Elizabeth Foss: Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home
Alison McKee: Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves
I’ve just discovered that some of you are subscribed to an inactive feed. If you haven’t been seeing my new posts in your Bloglines reader, please make sure you are subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/bonnyglen, not http://melissawiley.typepad.com/bonnyglen/atom.xml. Thanks!
When I moved to San Diego and switched ISPs, I lost my old website. It took a while to get the new one up and running, but at long last I am happy to announce I'm all settled in at:
Bonny Glen is taking up residence at the new quarters.
If you are a feed subscriber, you don't have to change a thing: the feed has already been updated. (Which means you won't be seeing this message.)
To update my blog URL in your blogroll, please use melissawiley.com/blog.
This move has been a long time in the making! I hope you'll enjoy the fresh new look. (Not too new for the blog: I wanted it to stay in keeping with this one.)
This blog here, the Typepad one, will stay intact—archives, sidebars, comments, and all—so as not to mess up incoming links.
Thanks for travelling with me!
"Harvard, he says, has some of the finest students in the world, but he believes most of them are visual illiterates. Their academic lives have been programmed around verbal and mathematical tests that will get them into a good college, but he says they lack a sense of spontaneity.
“I think they've missed a kind of self-guided, non-organized activity, non-sports activity growing up. Wandering around, getting into things. And the assumption seems to be nowadays is if a child isn't in an organized activity, the child is a criminal,” says Stilgoe. “But as far as I can understand, most of my colleagues I work with seem to have found their careers by being slightly disorganized. Lucking into something, you know.”
(tags: unschooling seeing learning)
Leap on over to the February Carnival of Children's Literature, hosted by children's book author Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day!
At the grocery store, I dial his cell phone. It goes to voice mail.
"Hey. I have two vitally important questions, so call me ay-sap."
We're unloading the cart onto the conveyor belt when he calls back. "What's up?"
"OK, first: what was I supposed to buy at the store?"
"Sugar. Tea. Um, bananas?"
"Got them. Good. OK, the other question was way more important. What's the Elvis song that goes 'A little more satisfaction, a little more nananana...'?"
I know I'm getting the words wrong, so I have to sing it. The man in line behind me grins, and the checkout lady cuts a glance at the bagger. An Elvis impersonator I am not. But sometimes you have to humble yourself in the quest for knowledge.
Scott is laughing. "A little less conversation, a little more action."
"RIGHT! Yes. That's it. Thank you."
"Why?"
"It came on while I was shopping and I needed to remember the words." We'd been in the dairy aisle, the boy, the baby, and I, and I couldn't help it, started dancing, which the boy can't stand. Mom, tease top! Please stop! He hates when I sing, too, which is a huge joke on me. I used to think I would sing to my babies and they would gaze lovingly into my eyes, smitten, enchanted. But none of the first three seemed particularly interested in my tender melodies, or else they cried. I'm not that bad, I swear, except for my Elvis. Then along came my little boy, the fragile infant I sang to for hours in the NICU because what else could we do? In his early months at home, I thrilled at the way he stared raptly into my eyes as I sang, his bitty face full of all the wonder I'd imagined my babies would feel at the sound of mother's crooning.
Then we found out he was hard of hearing. My softly crooned melodies? He couldn't hear them.
The wonder I saw in his eyes was probably "I wonder why she keeps moving her mouth like that?"
Ever since he got the hearing aids, he begs me to stop singing before I've hit the third note.
I still sing, I can't help it, I sing over dishes and vacuuming and in the shower and in the car. And sometimes I have to dance a little in the dairy aisle because that song, it gets inside the marrow of you and makes your heart pump faster.
When I got home, Scott had a link waiting for me: that's what I'm talking about. You can bet my son didn't beg the King to tease top.
I have eaten
the toast
that you left on
the counter
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
it was delicious
so buttery
and so warm
(with apologies to William Carlos Williams)
(but not to my husband)
Glorious weather today. An outside, low-tide kind of day.
In the morning Beanie and I finally returned to Half Magic; I think it's been almost two weeks. She claims it is her favorite thing in the entire world except for snuggling in bed. High praise! We're at the part where Jane has wished she belonged to another family, and she's the spoiled, prissy, niminy-piminy "Little Comfort" that makes the other children gag and has Bean and me in stitches.
Then Beanie wanted to start a crocheting project (she is just learning), a bookmark, so she did the "chain ten" part and I showed her how to single crochet. We worked on one row together. Then she was ready for a snack, she said, and that led to going outside, and once outside the gorgeousness of the day got into me and I decided upon an impromptu outing. We grabbed water bottles and the camera and drove to a hiking trail that leads up Cowles Mountain.
(Poor Rilla was so upset as we set off: I'd said "Do you want to go for a walk?" and she sprinted for her shoes, and then suddenly she was being hustled into the car and WHAT IS THIS CAR NONSENSE? YOU PROMISED ME A WALK! Oh, the wrath and woe. Until she found a water bottle from yesterday with a little left in it and got busy pouring it down her shirt.)
We've often driven past this mountain but never hiked it. And I knew we weren't up for the full mile-and-a-quarter trek to the top today, not me alone with the five, but we thought we see how far we could get. At first I thought that wasn't going to be much farther than the parking lot. Wonderboy has a thing about wanting everything to be always the same, always just so. Usually when I wear Rilla in the sling, he is riding in the stroller. But this time of course we couldn't use the stroller; I needed him to walk. But Rilla was in the sling. He cried. He resisted. He became increasingly agitated (aka LOUD). I quailed from the possibility (inevitability, it seemed) of shattering the peace of the morning air for all the other hikers: the parking lot was full; we could see a number of people ascending and descending on the trail. They would hate us, I feared. I couldn't do it, couldn't in good conscience ruin their pleasant hike, scare off the birds, most likely cause rockslides from the vibrations of Wonderboy's wails. We would have to bail. And just as I was heaving the sigh that would precede my resigned announcement to some disappointed girls, the boy accepted this unseemly breach of routine and consented to trot alongside me, holding my hand.
So we hiked.
The girls ran ahead up the path, and I tried to take pictures but I'm sure they are all blurry because I only had one hand free and never stood still. Wildflowers everywhere: orange poppies, some kind of purple flower on tallish stalks (I'll post a blurry photo later and y'all can ID it), black-eyed Susans galore. Oh, it was splendid. Clear air, soaring blue sky, Mount Helix green in the distance and Mount San Miguel a charcoal presence behind it, spiked with radio towers.
Far above us on the trail, but only perhaps halfway up the mountain, were some giant boulders, a gnarled outcropping of sandy yellow stone. I thought maybe we'd go up half as far as those rocks, but the girls kept wanting to go a bit farther, a bit farther, and suddenly we were there. The trail was muddy and rocky and pocked with puddles—all this rain we've had of late—but with a view like that, oh, who cares?
Rose wanted to go to the top. By then I was wearing Rilla in front and piggybacking Wonderboy, so no, no summit-reaching today. Our descent was challenging. Near the bottom Rilla began to voice some complaints about sharing her pack-horse with her brother, and things might have come to disaster but for the kind intervention of a young mom on her way down the hill. She sweet-talked Wonderboy into letting her tote him the last few curves in the trail.
We made it.
Home, snacks, water; no one really wanted lunch. Rose and Bean played a computer game ("we're learning math, Mom"), Jane re-read the Emily Starr books, Rilla nursed for like ever, Wonderboy watched The Wiggles.
Rose asked me to help her start a knitting project which is supposed to be a Mother's Day present for me. She worried a bit about having to spoil the surprise by asking for my help, but it starts with ribbing and she doesn't know purl yet. I told her getting to make it with her is a present in itself. She got chatty while I cast on.
The baby went down for a nap. Rose and I turned over the compost
pile. Beanie scootered in the backyard, Wonderboy rode his fire truck.
Jane was still inside reading, or maybe by then she was working on the
funky math project she got out of Mathematics: A Human Endeavor: she
made this set of numbered cards with special hole punches at each end,
and there's a way of sticking unbent paper clips through the holes that
separates out the numbers in certain ways, and it represents an
algorithm and also the Fibonacci sequence and possibly the cure for
cancer. Whatever it was, it was cool. She also copied out this drawing
puzzle thing where I had to start drawing a line inside a rectangle and
whenever I came to a wall, make a right angle and keep drawing. It made
a very cool diamond pattern and I loved it, loved that she is so on
fire about this sort of thing and willing to patiently teach me about
it. I love being homeschooled.
Many thanks to Dan and Dixie for clueing me in to the identity of our backyard visitor: seem it was a Western Kingbird. I hope it visits again! It's an insect and fruit eater, so it wasn't snacking at our feeder, just perching on the hook. I'm glad I got at least one (albeit blurry) photo before it flew away!
Not the best photo but it's all I had time for before he flew away. This is a new visitor to our yard; he was supervising the rowdy finches at the feeder this morning. He's bigger than a finch, almost robin-sized.
We don't get anything like the variety of birds to our feeders here that we got in Virginia, at the feet of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Gone are the charcoal-colored juncoes, the chipper titmice, the sweet chickadees, the nuthatches and downy woodpeckers and flickers. We used to have a nesting pair of bluebirds right outside my office window, and two cardinal couples who came for dinner every evening. Now and then a huge pileated woodpecker would dazzle us from the neighbor's tree, and sometimes a hawk would swoop low and scare the mourning doves.
Here in the suburbs of San Diego, in this particular yard at least, there are only finches: house, purple, gold; and sparrows; and arrogant crows; and one inquisitive phoebe, a Say's Phoebe, who likes to perch on our side-yard fencepost and survey the action in the street.
Oh, and parrots! A raucous flock of them, green and squawking in the treetops, fluttering up en masse and swirling together to the next tree. Always, by the time I've run for my camera, they are gone.
There is an elementary school on the other side of our back fence (I know, the irony is delicious), and last week my parents were walking along along the schoolyard fence with my three youngest bairns when they encountered a science teacher carrying cages of cockatiels. He let the kids play with the birds and told my parents he is putting a nesting box for the parrots in the big tree right behind us; he's hoping for eggs so he can raise a pair.
So: parrots we've got. But I miss my Eastern birds, I do.
This fellow, the newcomer: I hope he'll return. I don't know what he is—yet. Any thoughts?
| You Are a Question Mark |
 And while you know a lot, you don't act like a know it all. You're open to learning you're wrong. You ask a lot of questions, collect a lot of data, and always dig deep to find out more. You're naturally curious and inquisitive. You jump to ask a question when the opportunity arises. Your friends see you as interesting, insightful, and thought provoking. (But they're not always up for the intense inquisitions that you love!) You excel in: Higher education You get along best with: The Comma |
Wow! I do seek knowledge and insight, almost compulsively! I am open to being wrong: I've had so much practice! I do ask a lot of questions, collect information, dig dig dig! That's true! Wow! I do sometimes overwhelm my friends with too much of the digging and asking! Gosh! It must be true! I'm a question mark! And here I would have sworn I was exclamation point. Who knew?
Heh.
HT: Diane, the comma—so that's why we get along so well!
I was excited about this book long before I knew one of my own novels had been included in its pages. It combines two of my most favorite things (not just my favorite things, my most favorite things!): books and yarn.
Great Yarns for the Close-Knit Family by Mary Gildersleeve is about to hit the shelves, and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. What a gem of an idea: Mary has taken twelve children's novels, read-alouds her family loved, and created knitting projects to go with each one.
Imagine how tickled I was when I saw my own name on that booklist!
Here's a peek at the books and their projects, courtesy of the author's website:
1. Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
a. Pinocchio Doll and Clothes2. Canadian Summer by Hilda vanStockum
a. Mr. Magic’s Gnome Hat
b. Arthur Purcell’s “Gay” Sweater3. The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkein
a. Bilbo’s Backpack
b. Bilbo’s Traveling Jacket4. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
a. Ma’s Boot Socks
b. Pa’s Red-White Checked Mittens5. Little House in the Highlands by Melissa Wiley
a. Mittens for Laird Alroch & Auld Mary
b. Tullie Greyshanks Doll and Clothes6. The Lost Island by Eilis Dillon
a. Fisherman’s Jersey
b. Wool Socks for the Journey7. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
a. Mary Poppins’ Carpetbag
b. Mary Poppins’ Fur-trimmed Gloves8. Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
a. Captain Cook (penguin doll)
b. Mr. Popper’s Cozy Scarf9. Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
a. Otto’s Chain Mail
b. Otto’s Scabbard and Belt10. Redwall by Brian Jacques
a. Matthias’ Over-sized Habit
b. Asmodeus the Snake11. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
a. Colin’s Rug and Cushion
b. Mrs. Sowerby’s Cloak12. The Wheel on the School by Meindert deJong
a. Lina’s Stocking Cap
b. Thick Wools Socks for Linda & Jan
I can't wait to see that Tullie Greyshanks doll, but I think I'm most excited of all about Bilbo's Traveling Jacket. I want a Bilbo's traveling jacket!
I can also say for a certainty that Asmodeus the Snake will be crossing my path in days to come. I'm betting that's Jane's first project out of the book.
If you pre-order a copy from its publisher, Hillside Education, you'll receive a free set of wooden knitting needles. Pre-orders are available through March 8th. I think the book will hit the shelves in mid-March!
Photo by Funny Grandpa.
The burns are healing beautifully and she is back to her old tricks. Such as wrapping Daddy around her little finger. Business as usual.
The enchanting Allison of Homeschool Hacks wrote such a nice post about Tidal Learning yesterday.* Aww...
Homeschool Hacks, if you don't know, was created by Shannon Entin, aka PHAT Mommy, and has recently been taken over by Allison, aka Mrs. Fussypants. It's a fun site full of tips, links, and resources for homeschoolers. Check it out!
(P.S. Whale watching update: they didn't see a single whale! Not one, though the captain searched the waters from La Jolla to the coast of Mexico. Ah well, they had a wonderful time on the boat, saw pelicans and seals, and got rain check tickets to come back another day and try again.)
*Broken link fixed, thanks to Rebecca and JoVE. Yes, the first link went to a Duran Duran video. This probably tells you everything you need to know about me.
Approximately. But I forget what they were. I am tired. We have all been sick, and some of us are still being sick, and though I am sick no longer, the annoying cough lingers, the unpleasant souvenir of a particularly ruthless cold. My Body Went to Virus Land and All I Got Was This Lousy Cough.
Poor Jane was hit the hardest: she gave us quite a scare the other day. Valentine's Day, I think it was? Or the day before; it's all a blur. The combo of high fever and not having eaten breakfast yet caused her to pass out on the bathroom floor. I heard something fall and called to her, and she didn't respond, and then I found her there all limp limbs and tangled hair. When I knelt beside her, she roused and said, "What? I thought I was in my bed," which was funny a long time later. I got her to her feet and then she began to moan and her body began to sink, heavy in my arms, and I lowered her back to the floor and her eyes were wide and staring and there was nobody there.
Not my favorite moment of motherhood.
Beanie was standing behind me shrieking What's wrong with her??? as shrill as a teakettle at full steam, and I sent her for the phone while I shook Jane and shouted at her, and after what seemed like forever but wasn't really, Jane blinked and came back and wanted to know why she was on the bathroom floor and what was wrong with Bean. I dialed the doctor whose nurse made the whole thing even scarier by saying in a voice taut with alarm: "Get her to the ER immediately," adding that if I couldn't get Jane to the car without her passing out again, I should call an ambulance. But then she said that it was probably just the fever and empty stomach. Which is what five hours of tests and waiting, mostly waiting, at the ER confirmed.
So that's good.
The next day, Jane was still feeling lethargic. Her little sister decided to help perk her up with cup of mint tea. She left the mug steeping too close to the edge of the counter, and Rilla pulled it down upon herself.
That was a bad moment.
She was scalded on her neck, ear, and shoulder, but I got cold wet cloths on it immediately and the burns were not severe. Thank God. It was awful for Rilla and awful for me, but perhaps worst of all for the tenderhearted sister who had unknowingly left the mug in baby's reach.
All in all, a rough week for my poor girls. Every one of them was laid flat by the fever at some point and suffered sleepless nights due to their own coughing or their roommates'.
Ah, but Saturday morning brought an upswing in our spirits with the happy arrival of my parents and my eleven-year-old niece. Nothing in the world beats grandparent therapy. We stuck pretty close to home on Saturday, battling the last day of Beanie's fever, but by Sunday the older girls were well enough to go to church and then Scott and I snuck away for lunch together. In the late afternoon my folks took all the kids except the baby—who is still, today, feverish and crabby, and who gave us quite a wretched night last night, what with the crying and the fevering and the being original and adding throwing up to the mix, which none of the other kids had thought of doing—for a walk at our favorite nature center. And today? Oh my children are so lucky. As I type, they are on a boat on the Pacific, looking for whales. Whales! And dolphins! Yes, I am jealous. But of course my two littlest people are not really candidates for three-hour boat tours even in prime health, and most definitely not today.
I can't wait for the girls to come home and tell me all about it. Perhaps the mental image of whales fluking, or whatever it is that whales do, will replace the pictures I can live happily without, thank you very much: Jane's blank staring eyes; shrieking Rilla drenched in hot tea. My friend Sarah used to work as a pediatric nurse, and she told me that to this day she cannot walk out into the first crisp day of autumn without thinking about how that weather always meant a rush of toddler patients with burns from cups of coffee, tea, hot cocoa left carelessly in reach.
That night I served fish sticks for dinner (Friday in Lent, doncha know), and as I forked them onto plates I remarked casually that they were too hot to eat yet, they'll burn your mouths...and I heard a gasp from Rilla's direction and saw her sitting in her chair with both hands clasped to her mouth, her eyes huge with horror. I guess she understands burn now.
Whales! Dolphins! Salt spray, wind in hair!
Yes, that's better.
Recent Comments