Be free, have fun, ask why">

As we were getting ready for the day, the children played make believe with their stuffed animals.  They packed them up and insisted on take a bagful with us.

Today Sarah said that she needed a volunteer for Shenandoah Valley Community School and that there was a field trip to the James Madison University Arboretum  http://www.jmu.edu/arboretum/ .  I agreed and got there this morning at 8:45.

The kids were all excited about being out in the woods.  They just ran around on the paths for a while.  After they released some of their energy, we spontaneously split into 2 groups and walked to the far end of the Arboretum.  While walking we read the signs which identified the different types of plants and trees.  The kids picked up acorns and we talked about how acorns are the seeds of oak trees.  We touched the soft moss and Lilith remarked that it looked like little tiny trees.  We played the Three Billy Goats Gruff under many of the bridges.  Their favorite bridge was the wobbly bridge.

During all this different kids would get their food and eat a bit and then continue to explore.  Before it was time to go, Sarah asked if anyone would like to do some letterboxing.  Letterboxing is where a “placer” hides a box somewhere and then posts directions online.  Sarah had written directions down and the children followed them to find the box.  They borrowed my pen to write in the book that was in the box.

When we got home I read Riesling the Magic School Bus Gets All Dried Up (A Book About Deserts).  She did a puzzle until Cashel woke up.

They ate snack and then we went shopping.  Riesling had $2.75 to spend  and Cashel had $2.25.  They really like the bulk items in the organic section.  They selected and weighed their items out and printed labels.  Then they would eat their items and get some more!  When all was said and done, Riesling ended up with $1.02 and Cashel $.67.

At last we made it home.  During dinner Joe showed Riesling and Cashel a magic trick that involved putting a coin through someone’s head and retrieving it from their ear.  Riesling repeated the trick with great accuracy after dinner.  Cashel performed the trick by putting his coin through a pillow.

Joe read Riesling some books and I read Cashel Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans and Bear’s Bargain by Frank Asch.

Riesling got up and stuck a tape in the VCR and watched Arthur and Los Vecinos (the Neighbors), Sue Ellen’s Little Sister and Arthurs Family Feud.  As they finished their smoothies I sat down with them to watch about 20 minutes of The Wizard of Oz.  The children are fascinated by the wicked witch of the west. 

They played dress up and then wrote Nana an email.  Afterwards they read books and were so involved in them they didn’t want to eat lunch.  I put it away and read them Clifford At the Circus by Norman Bridwell twice.  They then chose to watch Boz, Thank God for Colors and Shapes and 15 minutes of the Nutcracker with Riesling as a Polychinelle.

I showered and they played dominoes and put together puzzles.  We ate an early snack and then I dropped them at the neighbors where they played with Emily and Elizabeth for an hour and a half.  Joe played with them outside for about an hour or so.  They made these enormous bubbles.  I think that Joe will post something.

We read Madeline in London by Ludwig Bemelmans and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  After Cashel was asleep I went to check on Riesling and since she was still awake I sang her a couple songs that she insisted I make up and counted to 100 before giving her a final kiss.

This morning we left the house promptly at 8:15 and drove 2 hours to Manassas for Momin’s 7th birthday party at Pump-It-Up.  The kids listened to Horton Hatches an Egg and some music on the way there.

When we arrived they found a worm on the sidewalk and touched it and then picked it up, which was considered gross to the older children and adults who were watching.

The kids had lots of fun sliding and climbing and jumping.

We thought and were hoping that one, or possibly both, of the kids would take a nap on the way home, but they did not.  Instead they fought (Cashel kept smacking Riesling with Announcer Bunny and she kept kicking him) and were generally grumpy.

At home they finished watching the Arthur video they had started before we left and finally got brave enough to watch The Wizard of Oz.  After 20 minutes, their agreed upon TV time was over and they went outside to ride bikes.  Riesling and Cashel set up the cones in a circular obstical course and they rode around it for an hour.  Then Riesling tried to jump rope while Cashel plucked the seed pods off the wilting flowers in the front flower bed.

After bath, Joe read a Let’s-Read-And-Find-Out Science book called What Lives in a Shell? by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld.  I sent Cashel in with a conch shell and she listened to the ocean and matched it up to pictures in the book.

I read Bernard’s Nap by Joan Elizabeth Goodman to both the kids and it was time for sleep.  Riesling always likes me to count 100 before I give her a final kiss good night.  She complained that I was counting too fast so I asked her how I should be counting.  She counted up to 69 by herself.  I prompted her with 70 and then 80 and she counted everything else.

tags: Cashel, Riesling, science

Riesling had Ballet class this morning.  Joe and Cashel took a walk and found lots of books and a helmet at a yard sale.  At the Goodwill Joe found a pop-out puppet which is now called “Announcer Bunny” from the PBS show Between the Lions.  We’re not sure if it’s really a mouse or a bear or a dog!

We went to the International Festival where Riesling and Cashel enjoyed dancing to African Drumming and watching a “Belly Button Dancer”.  While Riesling was making a bird rattle craft, I wrote Cashel’s name on the pavement in chalk.  He was drinking his milk which has his name written out on it.  He set his milk down and said each letter of his name, as he matched the letters on the pavement to the letters on his milk container.

At home Riesling watched Arthur and then looked at books.  Joe and the kids explored a change sorter that he had found at the Goodwill earlier.  Then they watched some videos on YouTube.  I think something about a guy who made his own jet fuel powered wings…maybe Joe will elaborate.

The kids also played hopscotch with some interconnecting foam mats.  It was amazing how many variations of the game they came up as we quietly watched.  Cashel practiced counting as Riesling helped him and hopped around.

Riesling wrote out a card for Joe for his birthday that said “Happy Birthday Daddy I know that you are 34 Riesling”.   Then she put a huge question mark on the opposing page, for reasons we couldn’t entirely establish.

I read Madeline in London by Ledwig Bemelmans to a very tired Cashel.  Joe read All About Light (Rookie Read-About Science) by Lisa Trumbauer to Riesling.

tags: Cashel, Riesling, science

I brought my neighbor’s kids, Emily (4) and Elizabeth (3), with us to Funschool.  Since it was raining I brought lots of stuff for the younger kids to do inside.  I had brought every train item that I could find from home, including a pop up Thomas the Tank Engine.  I never ever thought in my wildest dreams that Thomas would be referred to as “killer train” with Riesling and another kid or two inside chasing the older kids around. But that’s exactly what happened. 

Elizabeth, Riesling and Cashel looked at books and played with the train stuff while the leader, Carol, went through ads and asked the kids what they thought was being sold and how and what the marketers wanted them to think.  Emily sat and listened to Carol.

We watched the commercials that the older kids made.   My kids weren’t too interested.

Cashel, Riesling and Elizabeth disrupted other kids in various ways during Funschool by not playing the way others would have preferred (they didn’t hurt anyone or yell or anything like that, though). The older children, who they offended, came to me immediately to tell me what my kids were doing.  They attempted to solve the problem with the offenders after I let them know that if they didn’t communicate with my kids, they would have no idea what they needed to do and would continue being offensive.  I let them decide what to do next and didn’t tell anyone to do anything.  One Mom just went ahead and asked for toys back that her son had set down and then got upset when one of my kids had picked them up and taken them away.

Riesling enjoyed playing a game called Tomato with the Funschoolers.  I’m not sure what this entails.  I did notice that one of the Mom’s moderated the game so that the kids weren’t figuring out too much for themselves.

When we got home, Riesling watched Arthur and Numberjacks. 

Later Joe played Legos with them.  He  made a zip line for the Lego “figures” to ride on.  He decided that the objective was to determine which variations gave the figure the smoothest fastest ride.

We read some books before bed.

In Gleamer’s previous post, “Why does the soap have a spring in it?”, she mentions that I would post some explanation of the soap dispenser. Well I just don’t have enough time to do a detailed explanation so in the mean time you will have to settle for the explanation in the video. I’ve found doing life-sized demostrations of complicated phenomena and mechanisms is a great way to involve the children in learning. It also keeps my mind fit as I try to figure out yet another unintended use for one of their toys or some random piece of junk. (Incidentally, the idea to use the green alligator tube as the spring was Gleamer’s and she shot the video, a true collaborative effort!)

Enjoy the video!

tags: Cashel, engineering, fluids, physics, plumbing, pumps, reasoning, Riesling, valves

Thursday mornings are an early one for us.  I need to be up by 6, 6:30 at the latest.  So as I was prying my head off the pillow Cashel asks, “Time to make a ‘moothie?”  I said, “Yes.”  And he looked at the clock and said, “No! Not seven zero zero!  Time to ‘leep!”  Though I couldn’t agree more, I got up to make the children their breakfast.

We went to Shenandoah Valley Community School.  I played Madeline’s House with Riesling, Cashel and Lilith while Leyland and Solomon took turns on the computer.  While playing, Riesling and then eventually Cashel, would go over to see what was on the computer.  They then went into the art room where Riesling painted on some cardboard and Cashel on some wood that they had found.  Lilith (age 5) and I ended up finishing alone.

Riesling and Cashel chose to help Sarah and I mop the floors.  Riesling played with the doll house, they both played with the piano and then looked at books.  Leyland played with Cashel Smashel :) quite a bit and was very patient with him.

Solomon asked me to play Powder Puff Girls Villains-At-Large and when I let him know that I understood that he really wanted to play, but I had already committed to cleaning the bathroom first, he got upset and curled up in a ball and started growling!  I asked if there was anything I could do to help him work through it and he didn’t answer.  He got up and slowly tipped some chairs over and knocked some items off of shelves and tables.  Sarah implored me to leave him be as he wasn’t hurting anyone or destroying anything and that he would have to clean up after himself.  I went off to clean the bathroom.

After I was done I helped Solomon clean up and played his beloved game with him.  Lilith played as well.  At the end of the game Solomon asked me to add up the numbers on the game tiles for him using a calculator.  Lilith volunteered to do it.  After which Solomon decided to use the calculator to see what the largest number was that he could make the screen display.  He can read into the 100s, but asked me what the numbers were when he got to the thousands.  I explained the 1s place, 10s place, 100s place, etc to him and told him each number.

At some point Solomon asked me not to tell his parents that he got mad.  I asked what would happen and he said that he would get grounded.  This statement really made me think about what effects punishments have.  From everything I’ve read and experience, punishments don’t inspire people to figure out what’s best for them and others.  But instead to figure out how not to get caught doing something you might get punished for.  And when people are compliant it’s because of the possible retribution that my occur.

During this time, Lilith asked me what a googol would look like.  I said that I didn’t know, but we could look it up.  We first looked in the encyclopedias then in the dictionary, where we found the answer to be 1 with a million zeros.  Lilith then asked what the number “elephant” would look like!  She went to the computer to look it up.  After finding lots of pictures of elephants, she just randomly typed letter(s) in to see what would appear.  She told me all about her finds and she especially like the maps she happened upon.

Solomon got board of the calculator and went to find a long stick that he had painted that morning.  After seeing that Solomon had a stick, Leyland got one and Cashel was very close behind.  Riesling joined in after a bit and they ran around for the rest of the morning playing some game that involved Cashel as the monster chasing them.

When we got home I read Froggy Goes to School by Jonathan London and the Magic School Bus Inside the Earth by Joanna Cole.  Riesling watched the Numberjacks.  This episode involved the Shape Japer turning spheres into cubes.  Of course the Numberjacks save the day.  The she watched Arthur.

Joe played with Riesling and Cashel and the Lite Brite.  He got out the black light to show them the difference between white and colorless.  They also did their “belly button dancing show” again for us.

tags: board games, Cashel, math, Riesling, Shenandoah Valley Community School, telling time

Just a quick follow-up to Gleamer’s post. When I came in the bathroom to check on Riesling getting ready for bed she had the toilet cover lifted on the back of the toilet and asked me how it works. We took off the cover and looked inside. Riesling stated that she knew how the handle worked and proceeded to explain to me how when the handle is pushed down the toilet flushes.

This was a good start but we went ahead and explored further. We explored the way the handle felt (first tight, then loose, then tight again), what was attached (the chain), and what was attached to the chain (the flapper).  When I told here to go ahead and reach down and push the flapper down after we flushed it, she was a little afraid and tentatively asked, “That’s water? Real water?” To which I chuckled and replied, “Yes, real water.”  She reached down and pushed the flapper and was immediately surprised that the toilet stopped flushing.    She quickly grasped what the flapper was doing and that she could control it, even without the use of the handle on the outside.

We then moved on to exploring why the toilet kept spraying water out of the fill valve even though she stopped the flush by pushing down on the flapper, also I sparked her curiousity by wondering what made the water start and stop spraying and what was the deal with the big black ball in there.    This was a little harder for her to figure out and so I gave her some hints as to the best way to figure it out.   We watched very carefully how everything moved when the water emptied and filled.   After that Riesling did a couple of tests by pushing down or pulling up on the ball there-by releasing or preventing water from flowing out the fill valve regardless of whether or not the flush-handle had been pushed.

In the end, I think it was a really great spontaneous lesson, and I really enjoyed our 10 minutes of exploration together.

tags: fluids, levers, plumbing, reasoning, Riesling, valves

I read Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman twice and then the children decided they wanted to watch Fetch! which is a PBS “Science” show that we have on DVD.  The episode that they watched involved contestants going on a scavenger hunt for a star (the sun) and all the planets of the solar system.  They also watch and performed to Bella Dancerella Swan Lake.

We had clean up time.  A week or so ago, we had discussed how Joe and I cleaning up their stuff wasn’t working for us and solicited suggestions to find something that would work for everyone.  It was agreed upon that if someone wasn’t participating in cleaning up, then their stuff would be put in a box to be brought out the next day when another opportunity to put it away would occur.  Riesling (who is usually a rule follower) typically helps and has even put Cashel’s items that were in the box away.  Cashel (who likes to do his own thing, especially at the most inopportune times) sometimes helps and sometimes doesn’t.  Today he wasn’t helping so I began putting his stuff in the box.  Cashel got upset and then must have thought, “Whatever!” and began putting everything in the box.  I need to do some reading about how best to work with the children regarding cleaning up and we need to revisit this rule as it obviously isn’t working for everyone.

Riesling and Cashel were very involved in a game of house and decided they weren’t hungry enough to be interrupted for lunch.  They played for another hour then we read Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and A Weekend With Wendell both by Kevin Henkes, Little Grown-Ups by Tom Arma, Beauty and the Beast by Catherine McCafferty, Madeline and Madeline in London both by Ludwig Bemelmans.

After a hearty snack, I pushed Cashel in the stroller and Riesling rode her bike to the post office and then the library.  About 3 miles round trip.  We got some Star Wars books that were on hold for us and some stamps to send Riesling’s birthday letters out.

The kids were really wound up when we got home.  They played Twister by themselves and then some tickling monster attack game with Joe while I made dinner.  They also did some gymnastics. 

Cashel was falling asleep toward the end of dinner, at about 7PM, so I read him his Tonka Trucks book and got him into bed just as quick as I could.  Meanwhile Joe demonstrated to Riesling how the toilet closet works, read and sang to her and then tucked her in.

After the children went to bed, I read about chores and kids on a website called Joyfully Rejoicing http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/influencing%20kid%20behavior/chores/kidstohelpwithchores.html The site is about unschooling. And it’s about parenting more peacefully. But overall it’s about living more joyful family lives.  Joyce Fetteroll summarizes her message as “Put the relationship first and then figure out how to fit everything else around that.”  Good grief, I have a lot to learn!  No more chores.  I’ve decided that it’s just not important to them and hurts our relationship to coerce, manipulate or attempt to force them to clean up.  I’m going to happily clean what I choose to and hope that one day they will behave as I am modelling.  I think that they will because it makes sense and many other parents have found a way to make this work for them.

This morning Cashel brought me Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Suess. He pointed at the words starting at the bottom and asked, “What’s this?”

I went letter by letter, letting him say the upper case letters that he knew; B, S, H and E and then I sounded out each word. Riesling came in and let me know that she tried to read Green Eggs and Ham, but some of the words were too hard for her to sound out. I told her that I would be happy to help her with the words that she was having trouble with. She read the entire book aloud and I helped her sound out would, could, goat, dark and rain. I let her know that I enjoyed listening to her read the book to me.

Riesling and Cashel worked on gifts for Daddy for a good part of the morning as his birthday is on Saturday.  Riesling wrote her name and “Daddy” on envelopes and Cashel put dots on them with a marker.  They hid them all over the house.

We filled the soap dispenser, which had a little yellow soap left in it, with blue soap and made a lovely shade of green soap!

The children chose to watch Madeline’s Winter Vacation, Madeline in London and about 10 min of The Sound of Music (My Favorite Things and Do Re Mi). I watched some of it with them and then we played Hullabaloo. The game makes Cashel process information faster. I’m not quite sure what Riesling’s getting out of it, but she likes it and has fun so there must be something that makes her happy. I don’t particularly like how at the end of each portion it says, “You’re a winner!” to the person(s) who was on a certain mat. And everyone else is a….LOSER! Maybe Joe can hack it to say, “What did you end up on?”

After wards we played Memory, per Cashel’s request. As the children and I set up I talked again (as I did yesterday) about how we needed to make 8 rows and 9 columns or 9 columns and 8 rows because we had 72 cards. And how eight nine times is 72 and nine eight times is 72.

We read Opposites by Melanie Whittington, Can you Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street? by Eleanor Hudson and Johnny Appleseed, My Story by David L. Harrison.

While I had quiet time (ha ha) and prepared for shopping, the kids listened to The Beatles, Riesling “took care of” Cashel, they played house and fought alot.  I continuously went and asked them how I could help them work together, to touch one another softly and to please not take anything from anyone.  This general disregard for others lasted through out the day and I vowed to myself that I will not let the kids stay up late making gnocchi ever again.

We went to Walmart and while Cashel slept and our photos were developed, Riesling and I did some comparison shopping.  We counted the rolls of tape in a bundle and glue sticks in a package and figured out which was less expensive per item. 

We also kept our eyes peeled for something that Riesling could spend their $.13 on as her and Cashel had spent their money on treats at home earlier.  The $.13 was left over from last week’s shopping trip and I had stuck it in a pocket of my purse and came across it while getting my calculator.  The bulk area in the “natural foods” section of Martin’s was THE place to spend it.  Riesling figured out that she could buy one strawberry yogurt covered pretzel with her share and Cashel bought a sweetened dried pineapple ring.  They used the scale to weigh their items and then remove the excess until they were left with $.06 or $.07 worth.

Dinner then bath and Joe read them books.  I think that I heard Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes, a truck book and Trick-or-Treat Faces by Judith Moffatt, which is a glow in the dark book.

As Lilly’s beloved teacher, Mr Skinner says, “Today was difficult, tomorrow will be better.”