week #10 run-down

Week #10 of our Fall Semester was the "week that wasn't supposed to happen". We were supposed to be on a break, traveling out to visit friends in Ohio. But, well, life happens, and instead we had a "normal" homeschooling week. We shifted into new November rhythms to match up better with the chillier weather. Our ponies got furrier (as you can see in the photos) and our trees got barer (as you can also see). J had his chorus and soccer classes, and found out at Tae Kwon Do that he's going to be testing next week for a new belt. We had a playdate at some friends' house one afternoon. And we had another great Friday Excursion with our homeschooling pals to Northwest Park in Windsor, CT.

(Kids having a "dance party" during their before-breakfast free play.)

I put a lot of thought into story selection for this (and the coming) weeks. I decided to keep the more complicated Enki Nature Stories for special readings rather than trying to use them as our curriclum story for the week, and fell back on more basic Folk Tales. It worked well, and the kids enjoyed the Plains Indian tale about the Buffalo Race, in which Magpie outwitted all the other animals to win the race for Humans.

(Here the kids play a game with their Pokemon cards, which is a big up-and-coming interest for both of them.)

For the Nature Stories, we set the stage for a special story telling, a tradition that we'll continue through the winter. We started a fire in our fireplace on Friday evening, turned off all the lights, lit a special candle, and I read them the story of The Gift Of The Mighty Oak by candlelight. Zoo Boy curled up in The Map Man's lap and commented "that was a GREAT story!" when I was done reading. The next day J raved about how much he liked the Special Story Time, with the fire and the candle and the lights all out. It truly was special.

(The boys building a marble run with their block set.)

We shook up our Movement Circle a little bit this week, too. We've been having trouble engaging Zoo Boy with circle lately, so we tried to accommodate him a bit better, which I discussed in a blog entry earlier this week. We added some late-autumn type verses and songs, about squirrels gathering nuts and bears preparing for hibernation, and I borrowed tunes from other songs to add to a couple of the verses, as Zoo Boy prefers singing to reciting verses. Over all, it went really well.

We read the following books for Family Story Time this week: Mouse, Look Out!, by Judy Waite, illustrated by Norma Burgin (a cute late-autumn tale of a cat stalking a mouse through an abandoned house); In November, by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Jill Kastner (WONDERFUL book about that changes that come about in country life during November); and Every Autumn Comes The Bear, by Jim Arnosky (an Autumn favorite around here).

new ride at Six Flags

Ok, the winning caption for our little contest was provided by my Dad, and I'm not just "sucking up" by doing that, although I did like everyone's suggestions.

My personal favorite was Habeeb's "Instead of the General Lee, it's the General Nuisance", given my love (NOT!) of that danged tractor and how happy I was to see it leave the premises, as well as some history on it's existence here (seems that the former owner of our property used to get good and drunk and take it for midnight mud-slinging spins in the pasture, something that neighbors recount fondly). But it seemed to me that that particular caption wouldn't have the same appeal for folks outside of our generation....

My suggestion was going to be "so long old paint".

But anyway, in case anyone was wondering, The Map Man did NOT drive the tractor up there, it was winched up by him and the fella who bought it. (If it had actually been running, I'm not sure I could have convinced him to sell it.) The Man just thought he was being funny getting on it, and wanted a photo to cry over a beer with. He loved that ancient piece of farm equipment, even though it hasn't run in near on a decade now.

chilly November day

Brrrr...November is certainly here! We didn't see any snow today, but flakes were spotted in various parts of the state, and flurries are in the forecast for tomorrow. The landscape has changed drastically in the past week, bare branches everywhere, gray skies are the norm. I've always loved November -- the crisp leaves underfoot, the nip in the air. But I've come to the realization that it's time to buy a warmer coat! The one I've worn for years is pretty much shredded from catching it on fences, and the one I wore as a substitute today was entirely inadequate for freezing temperatures. So a shopping trip is in my immediate future.

We went over to Northwest Park in Windsor, CT again today, along with some homeschooling pals, and the kids had a blast playing in the nature center (it's small, but cozy, and just right for blossoming imaginations) and exploring the grounds a bit. Here they check out a really cool sculpture of various birds made out of "junk", as J calls it.

The kids take a look at the "painted pony" that was donated after a nearby town's Parade of Painted Horses. It depicts the Tobacco Farming heritage of the CT River Valley, which Windsor is in the heart of (in fact, the Tobacco Museum is on the Northwest Park property). There are many old tobacco barns on the property, including the building that now houses the nature center.

Zoo Boy feeds the goats a treat. This is actually the exact type of goat he wants to get in the spring (well, he'd rather get it NOW, but I've pushed it off until the spring!), an Oberhasli. What can I say, the boy loves livestock! He was born to be a farmer.

The kids explore the herb garden. I can imagine how beautiful it is in the summer when everything is green and in full bloom! But there's a certain magic to it even at this time of year, with everything brown and dormant. In a nearby area, the boys startled a white-tailed deer which we watched bound through the woods.

In the nature center, the boys had fun using a guide and these forms hanging from the ceiling to identify various birds of prey from underneath. What was cool is that this ties in with our viewing of a Turkey Vulture circling overhead on our walk here last week, as we talked then about how to tell which bird of prey it was by the shape of the silhouette and the colors of the belly and undersides of the wings.

artwork and changing rhythms

I figured I'd save time and blog space by addressing two things at once -- putting up some of the kids' artwork while discussing our current shift in daily and weekly rhythms.

So here's J's rendition of Pig in her house, which he notes is also the Chinese description of "family". (The Chinese characters for family are the character for pig under a character depicting a roof -- hence, there is food in the house, so family.)

Any 7 year old boy will recognize this -- Pikachu, J's favorite Pokemon.

With the change of the clocks, I decided that it was an opportune time to shift our rhythms around a little. The kids naturally are getting up an hour earlier and are ready to sleep an hour earlier, so our day now starts and ends earlier. It's too cold now in the mornings for our daily bike rides/walk -- we've swapped that time out for an outdoor time around mid-day. And it's too dark now in the evening to do our barn chores then, so we combined that with our outdoor time. We'll be spending less outdoor time in general now that it's getting colder, so we'll be incorporating more art and craft type activities, baking, etc, in to our days.

Another depiction of Pikachu, this time drawn and cut out of paper.

I've also discovered that Zoo Boy is more apt to participate in our Movement Circle if I do it as soon after breakfast as possible, when he's fed and still energetic. I've shortened it a bit, as I seemed to be losing him, and I made sure that it includes a lot of songs, as he likes those better than the verses. So when we do a verse, I make sure it's followed up by one or two songs before doing another verse. I also switched to doing our fingerplays (several activities towards the end of our circle) from a seated position rather than standing, as he was wearing out by then and was sitting out the fingerplays. He's more apt to hang in there if he can sit and participate. Incidentally, I'm not particular worried about whether or not Zoo Boy participates in our circles or other activities, since he'll get another full year of Kindergarten next year. But it serves our family rhythms better if he IS involved, so I try to make accommodations for him. Even so, some days there's just no way to engage him in what we're doing, so J and I just go along with our rhythms and let Zoo Boy join in where he's comfortable.

Here's a photo of Zoo Boy taking pride in a picture HE drew. He hasn't shown any real interest in art or learning to write yet, but I'm guessing as I get more organized with our art activities, it will spark his interest a bit more.

Here's what our daily rhythms are looking like now (times are approximate):

7:00ish -- rise and shine, kids do free play while Mom finishes up the animal care chores (which she started at 5:45 -- there is a LOT of animal care!).

8:00ish -- breakfast, followed by clean-up, tooth brushing, a short calendar activity, and dressing.

9:00ish -- Oral Motor therapy exercises for Zoo Boy, and Sensory Integration Therapy activities for both boys. The SI work also doubles as our morning exercise, so it's mostly gross-motor and vestibular activities.

9:30ish -- Movement Circle, followed immediately by Curriculum Story

10:00ish -- an hour's worth of creative play on their own

11:00ish -- lunch

11:30ish -- outside time -- barn chores and playtime

12:30ish -- rest

1:30ish -- Afternoon Adventures (following our weekly rhythms, below)

5:00ish -- dinner

5:30ish -- play

6:30ish -- bed prep

7:00ish -- Family Story Time (except on Fridays, when we'll have a Special Nature Story in front of the fire, and Sundays when we watch football together as a family)

8:00ish -- bedtime, adult time

J continues to show a self-motivated interest in foreign languages, here practicing writing Hindi (he found a list of Hindi vocabulary words at the back of one of our books). This is the Hindi word for "bear", or so he tells me. (And I have no reason not to believe him!)

Our weekly rhythms for our Afternoon Adventures is like this:

Monday -- Homeschool classes with a local group for J, museum play for Zoo Boy, then grocery shopping on the way home for all of us
Tuesday -- seasonal craft, then museum class for J/play in the museum for Zoo Boy
Wednesday -- Babysitter plays with them while Mom works
Thursday -- painting (eventually, we haven't started that yet, but will in the next few weeks), then baking/cooking
Friday -- Excursions with homeschooling friends

Most importantly, any day that is really nice out, we'll ditch (or partially ditch) our "scheduled" activity in favor of just spending the time outdoors somewhere. Nature walks, bike rides, playground time, etc, are all better uses of our time when we have weather that is agreeable. There's going to be plenty of winter to spend indoors doing art, crafts, and cooking!

election day

This is what I woke to this morning: J explained that he was practicing his speech for running for President on election day. Nice. I'm telling you, the world would be a wonderful place if President J were in charge!

Interestingly, we've not really discussed elections or the democratic process with him yet. I mean, he's 7. Of course, he's gone to the polls with me each and every election day, so he's been an observer of the process. And this year I voted via absentee ballot because we were SUPPOSED to be in Ohio visiting friends this week (life circumstances prevented us from taking that trip, however), so he was able to both observe that and ask questions about it. I cast my ballot in the Town Clerk's office, and both kids had a bunch of questions and insight about what I was doing and why it was taking me so long (there were a lot of bubbles to fill in!), and the Town Clerk herself offered them information (I love it when they learn about stuff like that from folks actually involved in the process!). And The Map Man and I freely discuss politics with the kids in the room -- always a passionate but friendly discussion, as we both have very strong political opinions, but fortunately they jive nicely. I don't think either of us could peacefully live with someone at the opposite end of the political spectrum. I'm not sure how much of that the kids are soaking in. Hopefully just enough. Certainly not so much that it's discouraged J from playing at running for office.

We're not political party fans here at this house. And we worry desperately about the electoral system in this country. For the past two presidential elections, the person for whom the majority of the people cast their votes was not determined to be the president -- how does that possibly make any sense?? We would really like to see this country set up as a TRUE democracy, where the people vote for the best person for the job, without political party backing, which prevents some of the best folks for the job of having a shot at ever taking office just because they don't have a party's stamp of approval. The fact that votes are "wasted" on people running outside of the big two political parties bothers me greatly -- on the one hand, we are Independent voters ourselves, and I love the fact that we have more choices than just who the Dems or Reps care to give their campaign money and political backing to. But so often, those valuable votes cast for non-party candidates do nothing but give an advantage to the Republican candidate -- the folks who were really voting on the political left wind up having a direct hand in putting someone from the right into office. How does THAT make sense???

So I vote Democratic. Pretty much whoever the Dems put on the ballot, I'll vote for. But this isn't something I take lightly. A lot of life experience and thought has gone into deciding to vote this way. In the past, I carefully read through all of the candidates information, cast my vote for each very consciously. Usually I wound up voting Democratic. Occasionally I voted outside of the two big parties (my candidate never won in those instances, nor did they even come close the vast majority of the time). Once upon a time, I voted to re-elect a Republican governor in this state of CT, because I thought he was a decent man who had done a good job in his first term. With the blessing of his party, he went on to slash jobs and took us from a state surplus situation to a huge deficit (and eventually wound up being indicted for federal charges, serving time in prison rather than serving out the end of his term, but I suppose that's not the party's fault). I felt betrayed and burnt, and swore never to vote Republican again, and to do whatever I was able to do to prevent a Republican candidate from getting elected again. And I decided that casting my votes for the Democrats were the best way to go about it. Most of the time I really, REALLY like the Dem candidates. Sometimes not. Sometimes I like the Rep candidate better. But I've learned that it's never worth it to add fire to the Republican machine, because no matter how good a person an individual Republican candidate might be, they are still going to vote along party lines when it comes right down to it. (And why wouldn't they? Where is their re-election campaign money and support going to come from? It doesn't behoove any candidate to vote outside of their political party, which is, in my opinion, the biggest failing of the democratic system. Well, that and the electoral college. It's a toss up.)

I may not like the party system, but it's all we've got. I won't register as a Democrat. But if they wanted to put their campaign signs up in my front lawn, I'd let them. Which would make our Republican neighbors across the street a little miffed, I'm sure.

So, there. My political views spilled out for all to see. Happy Election Day! Get out there and vote, truly every single vote counts. Do it for your children. Do it for your town. Do it for your country. Just DO it! (Unless you're a Republican, in which case you can feel free to stay home.)

week #9 summary

Hoo boy. Week number 9 is over, and I'm glad! The chaos of birthday celebrations, Halloween, adding new critters to the farm, and having to cancel a much-anticipated trip to visit friends, resulted in a week of dysregulation for my guys, so we had some tough times in circle, and the curriculum story was a total bust. (An Enki nature story about a cute little mouse who strays too far from home while playing, gets lost, and takes shelter in a jack-o-lantern for the winter, until his family finds him -- cute story, really!) I'm not sure if the story was just too advanced (or possibly too long) for them (the Nature Stories are a step up in sophistication from the Folk Tales we've been using, which have been working great for us), or all the chaos from over the weekend/first part of the week set us up for failure, or a combination of the two. But by the end of the week, I just threw my hands in the air, abandoned our curriculum entirely, and spent as much time outdoors as possible so that we could all recoup! I think we're back on track now, and ready to tackle week number 10.

We still managed to have a lot of fun this week, though, and plenty of learning opportunities. Like we learned all about what pigs need for food, shelter, and care when we added Pig to our homestead. J went to his usual Monday Homeschool Chorus and Soccer classes with The Map Man (who took the morning off to help out), while Zoo Boy and I went on our pig-fetching mission. J also participated in a museum class called "Mad Scientists" where they made scientific observations and did experiments, including one where they made blue slime. (I SO BADLY wanted to get a picture of J as he pulled out his blue slime to show us -- this icky, drippy, gooey substance, glopping all over his hands, while he had a big smile on his face! But the camera was not cooperative and the lighting was too dim for my camera phone, and by the time I was able to take a photo, the moment had passed.) While J experimented with science, Zoo Boy helped some volunteers at the museum cleaning out animal cages.

We also had two field trips this week (not counting our adventure to the farm for critter pick-up), the first to Foster Farm in South Windsor, CT (which I blogged about here and here and a little more here), and our Friday Excursion to Northwest Park in Windsor, CT (which I posted about here and here).

We picked up a scavenger hunt form at the Northwest Park Nature Center, and we had a great time finding all the items on our hike. Here J shows off item number 3 on our list, a leaf containing Chlorophyll. He already knew that leaves with Chlorophyll were green, but while doing the scavenger hunt, he also learned that leaves containing Carotenoids are yellow or orange, and that leaves containing Anthocyanins are red, purple or blue, although Chlorophyll, while still being manufactured by the leaf, usually covers those colors up. When the Chlorophyll stops being produced, voila, the other colors show. (Duchess Autumn at work, as J pointed out!) Zoo Boy had fun searching for nuts and climbing over logs and rocks.

One more photo -- J's creative use of books and other objects (there's a xylophone in there) to create a ramp to jump the Lego Racer he built this week off of. There was a time when J only used books for reading and musical instruments for making music -- his creative use of materials certainly has come a long way!

We read a really nice batch of Halloween stories this week during Family Story time: Pumpkin Moonshine, by Tasha Tudor; The Runaway Pumpkin, by Kevin Lewis, illustrated by S.D. Schindler (a really fun poetic romp); and my personal favorite, Miss Fiona's Stupendous Pumpkin Pies, by Mark Kimball Moulton, illustrated by Karen Hillard Crouch.

more pics from Northwest Park

Well, you certainly didn't think I was going to post just one entry about My New Favorite Place, did you?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, we visited Northwest Park in Windsor, CT this afternoon with a couple of homeschooling pals. Here's a few more pictures from our picture-perfect afternoon. This first is of my guys on the wetlands lookout.

The kids take a break while on our hike. Our walk took us past old tobacco barns and fields, over streams and wetlands, through mature and new forests. Quite the variety for a 1 1/4 mile hike!


I posted this to make my Dad jealous. Hey, Dad, you just oughta SEE the mushrooms and lichens at this place! Growing all over some stunning dead white birch trees. I wish I'd had my better camera with me, or better yet, YOUR camera! My little camera phone just doesn't do them justice.

Zoo Boy and J joyfully dancing through the fields. I felt the same way, although I didn't actually dance. But it was hard not to on such a gorgeous day in such a lovely place.


J and his good buddy B, strolling through the fall leaves.