Wooden Bucket Class

canoeing

Stream of Consciousness Whilst I Await Library Renewal

I have a huge list of books checked out from the library.
I don't want to return them; they now feel like they're my own.
I'm attempting to renew most of them via our online library service.
The service is having a hard time processing my request; I think I've overwhelmed it.
I wonder how many times I can renew these books before I absolutely have to return them.
I wonder how many people are waiting for these same books, which will make renewal impossible.
What will I do then?
How long will I have to wait before I get A Child's History of the World back into my clutches?
One month is not long enough to have a book.
I wonder how much it would cost to purchase all these books with which I've become attached.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to afford it.
Bard's biology textbook costs $72.00, and I had to pay for that, because they don't have it at the library.
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a home-ed budget?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could walk into a bookstore, like the library does, and spend a set amount on books each year?
I have such a long list of what I want.
I'd love to reward the kids for every thing they do with a new book.
When Bard was young, I'd reward her for reading a book by buying her a new book.
I once bought her Little Women and told her that if she read the whole thing, she could buy any book she wanted.
The renewal page on the library site just timed out; I guess it can't handle my renewal requests.
I'll try again.
I started a wishlist on Amazon. I've done this before.
I always hope I'll find the books used at a yard sale or a library sale.
Problem is, I rarely go to yard sales or library sales.
The library has accepted my renewal requests, so, for one more month, I have:

1-2-3 magic by Phelan, Thomas W.
The amazing Mr. Franklin, or, The boy who read everything by Ashby, Ruth
American tall tales by Stoutenburg, Adrien
Applying algebra by McCabe, John L. P
At the back of the North Wind by MacDonald, George
B. Franklin, printer by Adler, David A
Bard of Avon : the story of William Shakespeare by Stanley, Diane
Beethoven : 1770-1827 by Koolbergen, Jeroen
Benjamin Franklin : a photo-biography by Riley, John
Benjamin Franklin : a photo-illustrated biography by Usel, T.

Apparently, blogger thought I was taking too long, too. After entering the other gazillion books, it told me I had to log in first and ate the rest of my post.

Sigh.

Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame

Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame is a unique history book written by a father and his twelve-year-old son, Anthony, who travels through time and meets amazing people from history.

"I walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. I played baseball with Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. I flew from New York to Paris with Charles Lindbergh. I was with the brave soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. I cried with survivors of the Holocaust. I watched battle-weary marines raise the American flag on Iwo Jima. I heard the first words to come out of Thomas Edison’s talking machine. I saw the glow of Edison’s first electric lamp. I met FDR. I saw Doctor Jonas Salk conquer polio, and I counted the dimes that made it possible. I crouched in the trenches during World War I. I stood in a breadline during the Great Depression. I crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a steamship one hundred years ago, when my great-grandfather first came to America; I walked with him through the doors to America on Ellis Island. I was with my great-grandfather the day he became an American.

I did it all by stepping through the Picture Frame on my bedroom wall.

My name is Anthony and I am twelve years old. This is my story."

Have you read this book? Seen it? Recommend it? I'd like to hear your input!

The Baby

"It's raining outside! It's going to be Christmas! And there's going to be presents. For me! And for you! And Dad! And Pop! And for everybody! It's going to be ALL Christmas ALL day!"

Bard recently mentioned that I should do a post focusing on each child in the family, telling about them and their abilities and interests. The two-year-old Baby's words this morning gave me the perfect jumping-off point for a post about her.

Have you ever seen the movie Prancer? The movie about the girl and her quest to save one of Santa's reindeer? You know how the little girl sings Christmas songs all year long?

That's The Baby.

Last year during the Christmas season, while we were shopping for gifts, she formed her first full sentences by singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Shortly afterwards, she added Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. She sings them quite regularly.

Actually, she just loves to sing. She sings her ABC's, Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider and She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain, though she wants me to skip the first couple of verses and get right to the part about chopping off the rooster's head and wearing pink pajamas. This summer, I got her accustomed to playing in the water at the lake by singing Comin' 'Round the Mountain, replacing the verses with things like, "She'll be swimmin' round in circles when she comes," and "she'll be kicking her feet when she comes." We swirled and danced and kicked around the lake, singing, blowing bubbles in the water, jumping up and down, and it soon became her favorite game.

The Baby's a smart one. She knows her ABC's and her numbers to twenty (except for that little bit about fourteen, fifteen and sixteen, which all sound pretty much the same coming from her little mouth), knows most of her colors, and can recite "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" all the way to "my platter's empty!" but she prefers to stop at "9, 10" because she favors the "begin again" ending to the "big fat hen" middle.

Her first word was "duck," taught to her by her big sister Bard. The Baby had a little yellow duck on the bottom of her ruby slippers and learned to identify it with Bard's excellent coaching. Her second word was "boogie," which came with much force, the "b" getting stuck behind her lips until it would finally burst forward, the "oogie" rushing quickly behind, with the "ie" rising up an octave. That word came courtesy of Houdin.

Before she was verbal, she would get so excited about her surroundings that she would rotate her hands and feet in unison, round and round and round and round, attracting the attention of little old ladies everywhere we went.

Her favorite pasttimes are:

• nursing
• watching Franklin the Turtle on video
• drawing armless, bodiless people with a pink marker
• catching and holding baby chicks
• swinging on the swing
• picking flowers from the garden
• running down the hill skipping "like Carrie" (from Little House on the Prairie)
• eating broccoli, yogurt, carrots and cottage cheese
• playing with her siblings
• pointing out butterflies
• sleeping with mama and daddy
• carrying around her Kiki Cat she built with her grandma at Build-a-Bear
• and is currently learning to use the potty (her idea, after watching Once Upon a Potty about four hundred times, much to her siblings' dismay).

Oh, and singing Christmas songs, of course.

Now she requires my attention. Kiki Cat is missing, and life just can't go on until she's found.

It's pronounced "MEEM"

Chris from The Big Yellow House posted this little history assignment.

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

The fifth line of my 23rd post reads:

"Years of prayer often felt worthless."

This line comes from my post about our dream for a home where we could extend a hand of hospitality to others, the vision that fed that dream, and the symbolism of the acorn in my life.

Like Chris, I'm not going to tag anyone. If you want to post the fifth line from your 23rd post, I'd love to read what it says, so leave me a comment if you do it.

Next Year's Garden

As the leaves begin to change, I find myself already thinking about next Spring's gardens. Last year at this time, we were focused on finishing our house. This Summer, we focused mostly on the outside. I started my little kitchen garden outside my kitchen door, which is the little door you can barely see on the left side of the porch. In it, I planted jalapenos, cherry tomatoes, Early Girl tomatoes, Big Boy tomatoes, several different herbs (cilantro, bush basil, marjoram, chives-chives-chives, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme--seriously!), a pot of nasturtiums and lots of marigolds. Along the side and front of the porch, the kids and I planted different herbs, some perennials, swiss chard, lots of tomatillos and lots of basil. In the front of the house, we planted a whole host of perennials, including Hollyhocks, Balloon Flowers, several different types of sage, butterfly flowers, hyssops and horehound, chamomile and echinacea, and a bunch of things I can't remember right now. Next year, I hope to revive my deep beds, filling them with onions, peas, lettuces, cilantro, broccoli, peppers, and whatever else I fancy. And I will move the tomatoes to a larger space ( I never allow enough room for tomatoes), create a Rabbitat with lettuce and nasturtium gardens for our bunnies, and plant a sunflower house like we did a few years ago.

I think I'll re-do the porch beds, moving the herbs and keeping the perennials, lining the beds with allysium and petunias. I think I'll like that neater look better.

And I plan to move the tea garden into our native wildflower area as soon as the flowers fall off.

Bard has bugged me for several years to create a "snacking and sipping garden" like the one proposed in Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots, so we'll carve out a spot for that. And I definitely want to plant a vine garden, filled with cucumbers, watermelons, canteloupes and pumpkins.

Are you thinking about next year's garden already?

What's That You Say?

Sweetheart: "What does 'no comprendo' mean?"
Monet: "'I have no idea what you're saying.'"
Sweetheart: "What does 'no comprendo' mean?"
Monet: "'I have no idea what you're saying.'"
Sweetheart: "WHAT does 'NO COMPRENDO' mean?!?"
Monet: "'I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE SAYING'!"
Sweetheart: "WILL SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT 'NO COMPRENDO' MEANS?!?"
All of us in unison: "'I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE SAYING'!"
Sweetheart: "Oooohhhh! I get it!"

Humility

Bard: "You should do special posts about each of us."
Me: "About what?"
Bard: "I don't know. Just telling how great we are."
Several seconds go by.
Bard: "Actually, you should just do one about me."

It's a MIRACLE!

I have to post this, because it's a photo of a rare moment. My kitchen is CLEAN and I have proof because my new friend Irene took a photo of my spotless space today during music appreciation class. So, when you come visit me, I just want to give you some idea what NOT to expect. :-)

Thanks, Irene!

Goodbye, Summer

Well, Fall has arrived and the days of summer are gone. Our local pool has been drained, removing any hope whatever that we'll veer into that parking lot on a whim when the kids yell from the back seat, "LET'S GO SWIMMING!"

It's time, instead, to get out the scarecrow's clothes, hang up the harvest wreaths, start eyeing the pumpkings, wondering how long they'll last if we carve them now and whether it really matters because, hey, wouldn't it be fun to carve them again?

It's time to run through the yard and try to catch a leaf before it hits the ground, touching something that has never before been touched by human hands.

It's time to get out the sweaters and put away the shorts, forget about the watermelon and start mulling the cider, put sunbathing behind us and start stoking the bonfires.

Autumn is my favorite time of the year. Summer may be over, but I'm still looking forward to our first camping trip, a few good bike rides, at least a couple of hikes and a shot at bobbing for apples.

What are your favorite things about Autumn?

The Baby

Houdin and his friend Adrienne.

Ketchup

Ketchup: Free Verse

I am so relieved to give my tired feet a rest.
I wonder if the ketchup I'm making will be edible;
I hear echoes of my aunt telling my dad, "I couldn't wait for Ma's ketchup to run out. I hated that stuff."
I see my grandmothers garden in my mind's eye, her hoeing in the midst of it, and
I want to raise a garden just like hers, filled with red currants, delicious tomatoes, and tender carrots.
I am on my own in this; my grandmother has gone on to a different kind of harvest.

I pretend I'm self-sufficient, but I know that's a joke.
I feel inadequate; the Amish and Mennonite women in my neighborhood, like my grandmother, put up peaches, can corn, toil over tomatoes. They hang out their handmade clothes every Monday, gather to clean each other's houses, have a support system about which it exhausts me even to dream.
I touch the Victoria Strainer borrowed from a friend, plunge the tomatoes into its mouth and turn the crank, listening to the noises that come from it that sound like a scene from Willy Wonka. I think about the seasons of harvest that have passed through its sieve.
I worry about this ketchup, whether it will be edible, whether I, too, will have a child who says, "I can't wait until Mom's ketchup is gone. I hate that stuff."
I cry for the mother that I once had, over the times I, too, said, "I hate this stuff."
I am ashamed. I am a motherless daughter now.

I understand what my children do not, and they understand what I do not.
I say that it's important to treasure every moment, yet I know that I spend too much time worrying, crying and complaining.
I dream of the day when my kitchen will stay clean, when my floor will stay swept, when the toys will not trip me in the night.
I try to push the dream away, to appreciate where I am, right now.
I hope that my ketchup will be edible, that my grandmother's harvest is plentiful, that my children's toys will trip me in the night, that I will learn to be content.
I am a mother, a daughter, a granddaughter, and I am learning what that means.

*This is a poem written using a template that was posted on Hind's Feet's blog. Why don't you try it, too, and send me a note in my comments when you're done?

I am
I wonder
I hear
I see
I want
I am

I pretend
I feel
I touch
I worry
I cry
I am

I understand
I say
I dream
I try
I hope
I am

Monarch Butterfly Egg

When I shared my collage of our Monarch butterfly rearing experience, I lamented the fact that I didn't have a photo of an egg because of their tininess. Doug Smith sent me a link to this photo of a Monarch butterfly egg that he took with the macro feature of his digital camera. Amazing!

Check out Doug's site, Simply Charlotte Mason. Thanks, Doug!

It's Worth It

A friend recently wrote this piece about the importance of letter-writing. I know that sometimes our kids despair over any kind of writing, and we soft-hearted mothers, who feel like we're torturing our darling children, despair along with them. But don't give up. It will be worth it, I promise you, and they'll someday thank you for the gift you gave them.

"My mom, even when I was 7, taught me to write letters when things were both worthy of praise, and when they weren't right. I earned my first paycheck at age 8 picking berries outside of Portland. $3.23 for about 2 weeks work and I was elated. I sent away for a toy from a cereal box (we were serial cereal box readers) and it came broken. My mom sat down with me and had me write in my own handwriting to the company to send it back. The company must have liked it, because they sent me the whole SET of these toys. I can't remember a thing about those toys, but it's a story I love to tell my kids, as they never met their stunningly brilliant grandmother."

~Cynthia Fisher Rose

Daily Grammar

Do you or your child have a question about grammar that you just can't seem to remember how to answer? Check here for answers and miniature lesson plans!

The Whole of a Child's Existence to Be Used as his Education

"It is worth while to point out the differing characters of a system and a method, because parents let themselves be run away with often enough by some plausible 'system,' the object of which is to produce development in one direction––of the muscles, of the memory, of the reasoning faculty––were a complete all-round education. This easy satisfaction arises from the sluggishness of human nature, to which any definite scheme is more agreeable than the constant watchfulness, the unforeseen action, called for when the whole of a child's existence is to be used as the means of his education."

Charlotte Mason, Home Education

My Favorite Chair

I can't begin to tell you how very inviting my favorite chair looks to me right now. It's not an expensive chair by any means. I hauled it away from an estate sale after noticing the "FREE! TAKE ME!" sign that was pinned to it.

Of course, I've fantasized about other chairs, even shopped around for a few--maybe a nice leather one that's super pricey because the saleswoman can pour Coke on it and it won't eat away the finish. Or maybe a deep, fluffy oversized chair where two or three of us can sit at one time without fear of dislodging one of the arms. But my free chair is quite comfortable, reclines very nicely, and it's just the right funky color of split-pea-soup yellow that I happen to like. Plus it's all I can afford.

Today was one of those killer homeschool days where I'd rather have curled up in the fetal position in my free pea-soup chair; I hit the ground running at 6:00 AM, and even though my throbbing feet are currently standing still, my mind and my worries and my two-year-old are not.

I really enjoy learning with my children. I'm not lying when I say this. I live for those moments when they say, "Oh! I know what this is about! Remember when we watched A Man for All Seasons? Wasn't it King Henry who wanted to divorce his wife? Wasn't he the one that chopped his wives' heads off?" or "Adding nines is so easy, Mom, if you know the secret," or "MOM! I PEED IN THE POTTY! COME AND SEE! IT'S JUST LIKE ONCE A POTTY POTTY!"

But there are days--like today--when even my best-laid, color coded, color-copied in triplicate plans seem to be nothing but dust on a chalkboard.

Today presented me with:

a sick son, to the tune of, "Mom? What is this green stuff I just coughed up? And why is my right hip tingling?";
a sick husband who I actually asked, "Just tell me; are you honestly sick? I mean really and truly sick?";
about a finity of tomatoes just waiting to be made into pico de gallo;
about a finity of toys waiting to be removed from the floor, the bathtub, the porch and the ceiling;
an empty crock pot waiting for beautiful soup;
a broken crockpot that will never see beautiful soup again;
and another empty crockpot ready to receive about half as much beautiful soup as I'd planned to make.

Today, talented woman that I am, I juggled:

Two Amish Taxi jobs;
an algebra class for my daughter and the panic that ensued on the way there (hers, not mine);
a trip to the Stuff*Mart for the stuff I needed to complete the pico de gallo that was, unbeknownst to me, being eaten incomplete;
a library program before which Monet ripped his pants in a very unfortunate and quite conspicous location while climbing out of the van which is notorious for eating pants;
a trip to the Stuff*Mart to buy a new pair of pants for said embarrassed son;
a quick trip home to see the disaster area that is my kitchen and the imcomplete salsa that decorated the kitchen table;
another trip to Stuff*Mart for the milk I forgot during the first two trips;
and a play audition that ran much later than I had anticipated.

At various points during the day, I lost my temper. I cried. I felt totally and completely abandoned. Those antidepressants were looking mighty tempting, lemme tell you.

But those moments...those precious validating, uplifting, encouraging, miraculous, throw-away-the-prescription-for-antidepressants moments keep me going. Like:

When I take my children for assessments and the assessor is impressed with our organization, our curriculum and the quality of our work;
When I decide to try the copier one more time in hopes that I won't get horrible black streaks across my page, and it actually works;
When my daughter auditions for a play for which she didn't think she had a chance and the director tells her how well she read her lines and asks her what role she'd like to play;
When the kids all tell me that the beef-vegetable soup is awesome--even the baby and the picky eater;
When we sit together after dinner and read A Child's History of the World, even though it's 10:30 P.M.and we're absolutely pooped, just because there was something interesting we wanted to discuss--just because we wanted to do it;
When my son finishes reading a chapter of Heroes, a book about Roman Mythology, and wonders aloud, "How do we know Christianity's legit?" and a frank discussion about religion takes place in the kitchen;
When a friend happens to call just as the other son asks, "What killed the dinosaurs?" and the friend actually has a well thought-out response for him;
When my daughter, who insists she can't read, reads the word "jam," and I ask, "How did you know what that said?" and, before she can catch herself, she answers, "I read it," and when she realizes what she just said, she grins from ear to ear;
When my fourteen-year-old son says, "I thought I'd hate Greek and Latin, but it's actually a lot of fun;"
Or when he tells his private-schooled, homeschool-skeptical friend, "My mom asks us to tell her what we know, doesn't test us to find out what we don't know," in response to his question about mid-terms;
Or, better yet, when he tells me about how his friend who is a girl was giving her mom lip service while he was talking to her on the phone and I said, "If you were a gentleman who was truly concerned with your friend's well-being, you'd have told her to go help her mother and you'd call her back later," and he says, "That's what I did."
When a veteran public school teacher tells me that she's never seen an inadequate homeschooling family, but she's seen plenty of inadequate public school students, including an eighteen-year-old who can't read cursive and a sixteen-year-old who spells worse than a first-grader;
When the girls from the homeschool support group approach my daughter whom they've never met, address her by name and invite her to play Capture the Flag, like civilized human beings, NOT social misfits;
When my daughter puts her arms around me and says, "Thank you for taking us to science class tonight, Mom. It was a lot of fun."

Those things should always be before me. I should always focus on them. I know I won't, because I'm a fallible human being with a vitamin B deficiency, but I should.

I do recognize, however, that while that comfy chair looks really good to run to in solitude, it's so much more comfy when I'm relaxing in it while listening to my daughter play "It's a Pirate's Life for Me" on the piano, watching a son draw the corn snake we found in the front yard, hearing another son read about Perseus, having another daughter proudly show me her thumbprint art, and a baby singing her ABCs followed by every Christmas song ever written, even though it's only September or looking up at me from the breast and saying, "Thank you for nursing."

Now that's a chair. That's a chair worth sitting in. That, my homelearning friends, is the kind of comfy that simply can't be bought.

To the Moon and Part-way Back

: "When I was a child, I memorized that the average (mean) distance to the moon was 238,857 mi. Now it's 238,856 which is probably more accurate. The moon's orbit is elliptical, and the distance varies quite a bit (it varies from 225,745 mi. to 251,967 mi.)."

After thinking about the distance around the earth, my darling husband wondered about the distance to the moon. I, being the sharp cookie that I am, knew where he was going with this one.

Alas, our Jeep has driven to the moon and part-way back!