

Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain
Written and Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone
If ever a book embodied the admonishment not to judge a book by its cover, it's this one.  The old-fashioned illustrations give away it's 1936 vintage, and the Little Tim of the title is an English boy of means, presumably living somewhere near Dover, with it's white cliffs and coastal orientation.  If I were a less open-minded parent and not singularly bent on reading as many of the books in the NYT Guide as possible, I might have skipped it with Bean and waited to read them to Boo when he was older.  We are all glad I didn't.  Everybody loved the first book so much that we checked them all out and read them in chronological order by publication date.  Little Tim is a short-suited boy of about ten who dreams of a life on the high seas, just like his friend the old sea captain.  Every book finds him either running away on a ship or begging his angelically tolerant parents to let him join a ship's crew for just a few days.  The voyages always turn into adventures of far greater magnitude than he had intended and many of them include his best friends, the orphans Ginger and Charlotte.  One of the books foreshadows his future life as a ship captain which made me think that Tim would surely be one of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers were he real, putting in his 10,000 hours aboard ships to become a talented admiral.  Fair warning: any empty box lying around the house while you are reading these will immediately be commissioned as the SS Cardboard and Marker Enterprise.

Minerva Louise
Written and Illustrated by Janet Morgan Stoeke
We are new, but ardent, fans of Minerva Louise the chicken with a small brain and huge amounts of imagination and gumption.  The illustrations are simple and tell the chicken with a heart's story perfectly. All ages will enjoy these books which are just plain good picture books.  No grand morals or adventures, no messages or achingly beautiful prose or pictures.  Just a chicken.  Get to know Minerva Louise and you won't be sorry.  And you will get to say "Minerva Louise" out loud a bunch of times.

Mysterious Thelonious
Written and Illustrated by Chris Raschka
In no way could this be considered a biography of Thelonious Monk, but using fewer than ten different words and graphical, abstract illustrations, Mysterious Thelonious does a better job of conveying the feeling of the jazz impresario's music than a biography ever could.  When I read the first page of this book, Bean scowled and asked me with great suspicion what this book was about.  I kept reading and by the last page, she was bopping around the living room saying "Mys-ter-i-ous The-lon-i-ous" in as many ways as she could think of: hissing, jumping, swooping, spinning, shouting.  Boo of course had no idea who Thelonious Monk was or why we were saying his name over and over again in syncopation, but that didn't stop him from joining in.
Homeschool Connection: For good measure, and because that's what good little homeschoolers do, I dug up as much Thelonious Monk as I could from the iPod archives after we finished the book.  We left it at that, but starting with this one, small picture book could easily lead to a greater exploration of Thelonious Monk or a whole unit of jazz music.

Vera's First Day of School
Written and Illustrated by Vera Rosenberry
The numerous Vera books are yet another series which we had never heard of before the NYT project, but which made repeat appearances in the library bag.  Whether she's going to school for the first time, learning to ride a bike, adjusting to a baby sister, or recovering from the measles, Vera does it earnestly and with all the aplomb that a youngest sister turned middle child can muster.  The Vera books are not of the flashy ilk that show up in bulk at Costco or become television series, they are far quieter and far better.


Where's Our Mama?
Written and Illustrated by Diane Goode
When I first read the description of this book, I thought it would be an anxiety-inducing tale of losing and finding one's parent.  Instead, it was a beautifully illustrated tale of mistaken identity, that made me wish I was lost in Belle Epoque Paris.  We loved it enough to check out Mama's Perfect Present, which is an equally beautiful tale of the innocent mischief caused when the same protagonists from Where's Our Mama? go looking for a present for said Maman.

Happy reading aloud!  And if you feel so inspired, please continue to share your experiences with these or other favorite books in the comments.

What It Takes

If you are a homeschooler, even a new one, you already know what people are going to say when they find out you homeschool.  There will be something about the S Word of course.  They may ask why or how you do it if they are comfortable, and interested.  Most likely though - especially if they are parents of school-age kids - they will tell you all the reasons why they can't or won't homeschool.  There are few variations among these reasons: I don't have the patience is the most common.  I also hear "I couldn't spend all my time with my kids, I need a break" and "I couldn't be my kid's teacher and parent."

So here's the thing.  I don't have super-human patience (or even human levels of it unless I've had enough coffee and/or sleep).  I don't have a degree in education.  I don't love being around my kids more than the average parent.  Last night, at my monthly homeschool parents support group (read "my monthly lifeline to adult conversation with women to whom I'm not married") I saw many amazing moms.  Women who are homeschooling one, two, three kids; some by design and some by accident, or out of necessity, like myself.  I love these women and gain sustenance from those two hours.  But as I looked around the room, I didn't see any supermoms.

Well, I didn't see any parents who are more super than you, or more super than any other parent.  That's because any parent can do it, no matter the reasons for homeschooling or the financial or intellectual resources one brings to the table.  (I admit, single parent homeschooling could be tricky, but I know some who do it and know it's not impossible.) Any parent can do this because parenting and homeschooling are the same thing.

You need the same amounts of patience, fortitude, and love to homeschool your child that you need to parent that particular child.  Your child doesn't suddenly need different amounts of your energy, time, attention or intellectual capacity because you are now teaching them grammar and multiplication instead of potty training and brushing their teeth.

Think of all the things you taught your child before they went off to school and think of all the things you teach them on a daily basis that are not strictly academic: how to set the table, behave in public, count change, ride a bike, negotiate sibling rivalries.  Sure, you are not going to be an expert on every subject - outsourcing is perfectly acceptable.  You have probably already outsourced swimming and music lessons.  I tried to outsource Bean's potty training to a Montessori school, and that didn't go so well but we got through it.

And that's what you do: you get through it.  Every day, since the day your child was born, you've had to make a million decisions, negotiate a minefield of tricky situations, and figure out how this little human creature who came without any instructions -not even a DNA map printed on their forehead for gosh sakes- works.  And you have.  Sometimes better than others.  You have listened to the good advice of your friends, ignored the good advice from your mother and mother-in-law (and later went back and did that too).  You've tried dubious suggestions from websites and had dubious results, you've tried to keep up with the playground moms and then didn't bother.  You keep trying and figure it out every day some days better than others.

That's homeschooling.  I started homeschooling Bean with a million expectations of her and of myself.  Many of these we've discarded and refined.  Before we even started homeschooling, I was dissatisfied with the curriculum I saw being taught both in private and public schools.  I thought surely there must be something stronger and more rigorous out there.  There is, but that doesn't mean I could tell Bean to read ten pages and answer three essay questions.  If she was the kind of kid who could sit down and do the work put in front of her with no questions asked, then my blog would probably be about something other than homeschooling because I wouldn't be doing it.  The early days of homeschooling were frustrating when I saw myself as more of a teacher than a parent.  I had to work through my expectations, set them aside, and do what worked for Bean.  It's still a work in progress.  Just as she is, and just as I am as a parent.

I lose my patience some days, spend weeks taking the wrong track with something, and sometimes get it right on the first try.  In the beginning, I used a lot of workbooks from Costco because that's what I had.  As we kept going, and I figured out what worked for each of us, I abandoned those workbooks and began developing a curriculum.  But when we start our school day at 9am, I am not suddenly Ms. Teacher, I am still Mom.  Bean is not suddenly an easy going student ready to learn every subject I throw at her without question.  I use them same strategies to get her to learn anything she's not one hundred percent interested in that I would use to get her to clean her room.

Just as with any other aspect of parenting, from the time Bean and Boo were each born, I just show up each day (second or third cup of coffee in hand) and begin where we are.  That's all it takes.

The Evolution of a Diagnosis

June 1 was D Day around here.  Or perhaps I should say Dx Day.  If I had written this post on any of the last 30 days, it would be completely different, and probably have any one of 30 different titles.  If I stop now and come back to it tomorrow, this post - it's text, and the feelings it conveys, the picture of life it paints - will be different.


The diagnosis itself was a bit anti-climatic.  For the most part, there were no surprises, only confirmation of what we already suspected.  The pediatric neurologist confirmed what may turn out to be the most innocuous aspects of Bean's uniqueness: Tic Disorder which will in all likelihood become Tourette's Syndrome.  This is what we brought in with us when Bean and I walked into the exam room.  We left with that plus additional, generalized labels: OCD, ADD, and Anxiety Disorder, with a likely side dish of mild Autism Spectrum Disorder - and - surprise! another referral, this time to a child psychiatrist (or if we preferred, a developmental pediatrician) who could further parse the diagnosis and give specific recommendations.  The neurological diagnosis had the same effect of trying to get a comment from a high-powered PR firm about a celebrity scandal (in the most blustering, yet Groucho Marxish tones your imagination can muster): "We can neither confirm nor deny the presence of OCD, ADD, Anxiety, and Asperger's in this child, but that area of the brain is certainly lit up like a Christmas tree."  


Neither Dr. Yap or I have any interest in figuring out why Bean is the lucky recipient of the alphabet soup diagnosis.  We are pro-vaccine and have no interest in that particular discussion.  Her difficult birth could certainly be a culprit.  Brain Doc was quick to pin the blame on genetics and tried to do me a favor by fingering the anonymous donor, but it didn't take much to figure out that there's plenty of questionable fruit falling close to my side of the family tree: anxiety, OCD, social maladjustment, insomnia - all the major food groups of basal ganglia dysfunction are well represented by me and any branch surrounding me.  That's why it was easy for Dr. Yap and I to brush off Bean's sleep issues and why her many compulsions bothered Dr. Yap more - they looked familiar to me.  On the other hand, Bean's intransigence and difficulty with change also looked familiar (ahem, Oma) and Dr. Yap handles Bean's lack of adaptability with more ease than I do because she didn't grow up with it.  It really comes as no surprise that one region of the brain is responsible for all these related attributes. 


We had already followed earlier advice from Kid Doc to make an appointment with a local neuropsychologist for complete testing.  That will happen later this month.  Dr. Yap and I feel like we can't really do much with the information we already have until we get the results of the assessment.  It's like we've been given the ingredients, but don't have the recipe yet - or some other better metaphor for playing without a full deck.  


Or maybe it's more like getting a diagnosis in slow motion, a little bit at a time.  I began this week with a pre-assessment meeting with the neuropsychologist, delivering the already thick packet of checklists and vital info about Bean that she sent us to fill out several weeks ago.  Based on our meeting, and the Bean we portrayed on paper, the Neuropsych already has an idea which way the the diagnosis  will go.  She can't say that of course, but I can tell by her questions and comments what she's thinking: "Did she look at you or the object when she asked for something as a toddler?...I'd be surprised if you told me her handwriting wasn't atrocious...You will probably find the ADHD symptoms will fall away...You will need to start tracking all behaviors and responses to situations as they come and go - five years later you will be seeing them again...Other people will be involved as we go forward - they will know things you don't and you don't want to be the ones to implement everything...If you have twenty kids in a room with the same diagnosis, they will behave twenty different ways..." These are the pieces of conversational lint that stuck, what I am left with several days later. 


So we go forward, knowing more but not nearly enough.  I suppose that could make it all easier to digest (again with the food/eating metaphors), but it's also maddening.  There are days that Dr. Yap and I spend the day identifying everything little behavior that goes with what we've always known, but now has a name (or names).  Other days, we just think it's best to forget the whole thing and carry on like always.   And then there are the days when we wish we already had the better toolkit we hope to receive (or at least be pointed toward) at the end of all the testing.  Or the "bad" days when we're glad we already have something we can tell the staff at the school where Bean is attending summer workshops.  Some days others say "We thought she was just really bright" or "She seems to handle things so much better than other kids with similar issues."  And we agree.  

A Slew of Classics and a Handful of New Discoveries

So, I have this little problem with acquiring children's books:

Aside from the obvious space issues (this is one wall in the playroom/office) I really don't feel guilty about this because I bought the vast majority of them used (and back to the used book recycling system they will go when we are done).  One of my favorite sources for used books is the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Library Children's Book Sale (not to be confused with their general used book sale, whose children's book selection pales in comparison.)  Most years, early on some Saturday morning in January, I am on the library steps with two or three totebags waiting for the doors to open.  At a dollar a pound, the book sale is like an all you can eat buffet for bibliophiles.  My book acquisition priorities have changed over the years, but my strategy is always to go the sections in order of my greatest desire, grabbing first, weeding later.  In the early years, this meant going straight for the picture book section in the back of the room and grabbing any softcover book that was a medal winner, by an author or illustrator I loved, or that just plain looked interesting.  Baboon falls into the last category and it leads off the latest round of picture books from the The New York Times Book Project

Baboon

Written by Kate Banks and Illustrated by Georg Hallensleben

This is my favorite kind of kid's book: it's simple text and illustrations manage to convey deeper meaning that even young children can understand.  A baby baboon's mother introduces him to the ways of the world while on a walk in the savannah.  The tale appeals to all ages (toddler, big kid, and mom) and can be used to introduce toddlers to a range of African animals in their native habitats. For older kids it makes a great jumping off point for philosophical discussions about our place in the world and our relationships to the people and things around us.

Blackboard Bear

Written and Illustrated by Martha Alexander

Since I didn't read this, here is Bean's review: This is a cute book for older siblings to read to their younger siblings.  A little boy tries to play with the older boys but when they don't let him, he makes a bear on a blackboard and the bear only let's the boy play with him, ride him or feed him.  The moral of the story is that if you don't let someone play with you or your toys, they won't let you play with them or their toys.

Blueberries For Sal

Written and Illustrated by Robert McCloskey

About ten years ago, I convinced Dr. Yap to take a detour on our way home from Southern California and stop in Solvang, a cheesy faux-Danish town, that's only a little less cheesy and a little less faux than Helen, Georgia.  Besides the bakery, the only place of interest was a bookstore where I picked up Blueberries for Sal and another childhood favorite.  I knew I'd be reading them to someone at some point in the future.  If you've already read this a hundred times, look for another McCloskey classic, One Morning in Maine.  It's not exactly a sequel, but Sal appears as a big sister about to lose her first tooth.

Homeschool Connection: You could google Blueberries for Sal lesson plans and get at least a dozen suggestions for early elementary students, or you could spend the same amount of time thinking about Maine, black bears, and blueberries and come up with a week's worth of activities on your own.

The Boy Who Ate Around

Written and Illustrated by Henrik Drescher

This tale of a boy who eats doesn't his dinner so instead eats around it and ends up eating everything including his best friend, his parents, and the earth just didn't appeal to Bean and I.  The illustrations didn't redeem the unpleasant text and we were glad we read it at the library and didn't have to bother putting it in the bag.

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain: A Nandi Tale

Written by Verna Aardema and Illustrated by Beatriz Vidal

We've had this book in our home library for years, so I'll let Bean do the reviewing honors again: It's a great book for Africa-lovers like me and it's very catchy.

Homeschool Connection: This a great literature companion for a unit on Africa.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Written by Bill Martin, Jr. and Illustrated by Eric Carle

Another Bean review: This is great for learning your colors, the words are fun to say, and because the illustrations are by Eric Carle, they are really beautiful.  Boo also likes it.

Caps For Sale

Written and Illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina

If you typically tell your child the name of an author before you read a book, this one is a lot of fun and demands as a grandiose an Eastern European accent at you can muster.  The story itself - of a peddler, his caps, and some mischievous monkeys - is great fun for kids to act out.  If you've already read this a hundred times, check out  Circus Caps for Sale.

The Carrot Seed

Written by Ruth Krauss and Illustrated by Crockett Johnson

Bean says this book is for kids with big dreams and teaches that something big can come from something small.  I would also add The Carrot Seed preaches the importance of believing in oneself and one's work, despite what anyone else says.  Crockett Johnson's drawing style is a perfect match for the spare text.

Cat Up A Tree

Written by Ann Hassett and Illustrated by John Hassett

The fun illustrations in this tale of Mrs. Quimby, multiplying cats, and a local community unwilling to help until there is a mouse problem feature many things to count - especially cats.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Written by Bill Martin, Jr. and Illustrated by Lois Ehlert

This fun alphabet book is really aimed at Boo's age group, but Bean and I like to experiment with the rhythm of the words: singing them like a reggae song, speaking them in syncopation, adding movements to the story.

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Written by Judith Barrett and Illustrated by Ron Barrett

If you have only ever seen the movie, you must immediately acquire a copy of the book and expunge the memory of the movie from your children's minds.  Pickles to Pittsburgh isn't quite as good as its progenitor, but get that one too.  I always like to read Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord with these books and I think it's a travesty that it wasn't included in the Guide.

Corduroy

Written and Illustrated by Don Freeman

Really, who doesn't love this charming tale of a teddy bear with one missing button on a mission to find both himself and a home?  Well, Bean doesn't.  She thinks it's one of the weirdest books she's ever read- or had read to her - and thinks his eyes are creepy to boot.  To her, Corduroy is the literary equivalent of a clown.  It's the only childhood favorite of mine that was a total strikeout with her.  Boo and I remain fans of the teddy bear in green overalls.

Curious George

Written and Illustrated by H.A. Rey

Um, Bean also hates Curious George.  She was always (I think appropriately) horrified that he was stolen from his jungle home and appropriated by a man with no name, a man known only by his ubiquitous accessory.  Okay, fair enough, these things always bothered me a bit too, but even though I wouldn't count the monkey or his "friend" as favorites, I always liked his adventures to the hospital and the moon.  And Boo?  Curious George is his absolute favorite.  

Dance

Written by Bill T. Jones and Susan Kuklin and Illustrated by Susan Kuklin

Dance is one of the rare children's books illustrated entirely with photographs.  That alone makes it worthy of inclusion in the Best Books for Children.  Though short on words, both it's text and pictures easily convey the poetry and rhythm of dance.  Even kids who don't love dance as much as Bean will like this one.  

The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate The Wash

Written by Trinka Hakes Noble and Illustrated by Steven Kellogg

Bean and Boo loved this farcical tale of Jimmy's wayward pet boa constrictor so much that they immediately demanded we check out every silly sequel.  Steven Kellogg is a prolific children's book illustrator and author and you will probably recognize his fun, colorful drawings.  As with the best picture books, the illustrations in Jimmy's Boa support and extend the story of the day Jimmy took his boa on a field trip or the day he went to school, or the day he showed up - surprise!- at a birthday party.  

Drummer Hoff

Written by Barbara Emberley and Illustrated by Ed Emberley

We've been fans of Ed Emberley's drawing instruction books for a while now, but never new that he also illustrated children's books.  This odd little gem fits my description of a perfect children's book: it's short, but both the graphic illustrations and the text pack a punch; it's a bit weird, and it's the kind of book that both an eight-year-old and a two-year-old want to pick up again and again on their own, going through each page.  Without reading the two-year-old knows exactly what is happening.  Despite the fact that all the action centers around a Revolutionary War cannon, Drummer Hoff and his compatriots are more unabashedly, amusingly, bungling than war-mongering. (And the illustrations are so late 60's - a hit, with my just-turned 40, nostalgic self).

Ernest and Celestine

Written and Illustrated by Gabrielle Vincent

Once again, Bean and Boo were split evenly along lines of age and personality when it came to these books about a former circus Bear raising a mouseling.  I agree with Bean that the storylines are a little thin and the ambiguous relationship between the adult bear Ernest and the childlike Celestine seems a bit, dare-I-say-it-I-know-this-is-a-children's-book, contrived.  I also agree with Boo, who thinks the illustrations are pretty and stories sweet.

Synching Up

I am a listmaker.  I love writing and revising lists and crossing things off and writing new lists.  Book lists, task lists, grocery lists, I love them all.  I especially love when, as this week, one of the items on my To Do list is to make a list.  After six weeks of time off from school for traveling and appointments and pneumonia (me) and a tonsillectomy (Boo), my big task for the week is to plan out the next few months of homeschooling - roughly through the end of summer.  As I get out my favorite list-making notebooks and say hi to Rebecca Rupp again, I keep receiving lists on Facebook and in my email and feedreaders that are meant for the rest of the country. And by "the rest of the country" I mean non-homeschoolers.  You know, normal people who do things at the same time and on the same schedule as everyone else.

When the first list of Cool-Things-To-Do-With-Your-Kids-This-Summer-So-You-Don't-Drive-Each-Other-Crazy popped up on my screen two things went through my head.  The first was, "It's summer?" (living on the central coast of California we are never in the same season as 95% of the rest of the country.)  The second was the theme song to "Phineas & Ferb."  [Google it- it's a Disney Channel cartoon and the kid's are right, it's actually pretty good.] By the second and third list, I started to get twitchy, like there was something I should be doing but wasn't.  I mean these were lists, right?  They were inviting me to make my own lists of indoor and outdoor fun and ways to maximize the family togetherness and minimize the screen time.  How could I keep trashing these lists and booting them off my feedreader unread?

I had this same feeling of dissonance last September when we had already been "doing school" for several weeks and all of a sudden every media outlet was crackling with school supply sales and and lists of how to survive every aspect of "school" from making lunch and the container in which it should be carried to how to manage homework and your kids' teachers. It took me a week of needling Bean about her handwriting and her refusal to do fifty versions of the same math problem (and I'm sorry to say more than one threat to march her over to the local public elementary school) before I realized I was borrowing angst from fifty million other parents.  Really, angst is not something that's in short supply around here so there's no need to suffer it vicariously.

As in September, the solution to making peace with our summer-time asynchronicity is to knuckle down and get my head around the next few months of homeschooling.  Once we are settled back into our own routine, it won't matter so much that the rest of the world thinks it's summer vacation.

Except that it kind of does matter what the rest of the world is doing in both positive and inconvenient ways.  On the positive side, there are many more daytime camps and workshops available during the summer, and Bean has kids her own age to play with (or around as the case may be) no matter what time we show up at the park.  For Boo, he gets a little more one on one time with me while Bean is off at her various summer-only activities.  On the inconvenient side, we have to share some places that we might normally have to ourselves during the school year, like the beach or the library, with so many people it's a different experience.  And as clever as we think we are to travel when most other kids are in school, this can backfire, as it did when we showed up in DC for one day with several thousand junior high kids having their turn at the annual pilgrimage for the entitled.  Or when we showed up at the La Brea Tar Pits in LA during the first week in June, which this homeschooling mom had forgotten is designated school field trip week.

As I continue to plow through my list ("Homeschool Lesson Plan Summer 2011") and try to ignore everyone else's summer plans, a post titled "Getting Organized for an Intentional Summer" came across my feed reader.  The contents may be aimed at the "rest of the country," but the title spoke to me.  That's exactly what my current list and the schedules it will drive are all about.  I may not be intentionally planning carefree days or intentionally planning to cross items off a summer bucket list, but I am regrouping with intention for the next few months of home learning.

In our first year and a half of homeschooling I have found that periods of downtime followed by a renewed focus seem to come naturally, often after a period of travel or through the completion of educational goals or change in educational focus.  We already changed our educational focus several months ago, going back to an eclectic approach - based on the afore-linked book by Rebecca Rupp -  after a trial run with a packaged curriculum.  But after six weeks off, it's time to look again at what we're doing and make tweaks where necessary.

One of the first changes I am making is to shift our reading time to the beginning of the day.  It just hasn't been happening for us at the end of the day lately and that's something I don't want to lose.  Although Bean reads on her own, I want to make sure there is diversity and continued challenge in her reading selections, so we will take turns reading books from the New York Times Children's Book list.  With most other subjects, it's just a matter of reminding myself of where we are and making lists (Yes!) for the library.  All our recent museum visits while traveling have renewed my desire to include trips to local museums in our "curriculum."  This isn't the first time I have set this as a goal, but it often seems to lose the extracurricular activity competition.  I am writing it into our schedule this time to see if that helps.  Every week seems too ambitious and likely to lead to museum ennui.  We'll try every other week on a designated day.

As I finish up my list and turn it into our summer schedule, it matters less that we are out of sync with everyone else and more that we are in sync with our family's intentions and what works for us.  And that  is pretty much my one-line homeschooling manifesto.

Break Schooling

We have spent most of May either preparing to travel, travelling, or recovering from travel - not a lot of schooling going on here.  But that's okay, that's why we more or less homeschool year round, it takes the pressure off.  If we blow off the month of November to go to Hawaii, or oops, don't get anything done in May, it's okay.  Bean doesn't have to worry about making up any homework when she's sick and I don't have to sweat days that are more about appointments than academics.

This was our big spring family trip, a birthday trip since Bean and I both celebrated ours while abroad.  We flew in and out of Dulles, with brief forays to DC and Baltimore and a longer stint in Williamsburg, Virginia.  I know many homeschoolers would have turned the itinerary into curriculum, but that's just not how Dr. Yap and I do things on vacation.  As it was, we had a much busier trip than we normally do and it was chock full of educational opportunities, both intentional and serendipitous.

Flying from right to left across the country means that the first day was dedicated to travel.  The only thing we learned - besides the limits of parental sanity when traveling with a two-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a grandmother - is that Virgin America is a very civilized airline.  Everyone and everything was so pleasant, we didn't mind paying for all checked bags and anything beyond the first drink.

It also helped that after years of trial and error, I think I actually perfected the on-board entertainment for each kid.  I bought each of them a legal-size flat plastic pouch with a zipper at our local art supply store for $1.99.  Each one was stocked with age and personality appropriate art supplies and activities and both bags fit nicely in a ziptop tote bought from Target for less than $20.  These art pouches were pulled out over and over again during down time at each hotel.  For the way home, I streamlined each pouch, putting things that hadn't been touched during the trip in the suitcase and adding in a few new things we picked up along the way.

We spent our first two nights on the fringes of Old Town Alexnadria, on the Virginia side of DC, and took one day in DC to see what we thought would be most interesting to Bean and Boo.  Of course, two-year-olds and eight-year-olds have different ideas about what is worthy of their attention, but we had Oma in tow so we figured between the three of us, we'd work it out.

Dr. Yap and I are both city girls at heart, but for one reason and another, we have spent the last decade in a town that has many monikers, but compared to any metropolis I like to refer to it as Hicksville-by-the-Sea.  We thrilled for the chance to ride a proper subway - a clean, well-lit subway with good signage to boot.  The last time either one of us rode the Metro (though not together) was during the 1993 March on Washington for GLTBQandeverothersexualother.  So even though we had to figure out the complex fee structure instead of riding for free and even though the drag queens in all their colorful regalia were replaced by Queen Bean in all her colorful regalia (and Oma wearing the first of what I think were 10 separate coral colored t-shirts - I'm not complaining, it made her easy to find) - we made a point of taking the Metro.  Fun was had by all.

After a brief foray into the Smithsonian "Castle" to get our bearings we made a beeline for the cafeteria at the Natural History Museum (eating at odd hours is the most inconvenient part of traveling from coast to coast.) After fueling up and making a presumably unavoidable stop in the obligatory cafeside museum shop, we headed straight for the second floor Insect Zoo.  Bean loved trying to suss out all the creepy crawlies in their cages and Boo just thought it was creepy.  He had a similar sentiment about the forensic anthropology exhibit titled "Bones."  After about twenty minutes he declared himself finished with this dark, "yucky" museum and Dr. Yap left with him, heading towards the Air and Space Museum.

Bean, Oma, and I took advantage of the toddler's absence and meandered slowly through this fantastic Bones exhibit, a good portion of which relied on the local Chesapeake Bay area to provide historical forensics cases.  Bean, of course, was most interested in any part of the exhibit showing teeth, and their were plenty.  The whole thing culminated with a visit to the forensic anthropology lab, where Bean had an education specialist, a bunch of jaws, and lots of dental x-rays all to herself for at least half and hour.  After those two exhibits we felt like we had gotten our monies worth (admission to many Smithsonian museums is free) and meandered toward the Air and Space Museum.

We were waylaid for an exceedingly pleasant half an hour in the Sculpture Garden outside the Hirshhorn  Museum.  For a while, Oma and I did nothing more than contemplate the wonderfully odd, but sublime architecture of the Hirshhorn and watch Bean run barefoot laps around the central fountain and in and out of the Sculpture Garden.  Then Bean discovered not one, but two birds who met a sad fate at the hands of the Hirshhorn windows and asked Oma to film her made-up-on-the-spot nature series.  Once she started poking the poor creatures with leaves to compare their anatomies and injuries, it was time to continue our sojourn to the Air and Space Museum.  (We found out later that Dr. Yap and Boo had taken a short break in Hirshhorn garden as well.  It really is a wonderful oasis right off the Mall.)

I wish I had seen Boo's joy in the Air and Space museum firsthand, but by the time we arrived, he and Dr. Yap were already in the museum shop and Bean had as much interest in the air and space craft as Boo had in the Natural History Museum treasures.  I know he loved going in the airplanes and spaceships (as he put it) because we heard a lot about both for the next few days.  The museum as a whole looks like it's getting about as much funding as NASA is these days, despite the heavy foot traffic. It was exactly the same as I remembered it from my last visit more than 25 years ago.

We didn't spend much time in Old Town Alexandria, other than to sample the local seafood for dinner, but we happened to be there on a Friday evening when the Torpedo Factory Art Center was having an opening and Bean discovered her new favorite contemporary artist, Leslie Blackmon.  Her Baa-America!  show featured crocheted 3-D sheep in the guise of famous artists and celebrities.  Bean's favorites were Jackson Baa-Ollock and Martha St-ewe-art.

The next day, we drove to Baltimore, which is home to the world's oldest dental college and that dental college, now part of the University of Maryland, is home to the National Museum of Dentistry.  Yes, that's right, my tooth-obsessed Bean discovered that one of her favorite kid-oriented dentistry websites, MotherPower Online, was the online home of the National Museum of Dentistry.  We'd been trying for a while to organize a trip to Williamsburg and when we found out about the museum, we knew this would be a perfect addition to the birthday voyage.  As we started trying to figure out how we were going to make all these different locations fit into one trip, we discovered that Baltimore has a little more going for it than the dentistry museum.

We stayed right on the Inner Harbor, and only had a chance to explore a fraction of this redeveloped waterfront, filled with a mall, restaurants, museums, decommissioned Naval and Coast Guard vessels and a Revolutionary War era fort.  The first stop, before even checking into our hotel, was the National Dentistry Museum.  The Museum is on two partial floors of the original College of Dentistry, which itself is right in the middle of the University of Maryland medical complex. We had the whole place to ourselves and it was obviously well-funded and the exhibits were very up-to-date (one was about DNA and genetic link to oral health.) We spent about an hour-and-a-half there and although I think Bean enjoyed finally being there, I think she was disappointed that we were the only ones there and I think that she was actually far more engaged in the forensic anthropology exhibit at the Natural History Museum in DC.  She wanted to go back the next day, hoping there would be other kids who share her unique enthusiasm.  Dr. Yap and I were a little relieved when the kids decided they were too worn out from the excellent children's museum, Port Discovery.  We don't mind indulging her passion at all, and truly hope she will find someone with whom to share her interest, but we aren't eager to see her get hurt if her chosen audience rebuffs her willingness to disgorge all she knows about dentistry and orthodontia.

Since it was right there across the street from our hotel, we also visited the National Aquarium.  I don't know if we were tainted by our many experiences at our local Monterey Bay Aquarium, or if our assessment was truly fair, but no one was impressed.  Boo thought it was too dark (this is a theme with him, and being two, it's a big criteria for him - that and how much freedom he has to run around.) Bean thought both the individual exhibits and the museum as a whole were poorly laid out and difficult to navigate.  Dr. Yap thought there was too much concrete and too many large photographs of fish were there should have been actual fish.  My two favorite aquariums, the aforementioned Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga both focus almost exclusively on local water life and I really think the National Aquarium missed the boat in neither focusing mostly on the rich Chesapeake Bay nor clearly curating exhibits of American water life region by region.  The curation was all over the place regionally and lacked focus.  Oma thought it was just too much darn walking.

After two nights in Baltimore, we headed south to Williamsburg, stopping outside Richmond to see some of my relatives whom we have always seen far too infrequently.  We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge, a water park resort, which is an experience itself.  The water park was a blast but the main attraction was proximity to the Colonial Triangle of Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown.

Dr. Yap has never visited the patriotic trifecta (and please don't ask her to rate her interest in these sights on a scale from one to ten, her answer is probably not on the scale and probably not an integer) but I've been twice before and have wanted to take Bean ever since she became interested in the American Colonial era a year ago.  The first time I visited Williamsburg, I was six and it was the summer after the Bicentennial (please don't feel the need to do the math).  I don't know if was because Williamsburg was still awash in the glow of the Bicentennial celebration or if my memory is wonky, but I remember having a blast with the historical interpretations and with hands-on demonstrations of making marbled paper and dipped candles.

For whatever reason - it was too hot for my family of Coastal California weather wimps, it was too early in the season for everything to kick into high gear, we took the wrong advice about where to park and ignored the right advice about attending an orientation - this was not the same experience.  Bean did love the wigmaker, who was properly and humorously in character, and found the blacksmith shop fascinating; and Boo took full advantage of access to dozens of doors that he was allowed to march up to and try opening.  Much of the rest of Williamsburg seemed lacking and after two half-days trying to make it the historical experience extraordinaire, we decided to pack it in and head to Jamestown and Yorktown, which we had initially planned to overlook.

And we would have been so wrong had we overlooked the amazing state parks at Jamestown and Yorktown.  That's right, state parks.  If you want to see what's left of the actual settlement at Jamestown or the actual Revolutionary war battle site at Yorktown, by all means visit the federal parks in those locations.  If you want to have a historical experience extraordinaire, buy a combined ticket for the two state parks (the tickets are good for an entire year), Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center.  The parks are about 15 miles apart and each sit near their federal counterparts.  The facilities are so nicely done, with museums inside and vast interpretive areas outside, that I just couldn't get over that these were state parks.  We can't even keep all of our state parks open in California, let alone provide them with enough funding to offer visitors such a complete experience.

We visited the Jamestown Settlement first and spent about 2.5 hours there.  The site has three separate outdoor interpretive areas: a Powhatan Native American village, life-size models of the three ships which brought the first English settlers to the area in the early 17th century, and the Jamestown fort.  All three sites were fully staffed with people in period costume who fully embodied their characters.  I didn't hear any questions they couldn't answer with gusto.  We were allowed to fully interact with the interpretive environment in each area (except they prudently disallowed Boo from firing a musket during the quarter-hourly demonstrations.) We wandered in and out of Powhatan homes, and up and down the three ships, and Bean even tried a straw mattress in the Fort.  In the Native American village, we noticed four staff members in traditional clothing, each taking part in one of the daily tasks that would have been commonplace in such a village at the time.  A fifth staff member was demonstrating how to shape a needle out of deer bone that had been generously provided by registered hunters in present-day Virginia and she invited Bean to try her hand at running the bone splinter along the sharp edge of a rock.  We noticed this staff member was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and had an ID badge.  It turns out, she was new and hadn't yet made her deer skin dress.  In addition to doing extensive research in primary sources and the most trusted historical research, staff at Jamestown learn hands on how their character would have lived.  As Bean and I were invited to use an oyster shell to help the new staff member scrape the hair off one of the three hides stretched on frames around the village, it became obvious why the interpretive team was able to provide such thorough answers.  There were a few anomalies, such as a female blacksmith in the fort and a woman among one of the ship's crew, but they were so good at what they did who were we to quibble?

We finished the day by giving ourselves a self-guided driving tour of the federal area at Jamestown and headed to the Yorktown Victory Center the next day to experience live on an early farm and life among the soldiers encamped at Yorktown during the Revolutionary War.  The kids weren't quit as impressed with this one, but the adults were pleased.

When were weren't soaking up science and history, we tested the strength of our stomachs on the waterslides at Great Wolf.  The next time, we take a trip like this, I will try to remember to take more photographs of edumacational stuff for our homeschool consultant (I apparently started and stopped taking photos at the poorly-lit dentistry museum.)  I'd also try to encourage Bean to use her art materials and journal a little more along the way to document the experience, not just as hotel-room and airplane entertainment.

Now, to try getting back to regularly scheduled homeschool "programming."

Cranberries and Cheese

Pretty much everyday, Bean and I have a salad with our lunch.  It's a simple salad: washed baby greens and olive oil with a generous helping of dried cranberries and goat cheese, blue cheese, or feta cheese on top.  The greens are the important part, just that alone would be sufficient, but the cranberries and cheese give it added flavor and nutritional punch.

That's exactly how I view music and art in our curriculum.  We could do without either one and we'd still be meeting the state requirements and the kids would be learning a sufficient amount of academics to get along in the world.  Life and learning are much richer for Bean and Boo when they have music and art, and not just what they absorb in the world around them, but when we intentionally introduce them to artists, composers, movements, and the vocabulary of art and music.

With both art and music, the instruction possibilities can be divided into three areas: practical (hands-on production of art and music), theory (composition, vocabulary, themes), and appreciation/history.  Typically, as far as I can tell from my experience, schools focus on a limited combination of practical and theory for both art and music, until kids reach the point where orchestra and band are offered. I remember only having art in early elementary school, about fourth grade, then it disappeared entirely for students on strictly academic, college-bound track.  Kids who were encouraged to go a more vocational route, may have taken art and/or drafting in junior high and high school.  Unless a student was in band, orchestra, or one of the choirs, music was over at about fourth grade too.  Since I am the teacher, principal, superintendent and school board (not to mention the comptroller), I get to decide what kind and how much music and art instruction my kids get.

One of the many things that enamores me to the curriculum laid out by Rebecca Rupp in Home Learning Year by Year, is that she outlines a very thorough program for music and art, giving them almost as much real estate as the "academic" subjects.  Actually, she treats them as academic subjects, giving them serious heft.

We have tried over the years to introduce music lessons to Bean and whether she was too young or the teachers were not a good fit is open to debate, but so far nothing has stuck.  I am determined to keep this idea alive and keep offering the possibilities whenever they arise or whenever we are at a curriculum turning point (otherwise known as new grade levels).  She insists that she only wants me to teach her, so in September, I ordered the first level of the Alfred Piano Course for Beginners, figuring I could at least get us started with my four years of forgotten piano lessons and that I would be learning too.  It was going okay at the beginning, but Bean soon complained bitterly about the illustrations in the books and the names and content of songs.  I promised myself that I would keep going with the lessons myself so she would absorb something and hopefully join in eventually, but that soon fell by the wayside.  Recently we have been talking about looking for another piano course with a different format - maybe a course intended for adults.

I don't dwell too much on music theory since Bean isn't doing an instrument at the moment.  I do go over the Music section in each grade's edition of What Your ...Grader Should Know: notes, rests, measures, time signatures, etc.

For me, the real fun is the music appreciation.  I see great irony in this. Neither of my parents were at all in tune with popular music when I was a kid (this made the musical predilections of my adolescence all the more alarming to them, delicious to me).  My mother in particular was emphatically interested in classical music and classical music only.  I remembered the on-going negotiations over the requirements for my attendance at the small symphony in my hometown.  The first concession was getting to wear jeans, then bringing a book (and being allowed to read it), the final coup de grace was getting to bring my WalkMan (and getting listen to Tears For Fears instead of Tchaikovsky).

During the fall, we went through The Story of Orchestra  (a Costco purchase from years ago) and listened to the accompanying selections.  We also read about the composers listed in What Your Third Grader Should Know and delved into our iTunes library for the featured pieces.  Currently, we are using a library copy of Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times, and What the Neighbors Thought to learn about different composers.  This book features short, slightly irreverent biographies of about twenty composers both famous and not so well-known, with descriptions of several of their compositions at the end of each bio.

I love these little interludes in our school week and although Bean's interest level ranges somewhere between indifferent and mildly intrigued, the closest she has come to negotiating her way out of it is insisting that she get to pick the composer each week.  I readily concede because I'm always curious who she'll pick and why.  Recently, she picked Clara Schumann because she had never heard of a woman composer before (alas, the only recordings we were able to come up with where her husband's.)

We follow a similar trajectory for art, though the hands-on part pretty much takes care of itself.  Bean has always been a prolific artist.  I have always made all art supplies readily available except the printmaking  tools and the acrylic paints.  These are the only two things on a high shelf because I like to know before my kids use supplies that could cause permanent damage to themselves or others.  Very often, Bean and Boo are working on art projects while I am reading history, science, or fiction aloud to them.  I may pull out something new or little used once in a while, but mostly I stay out of the way and try to remember to save samples for our public school consultant.

As with music, the only theory we cover is the lessons in What You're...Grader Should Know.  I figure it won't hurt her to learn the technical vocabulary of art, though I have yet to see her explore the finer points of composition on her own.  (Though she is a mean color mixer.)

No matter.  The real fun is inflicting art history upon her - um, I mean exposing her to artists past and present.  Despite growing up in proximity to the Art Institute of Chicago, I didn't know of any artists but Monet and Georgia O'Keefe until college so I feel like this is a gift to Bean and Boo, rather than education.  Bean genuinely enjoys this, but either loves an artist or is indifferent.  She's been drawn to Van Gogh since she was young, and her current favorite is Frida Kahlo.  (I'm really hoping there's a Frida Halloween costume in my future.)  By coincidence, we are using Lives of the Artists, from the same series as the music volume.  Bean picks an artist, we read about him or her then look up their work on the internet and in The Art Book, which we have at home.  She picked Andy Warhol after seeing an Arthur episode with a Warhol character and Hokusai after seeing an exhibit of an artist who used trash to recreate Hokusai works at our local marine science center.

She may not be impressed by art theory, but she often creates art in the style of an artist who's made an impression on her, and that's enough applied theory for me.

Of course, actually experiencing live music and art in person is the best education there is, and we do that as much as we can, but between having a toddler and Bean's aversions to noise and crowds, we don't do that as much as I'd like.  For now, I just settle for cranberries and cheese to inject a little calm and beauty into a haphazard or rancorous homeschool day.