Weekend Things ~ Projects and Fuzzy Animals

I never know how involved I should get in my kids' take-home projects. How much help is actually helpful and how much is helicoptering? It's a conundrum I'll never know the answer to, judging by my anxiety over my firstborn child's ahem laid-back approach to researching college prospects. On the one hand, I had very little help when I was going through the same process. On the other hand, I did not exactly make the best choice and probably could have used some real guidance. The same goes for seventh-grad projects. I remember making a diorama for the book 1984, in which I used Fisher Price peg people. I put the blue peg woman with the yellow bun in a helicopter and suspended her from the top of the shoebox, hovering outside a window. I'd only read the first and last sentence of every paragraph of the book, so it's possible I didn't have a firm grasp of the storyline. It's also possible I might not have been able to pull off a more artistic diorama even if I had.

In any event, E and Z had big projects due this week and I deemed it necessary to dip in my oar, to at least encourage them to up their game over peg-people-in-a-shoebox. They had an assignment of a trifold poster and 3D model about a famous person from history (I think it was meant to be a famous American, but E stretched the boundaries a teensy bit).

E was very glad to have my assistance and I helped him recreate King Tut's coffin out of a papier-mached egg carton and wrap up a corncob in tea-dyed and epsom-salts-soaked muslin. He found lots of photos of his historic character and picked out a cool font, and I supplied colored sticky mounting paper. I think he was pleased with the results. And, because he had his project done a day early, he was able to help a friend work on his project during class, which I think is the most valuable lesson he gained from the whole process (at least on par with using colored mounting paper for effect).



Z, who has a recalcitrant streak, would disappear while I was "helping" him cut out his photos. He didn't want to use glue stick. He didn't want to fill in blank spots with more pictures. He definitely didn't want his picture taken. Fortunately his idea for a model involved woodworking, so C got to help him with that part and I got to take a break on Sunday, visiting, all by myself the Fiber Frolic.

The kids are finally old enough to not want to join me at the annual yarn-and-sheep fair, and that's okay with me.



In fact, walking past the stage where a puppet show was going on, I felt a great sense of relief that I no longer have to pretend to be interested in irritating kids' entertainment in order to trick my kids in being interested in irritating kids' entertainment.

I could just walk past, and go browse the yarn and wool and sheep.



There weren't many of the latter. The Frolic used to have tons of sheep, llamas, alpacas, goats, and rabbits. There were llama parades and drill teams and sheeps-shearing and bunny-brushing demonstrations, but now only a handful of farm animals show up, including this cute, pink-eyed bunny. I suppose it's a big pain for farmers to load their stock up and take them to an event where they probably don't expect to make many sales, but I still miss the supply side of the fiber, even without little kids who might want to pet the animals.

We Did It!!

On August 20, 2016 (my birthday! "CT by 43" having been my mantra), Curry, Milo, Zephyr, Emmet, and I reached the trailhead at Junction Creek in Durango, having hiked the nearly 500-mile Colorado trail over the previous 42 days. We did it! I always knew we could, but still...we did it!!!

There was no ribbon to run through or finish line to cross, and at first we weren't entirely sure we were at the actual trailhead (last time there was some confusion), but my parents were there, to take pictures and to bring us our car, and when we all went out to lunch, it felt like it might just be another resupply stop.

"It still hasn't hit me that we're done hiking," Emmet said at the lunch table. Exactly. It still hasn't hit me, two weeks later, back in Maine.

We spent a couple of days at Mesa Verde National Park, with my parents and one of my sisters. It was exactly what we needed, some time in a quiet place with not much to do...but something to do so our new muscles wouldn't atrophy...before being catapulted back into regular life.

We got home early Sunday morning and school started Monday for the twins, yesterday for the teen. I've spent the week jitneying kids to friends' houses and sports practices and running around town belatedly buying school supplies and clothes and groceries to fill our bare cupboards. And trying to remember how to function in the world (I forgot to take my purse into the health food store; fortunately they're small and understanding). And trying to lie low because people completely overwhelm me. 

Also, I'm working on the book. I have to; E and Z keep me honest. Every day after school they ask me, "How's your book coming?" "Did you work on your book today?" I'm on page 17, averaging about four a day, and still only halfway through Day 2 (this will either be a very long book, or I'm going to have to learn how to be selective). Also trying to figure out how to organize my days without the outside organizing principle of work (and honestly, how did I ever even have time to go to a job? The days fly by and there is so much to do and I barely scratch the surface).

So that's where I am. I don't know how much I'll write about the hike here, since that energy and those stories need to go into the book. I hope to share some pictures, but before I can do that, I have to address the perennial problem of having too little storage space on my computer. I didn't come home to any grants or publication deals, so a new computer is, sadly, not the answer right now.

And how about you? I hope you had a wonderful summer and are settling into the school year with a little more organization and grace than I have so far managed.

Freedom Trail Two

Friday we joined E and Z on their fifth grade class trip to walk the Freedom Trail in Boson. We had a memorial to attend in Rhode Island the next day, so C, M, and I all went (and we got to drive our own car, rather than spend six hours in a bus with 26 eleven-year-olds). This trip felt a lot faster and more frenetic than M's trip four years ago did, but then I looked back at the post from that trip and saw that I wrote that it was "like the ADD tour history," so I guess it had been a hectic tour then, too. 

We started with a climb up to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument.

Hit a couple of cemeteries.

Took a peek in Old North Church.

 Visited the Statehouse.

 And everything in between.

We finished it off with a visit to the Tea Party Museum.

 

 And a taxi across the water back to Charlestown.

The kids have been studying the Revolutionary War all year and this trip is meant to put places to the names, make history come alive. The kids, though, mostly seemed to enjoy the bustle and energy of a big city, waving at the cars driving by over the bridge and parkour-ing around the steps and benches and curbs and parks whenever we stopped for a break. In the long run, though, I think some of it will have sunk in--the 290 steps to the top of the monument, the really great interpretive presentation about the Battle of Bunker Hill, throwing replica tea boxes off a boat into the Charles River, the actual windows where the two-if-by-sea lamps were hung, the spot where the Boston Massacre took place. 

First Day

E and Z started school yesterday.

They weren't too thrilled by the prospect. 

And who can blame them? 

It was too nice of a day to spend inside a classroom. 

It turns out Z had good reason to be apprehensive--he hurt himself on the playground at recess.

His legs, as they say here in Maine, are all stove up, and he's missing the second day of school. 

We're making good use of ice, ibuprofen, arnica, and castor oil (my grandmother's old timey bruise remedy).

 I'm hoping he'll be back on his feet--and back in school--tomorrow.

Meanwhile, M and I attended freshman orientation last night and he started high school today. I'm feeling a surprising lack of sentimentality over this momentous occasion--I didn't even get out of bed to see him off this morning, let along take pictures of him getting on the bus (for which he wouldn't have thanked me anyway). I think I'm just feeling such great relief to have gotten to this point--after a year of struggle convincing him this school is the right choice (we don't have a HS in our town, so we get to choose) and a summer of anxiety expressed as surly teenagerness. I'm expecting to see him arrive home this afternoon wound up with excitement over the new friends, new experiences, and new challenges ahead. We'll see...

Graduation

M's first day of kindergarten...

...and last day of eighth grade.

What can I say, Mamas, but hold onto your babies tight. And if your little boy has a fluorescent green Oscar the Grouch fleece sweatshirt, don't give it away when he outgrows it, because you're gonna wish you'd saved it to make into a pillow you can cry into.

Super proud of this kid. He's worked hard all through elementary and middle school, never lost his spark and love of learning, and accepted his accolades with grace. I'm excited to see what the next four years bring, but still wondering how the last nine (er, fourteen) went by so fast.

Little House Projects

When E and Z's teacher assigned them projects for their Little House on the Prairie unit, to be completed at home this month, I almost had a conniption. But it turned out to be a good thing for the projects to coincide with holiday preparations, because it kept me from getting over-involved, pushing the kids to more complicated projects that I would end up doing mostly myself. It was fun to "help" M make his Little House log cabin four years ago, but there was no way that was going to happen in December.

Z knew right away that he wanted to bake bread. We checked out the Little House Cookbook from the library, read the section on bread and how all the ingredients work.  Z made the 'light bread' recipe. He did all the measuring, mixing, kneading, and shaping, while I stood by with the camera. The only part he didn't do was take the bread out of the hot oven (this photo is staged). Then he wrote a short report with the recipe and pictures of all the stages of production. We put the bread in the freezer and brought it out yesterday morning before school. It was kind of nice having his project all done almost two weeks in advance. I also really like that this is a totally consumable project and will not add to the stack of box projects we already have in the basement.

I thought it would be kind of nice for E to do a project that involved a pioneer skill as well. Since he already knows how to knit, I suggested that, but he refused. We got a couple of books on pioneer projects and crafts, but mostly they're 'girly' crafts like sewing and quilting. There were no 'making bullets' or 'carving a bracket' or 'staring down a bear to get to the honey tree' projects in any of the books.  Now, all my boys can hand sew a little, and E can knit, but I guess he's not quite ready to take those skills out in public. I suggested making a covered wagon from a clementine box, but he didn't like that idea nearly as much as I did (I might still make one for myself!). Finally he settled on a diorama. I stood by and made helpful suggestions regarding materials and helped him find supplies and held things together while he squeezed on the glue and cut out the horses with a razor blade, but otherwise tried to stand back while E made a milk carton cabin and barn and a jewelry box wagon with button wheels and twist tie hoops. I think it's pretty darn cute (and I could go crazy cutting out tiny people and making a tiny vegetable garden and putting tiny supplies in the wagon, but I restrained myself).

First Day

The mood was somber.

Two pairs of eyes woke up glowering at me beneath furrowed brows, as if the blame for the end of summer fell squarely on my shoulders.

Where was their father's culpability in all this?

But of course if it weren't for my civilizing influence, they all four would turn feral.

I blamed the same scapegoat parents have blamed since time immemorial: "If you don't go to school, the truant officer will come arrest you."

And they gave it as much credence as children have since time immoral.

I thought some words ("Why can't you be more like your brother?" who has never complained about school since he was four years old, and who has gotten up and gotten ready to go since second grade) and said some words ("You're big boys now, not babies, and I expect you to get up and get ready for school without all this nonsense!").

Outside, the fog reflected the mood inside. A mourning dove played the soundtrack to the melancholy morning.

Maybe it is all my fault. Not the end of summer, but the bad attitude. I always feel like school starts just as the kids have hit their stride, when they're being their most creative selves--E and Z's Pokemon obsession turning into making their own Tom Lighthouse's World trading cards, M churning out a new song every day--just in time to squelch them into little automatons. The "back to school" fliers in July depress me as much as if I were the one going back to school. Friday I made a half-hearted trip to Target for a few notebooks, glue sticks, and a planner (of which they were wiped out). Over the weekend, I sharpened last year's colored pencils (no sense in buying new ones when these are barely used, other than the red and black ones) until my thumb blistered and sewed a patch on M's second-hand backpack over the pink "CM" monogram (which, coincidentally, is his initials in reverse, if one choose to ignore the first half of his hyphenated last name). When the weather turns in a few weeks, I'll dig out the hand-me-down bins, buy a few pairs of jeans, some wool socks. Summer sneakers should last until boot weather.

As always, I missed that "getting on the bus" shot. But they did it, with no shoving, no further threats of truant officers. And they came home with reports of "good" when asked about their day, their moods considerably improved.

I'd still like to leave them to their own devices for a whole year, see what they come up with, but that's not really in the cards right now, and I think they'll survive another year of school

Trying to Get Organized

This year is the first that E and Z are in separate classrooms, which means that my automatic backup system for homework, announcements, forms, and fliers is no more, which means I needed to get organized to keep up with two sets of paperwork for two kids.

At first, I thought of making some kind of pocket wallhanging, but decided that: a) that would be too much work, and b) we don't have enough wall space for something like that. So instead I bought an accordion file thingy with lots of pockets.

On the front, I stuck on a piece of blue paper listing all of the things they need to do for homework each evening (I thought i was very clever making it look like a chalkboard with fluorescent colored pencils, but, they informed me, they don't even use chalkboards in school anymore; they use whiteboards).

Inside I labeled each slot with the types of papers I expect to come home: schedule, math, spelling list, reading log, projects, forms. That way they can always find their spelling list or reading log when it's time to study or write down their minutes (I can't tell you how many times M failed to pass in his reading log because it was lost somewhere amid the clutter on our kitchen table).

Because it's all written there for them (and because they can now read––yea!), it gives them some autonomy. Ideally, I won't have to constantly remind them of every single thing on the list, but they will one day come home from daycare and just do it all (wishful thinking is good, right?). So far it has worked fairly well, at least we haven't been going through the drill of trying to find all of the lost papers all over the house. They are still waaaay too tired for the amount of homework they get (which is only one math paper––for Z only––plus studying for spelling and reading), but that's a topic for another post.

Back to School

The boys started back to school today.

I think we were all in deep denial about it until the moment the bus trundled up.

C and I were marveling about all the people who say "I can't wait until the kids are back in school."

School means a whole lot more work for us--racing around to get everyone ready and out the door in the morning, making lunches (please don't suggest I have the kids make their own lunches; everyone knows it's ten times more trouble to make a kids do something than just do it yourself), helping with/nagging about homework, parent-teacher conferences, soccer practices, PTA begging, etc., etc. You get the idea.

Plus, school means that summer is over, and fall and winter are inevitable, and I'm so not ready for that.

E and Z decided last week that they were going to homeschool themselves. What will you do for math? I asked. "Legos!" E said. "The mathematics of nature!" Z said. What will you do for science? "Legos!" "Nature!" What will you do for art? "Legos!" "Draw pictures!" What will you do for PE? "Run around outside!" What will you do for lunch? "PB&J!" "Hummus sandwiches!"

They had it all figured out. They almost had me convinced.

But in the end, they got on the bus. 

Busy Work

Thanks for all your great comments on my post about M and our frustrations with school and school work. One of the best things about blogging is the reminder that we're not alone

I thought I'd share some of the wisdom everyone shared here in the comments section, in case any of you are going through or will in the future go through something similar, and mostly so I can come back here and find reassurance.

Shannon wrote: "I've been in similar circumstances with my daughter, in regards to the busy work and the lack of organization skills. Now that she is in high school and it all "counts," she has figured out her own system that, though it's not the way I would do it, appears to work for her. She still gets frustrated with some of her teachers, but recognizes that she has to do some things she doesn't want to do in order to reach her goals...Good luck! Hey, at least the school year is almost over!"

Meryl wrote: "It sucks to be doing busywork that's too easy for you when your brain is firing-up for so much more. But, as you say, learning to follow directions and jump through hoops is as much of a life lesson as learning how to read."

Rachael | The Slow-Cooked Sentence wrote: "I remind myself when one of my twins struggles with middle school that this is a good place to make mistakes. In large part, my husband and I have tried to let our son own his problems. He checks his school online account to track his grades, missing homework, etc. He decides when he needs to stay after school for tutoring.... Ultimately, school success or failure is only one mirrored image of a child. Sometimes it's unflattering. My job as a parent is to expect and support my kid's best effort, whether it brings about the desired letter grade is irrelevant."

Lone Star Ma wrote: "I tried to take a middle road with my eldest who was always learning but also rather unwilling to jump through hoops. I insisted on B's and grounded for C's (one in elementary, one in middle school). She was perfectly capable of getting A's with no real effort through middle school, but I did understand about the hoops - her basic philosophy was 'grades and other numbers are just establishment illusions, Mom.' Other than the grounding, I tried not to linger on the C's.... Once she hit high school and her grades counted for her transcript, she became a whole different student. She is 7th in her (huge) class while taking an IB curriculum - the most rigorous in the world and her GPA is well over 100 and I would never, ever remotely suggest that she do anywhere near the amount of work that she does. She wants to go to med. school, though, so she does it, hoops and all."

And a friend of mine (who seems to have a mini-M in kindergarten right now) wrote in an email: "All I can say is I think having a kid like M is the best gift ever, he’s strong, smart, and independent.  He knows who he is and isn’t going to be swayed.  You should celebrate that, and I admit, figure out how to minimize all the school ‘junk’ so he can focus his attentions where he thinks they should go.  He’s motivated, he’ll fit it all in."

So there you have it: kids know instinctively when grades "count" or not––they'll motivate when they feel it's important to them, not arbitrary; the most important thing is to support and appreciate your kid; focus on his strengths, rather than squirting him with "week-killer"; let him take responsibility and ownership. Still I hope he finds a way to get along with this teacher who he'll have for two more years.

Musings on Banned Books Week

This week is Banned Books Week, as I was reminded by this great post by M. Molly Backes, and Banned Books Week reminded me of something I wanted to write about way back in June, but never got around to it.

Last spring, M's fifth-grade class was studying the Revolutionary War, for which his reading group read My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier. When he finished the book, he left it on the kitchen table, as he is wont to do--whenever he is done with anything, he just sort of drops it in situ, like a snake shedding its skin. After it had been sitting there a few days, I picked it up and just happened to flip though it and noticed that there were magic marker lines throughout the book, blacking out words or in some cases whole sentences.

I asked M what that was about, and he said Mr. C. had crossed out all the "swears." I was immediately appalled, but kept my cool and decided to use this as an inroad to discussion about censorship. Now, I should probably say I've never read My Brother Sam is Dead, but I noted from the cover that it is a Newberry Honor Book and an American Library Association Pick, so that some smart people somewhere have read it and think it is a pretty darn good book.

Anyway, I asked M what he thought about that, and he said that he thought writers shouldn't put swears in their books. Fair enough. He's not a kid who swears, and he gets mad at me when I swear (although he laughs hysterically when he hears kids swear in movies like Goonies, which is likely the most sweary movie he's ever seen, on my watch anyway). We talked about why the characters might be swearing--it is a book about a war after all, which is probably a pretty stressful time, and stress might make you want to swear a bit. I brought up Fahrenheit 451, which he had just read (in graphic novel version) and talked about how this was another, if less extreme, form of censorship, like book-burning. I asked him if he wanted another, un-redacted, copy of the book and he said no.

And we left it at that. School ended. Summer came. And I forgot all about it, until this week. Still I have a lot of unanswered questions and would love to hear your thoughts on it all.

I, personally am opposed to censorship. I don't know if the teacher acted on his own, if it's the policy of the school or the school unit, if he had to deal with irate parents in the past and just wanted to skip over the headache. I don't know what type of "swears"the book contains--is it just hell and damn, or f-bombs? Would I feel differently depending on which it is? Honestly, most kids in his class I'm sure are exposed to as much if not more from the movies and video games they watch (I know M is way more sheltered than most of his friends as far as that kind of thing goes).  I would have happily bought M the real book, because first of all it must be confusing to read a book with half a dozen words crossed off every page, and secondly I believe in the integrity of art. I'm not against holding back on books that have content too mature for my kid to handle, but it's tricky when he has a very high reading level (and when I don't really want to pre-read every book...he reads way too many too fast for me to keep up!). Then again, maybe it's no big deal at all, or maybe the opportunity for us to discuss the idea of censorship made it worth it. I do think it's ironic that the book is about the Revolutionary War and that one of the central principles of our country is freedom of speech.

Sooo.....what do you all think? Do you read all the books your kids might read before they do? If not, how do you decide your kid is ready for a book? How do you feel about the school crossing out the swear words or other content in a required book? How do you discuss this kind of stuff with your kids? Would you have spoken up and said something to the teacher or just copped out an let it slide like I did?

Reading

M was an early reader. Not to fail to give his preschool and kindergarten teachers credit, but he just seemed to take it up rather magically. In fact, he learned to write when he was four, before he could read, by sounding out words, and shouting to me from the deck where he sat drawing thousands of pictures while I sat inside nursing thousands of babies--okay, maybe it was just two babies, but they may as well have been thousands--"what does an 'h' look like? What makes a "fff" sound? And then one day he was reading. And then second grade came along, with the Reading Log, and suddenly he had to read every day, and that was pretty much the end of me reading to him, until I started to read the Little House books to E and Z and he would listen in (and then he really stuck around when C and I read them the Harry Potter books the first time around).

Ever since, I have thought of it as the Tyranny of the Reading Log, because it not only meant an end of the lovely time reading to my boy, but it was also the beginning of a four-year battle to get him to keep track of his reading. The whole thing always seemed completely stupid to me, because M has never needed external motivation to get him to read. Most of the time, we have to make him stop reading so that he'll sleep or do some other necessary activity. He's always, as a matter of course, read far more than necessary for the log, but he's never once been bothered to check the time before and after he starts reading and writing it down, so every Friday morning it was a struggle and tearful battle to get him to try to remember (or make up) what he read and for how long on which day. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to learn that sixth grade meant no more Reading Log.

And then E and Z, who are now in second grade, brought home Reading Logs. Ahhhhhh!!!

But, here's the thing. They are not natural-born readers. They went into second grade reading at about the same level that M did going into kindergarten. I've been (mostly) totally fine with that, knowing all kids develop at different levels, and that I was a later reader which has in no way affected my life. But, when they started the reading log, they started to get excited about reading. They check the clock before and after they read. They write down their books and their minutes. They have been caught getting up very early in the morning to read more. It turns out that perhaps this kind of external motivation works for them (for now) and is helping them get over whatever reluctance they have shown toward reading in the past. I still wish the teachers could have shown a little more flexibility when putting this requirement before someone who clearly did not need such motivation (page numbers! if they had just let him record page numbers instead of minutes life would have been so much happier). For now I will drop my own bad attitude toward the Reading Log, but I won't let it stop me from reading to my kids this time around.