A Place in the Community

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" As adults, we often quip that we're still working on the answer to this question. Discussions about career are polarized: Will you do what you love and become a starving artist? Sell out and make big bucks? Or are you one of the lucky few who can do what you love and the money will follow?

Love and money and passion and money chase each other in that framework. People just meeting one another may ask, "What do you do?" And some of us cringe because we don't want to be defined by what we do for money, or we're not doing anything for money, or the thing we do for money isn't what we wish it to be. Some questioners might be networking, or posturing, or judging others by how much money they make. But I suspect that many of us persist in asking the job question because we want to learn a person's interests. And we are blinded by a pervasive (middle class?) myth that a person's paid work is indicative of their interests. I suggest asking the more genuine question: What are your interests?

We ask children what they want to be when they grow up because they are working on their education. We're thinking of vocations and professions that require a specific education, and wondering if they've narrowed anything down. 'Cause it's interesting to explore your interests, but you will have to grow up and pay bills one day. Most of you, anyway.

Children are also asked their favorite subject in school, I suppose as a tactic used in sussing out their interests. The timeline varies by family and community, but at some point the child gets old enough for the adults to turn up the pressure and feed them into the same high-stakes career mill we've entered ourselves: Will your paid work fulfill your passions?

If the answer is yes, it can be quite an exhilarating time. Unless and until you hit some kind of emptiness in trading your passion for money. If the answer is no, life can feel devastating: you are one of those failures giving less than gleaming answers at parties. Worse, if only you had arranged things better, you too could be happily spending all day getting paid to do what you love.

May I suggest an alternative? When our children are old enough to begin thinking outside their immediate families, let's teach them that they will need to find a place in the community. Yes, there are practical considerations: your household has to earn enough money for food and bills and meeting your financial goals, whatever they may be. You will need to do enough work for the community to be paid "enough." Look at your skills and ask what you can do. It doesn't need to be like finding a life partner: one career to fill your heart and satisfy you all the days of your life. That's probably a little sick anyway; that kind of devotion to career seems outsized.

Your place in the community will shift over time. Your place is not only your paid work, but defined by all the relationships you have. When you go out into the world, who are you in relationship to others? As you note this, remember that work doesn't need to be paid to be real. It's the interactions with other people that bring our half-formed dreams into reality. Be a part of the community.

Not So Organized Chaos

Having sort of a crazy feeling morning....Chris needs his flu shot and was looking everywhere for his insurance card. Couldn't find it, wound up taking mine and putting in a request to Cigna for another card. I realized that I'd left two dozen eggs out overnight. Facepalm. Eggs in trash. However, I have like 8 dozen eggs in the fridge right now. I guess my rate of omelet making has gone down drastically! Time to bake some eggs for dinner. And lunch.

Picture me writing the check to the town for the car excise tax while Ladybug pours her water into her cereal. We'd already pulled apart my wallet looking for the insurance card, so that was all over the table too. I took the opportunity to clean out the extra cards I don't need to have in there. They'd have gone in the trash, but I gave them to Bug to play with. So I'll probably be cleaning those up repeatedly before I get sick of it and toss them.

One week to Thanksgiving and my house is almost total chaos. I kept hugging my husband and going, "I don't know why I'm so stressed this morning..." And he's like, "Um, cause it's kinda a zoo in here right now?" Speaking of zoo, I haven't fed the cat yet....But I did apologize to him for being low on the priority list. Not kidding, I patted his head and said, "Sorry Skimble, you're at the bottom of the list right now!"

I did remember to pull the stroller out of the car so that Chris wouldn't take it to work with him and leave us stranded.

While all this is going down Chris and I discussed which of three major purchases should be next: toy closet, chest freezer, or microwave cart. We decided quickly that microwave cart can wait as long as we get the pot rack up soon. Toy closet involves buying me a dresser so my clothes come out of the spare bedroom. Then we buy some shelving so all the toys can live in spare bedroom closet. This is important because Ladybug plays better (happily, independently) if her toys are organized and rotated regularly. As opposed to in a crazy mixed up pile of parts that get coated in that mixture of peanut butter, spit, and oatmeal that is Toddler Goo. Happy toddler = vying for very high priority.

Then there's the chest freezer. The fridge is bursting at the seams. Adding to my stress right now is that it needs to be cleaned out and is currently the source of mysterious ucky smell whenever I go in the kitchen. So gross! I'm not the best housekeeper (by any stretch), but my fridge is not usually full of random gross. I keep opening the freezer and noting that I have next to no extra space. How am I supposed to cook ahead for Thanksgiving, or anything else, if I can't store it properly....Chris says, and I agree, that the chest freezer is the next purchase. Then we launch into the discussion of where in the basement it will live, each mentally sliding furniture around and making our case for best location. Ladybug is gleefully pulling out brooms and mops and strewing them about in positions most likely to lead to tripping. She's doing this because I mentioned that we're going to clean today.

When Chris finally did walk out the door for work, I felt that "I'm here alone in the chaos with no other adults" feeling. I don't remember even feeling that way when he went back to work after our daughter was born! But today, yep.

One week till Thanksgiving. ; )

Two Good Reads for Preschool Halloween

It's almost Halloween again, so our usual favorite Halloween books are out. Ladybug's favorite is still Ghosts in the House! This adorable story involves a witch who takes care of her ghost problem by washing the ghosts in the machine and turning them into useful household linens like curtains and blankets. As a family we've developed a game where Ladybug tosses a blanket over a parent's head, shouting, "Haunted!" Then she yanks the blanket off. Ticklefest follows. I say the game was developed as a family because each parent claims to have invented it. I think Ladybug gets the credit.

The new favorite is Run Home, Little Mouse, which isn't marketed as a Halloween book, so it might be easy to miss. But it's a late fall, spooky nighttime book, making it a great Halloween read. As Little Mouse runs along in the night, he comes across glowing eyes in the darkness, visible through cutout holes in the pages. Turning the page reveals the animals who are peering out at him: fox, owl, weasel, crow, cat, bats, and eventually his own mouse family. This one was an instant hit with Ladybug, who read it repeatedly, recounted the plot to us, and requested it again this morning.

Bonus: we've started the "Spatial Relationships" chapter in math, talking about how things are positioned relative to one another. Bug's favorite is to run up the stairs or the playground ladder and shout, "I'm up above Mama! Mama is down peblow!" While reading Ghosts and Little Mouse, she pointed out the various positions of the ghosts all over the house and talked about how Mouse had to run past all the animals. I love quality book tie-ins that happen spontaneously.

Different Definitions

Parenting is exhausting, but sometimes it's the other grownups making it hard work. Today I went to the town square with Ladybug, who was well behaved and cooperative. On our walk home I began to reflect on my level of emotional exhaustion. I noticed that most of my interactions had been stressful because of assumptions others were making about us.

First we went to the dentist's office to pay a bill. There was a nice elderly gentleman in the waiting room who wanted to interact with Ladybug. He addressed me in Spanish, because my daughter and I have olive skin and dark eyes, so he was hoping there was a cultural connection there. Unfortunately I had to disappoint him (this happens to me a lot). I could have said my husband speaks Spanish, but that's beside the point since Chris is black and didn't learn Spanish because of any family heritage. He also knows some Japanese, Arabic, Latin, and Italian, 'cause he's a language junkie. Not what the elderly man was looking for. Again he asked me (in English) if we were from South America, and I just shook my head and muttered about how we're from here.  I thought briefly about showing the man a picture of our family, which would help him understand why Ladybug is the color that she is, but what is the point? I can't be who he expected me to be. I have no simple way to explain that we're descended from slaves, slave-owners, poor European immigrants, and Native Americans, but (to the best of my knowledge), no one who spoke Spanish. This interaction is one so tired and familiar to me that I shrug it off.

Then the gentleman kindly shakes Ladybug's hand (with my permission) and feels that she's cold. He tells me she's cold, and exclaims that she has no coat. She's actually wearing a sweater and a coat, both with hoods up around her ears. It's 50 degrees outside, and we've just come from the playground. I am not concerned. I try to placate and say we're going in to the library where it will be warm. "She's cold," he says again. I just nod.

In the library, I am reminded that libraries can be more about rules than reading. In the children's room the librarian hears Ladybug's footsteps and without looking up, calls out, "Walk please. No running." Okay, she's not even three. The fact that she isn't eating books and climbing the shelves is a major accomplishment. Her gross motor skills are only just past "toddle." To keep a pace with me she has to move her little legs quickly, but she isn't running wildly through the library. This librarian, as nice as she means to be, is clearly clueless about young children if she thinks barking instructions from behind the desk is any way to achieve results. But just to make sure I'm not one of "those parents" who won't discipline their kids, I kneel down and pull Ladybug close. I explain that the library is a quiet place. It's not a place to run fast like the Ornithomimus. Can we think of a dinosaur that moves slowly instead? She does, but she also doesn't want to go pick books now. She wants to go to the cafe. Score one for reading, Ms. Librarian.

We get to the cafe, and by now I'm tired. So, when asked about Ladybug's age and preschool status, I don't have the heart to tell the nice lady working at the cafe that we are homeschoolers. To delicately explain that I've made a different choice, based on my family's deeply held values, than the one she has made. That I don't judge her for sending her daughter to public school, because she loves her daughter dearly and it isn't my job to parent that girl. But my daughter, my girl, I saw perfectionism in her at only four months old, while she pushed herself to reach milestones her friends (three months older) had attained. Apparently perfectionism is genetic. I wanted to cry for her, watching it. Don't be so hard on yourself, baby. Goodness knows I've put myself through the ringer, and I know it does no good. Go gently. At almost three, she continues to be hard on herself, internalizing everything she can't yet do as if it's a failure. So no, I'm not sending that child to schools where your worth is based on a letter grade and a standardized test score that will be held up against other districts, even other nations.

It's an understatement to say that our family values learning. My husband and I hold it so dearly, that spark of inquiry, the delight in puzzling and discovering. It's as precious to us as any deeply held religious belief. So no, I'm not sending my child to school, which will violate our family's values. I don't want her deciding at age five that she's smart or dumb based on whether the teacher or the curriculum are testing her particular strengths. Frankly, I don't want her worrying about being smart or dumb at all, because those kinds of nonsense ideas are not what learning is about.

I'm tired, and there's no good or short way to say any of that while I'm adding cream to my coffee. So I just say she's not in preschool. The nice lady presses on, about how she's young and maybe next year. I mention how we do play groups, and it's like she didn't hear me. She continues on about preschool, "so that she can be around other children." Never mind the fact that we were at play group yesterday. That another kid snatched the tool Bug was using, and without complaint, without direction from me, Bug found another tool (sitting unused), waited patiently for a younger child to move out of the way, grabbed it, and went back to work. No, my kid clearly won't learn to navigate social situations unless I pay for preschool.

The nice lady means well, and I don't feel like offending her with all my radical thoughts about education. So I lie by omission and nod and smile as she explains that the local elementary school is "good." Whatever that means. Everyone you meet has a different definition.

Everyone you meet has a different definition of a good school. Of running inside. Of what language you ought to be speaking. We ended our outing on the playground, with no other children or adults around. What a relief to simply play with my young child, both of us at home with ourselves and free from concern about these definitions.

Two Favorite Fall Books

Ladybug has been obsessed with Play-Doh for over a week now. It came in handy while her father and I were fighting off a bad cold this weekend. Other than occasionally demanding that a parent roll a dough ball for her, she has stayed occupied for long stretches of time with rolling, cutting, poking, and blending Play-Doh. She had air dry clay too, until we realized that she insists on eating it. She doesn't eat the Play-Doh though, so it's all good.

Did you know that when mixed, hot pink and black Play-Doh make a lovely eggplant purple color? Good times.

As usual, I have a ton of books in the house selected for the season and the concepts I'm focused on. Right now that's fall and describing words. I wanted to mention the two autumn books that Ladybug has really latched on to.

The Little Yellow Leaf is a sweet story about a leaf that isn't quite ready to fall from the tree. Not yet, not yet he keeps repeating. He hangs on even after the first snowfall. But after he makes friends with the scarlet leaf also hanging on tight, they both feel ready to let go and fly off together. It's such a gentle story for a child who is reluctant, slow to transition, and prefers to watch a little before jumping into something new. Or just to validate that it's okay to be where you are and feel how you feel. The book's theme was definitely not lost on my child. Each time she asked for the story, or even saw the cover, she repeated fervently, "He wasn't ready. Not yet." 

The other surprise favorite is Autumn Leaves, which Bug requests by name even if the book is out of sight. It's time for me to stop being surprised by my kid's preference for non-fiction science books. I married a scientist, after all. Autumn Leaves is a book of detailed close-up photographs of the leaves of thirteen different kinds of trees, along with surprisingly nuanced discussions of their variations. It talks about veins, symmetry, shine, shape, and more. Did you know that the compound leaf of the hickory tree is actually made up of five leaflets? My preschooler does, thanks to this book! As Bug would say, "Yeah, dat's right Mom!"

The Educational is Political

I talk with so many people about education, and so often I feel like I haven't managed to communicate why I would want to homeschool. Its hard to do without a three hour conversation. But I want to improve. How about this:

I want for my family far more freedom and self-direction than the system is willing to accommodate.

The educational is so political. Study political science, and you will likely begin with Socrates, whose crime was corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens. What and how we teach our young people is a powerful force to wield.

I recently told a politician I would vote for him because I valued what he had to say about improving public education. I couldn't miss the crestfallen (and maybe confused) look on his face when I said my family would probably homeschool. I'm all contradictions. What I mean is this:  Yes, please improve the public system. Families deserve a quality public option. I want something more radical, but I know most don't.

I know teachers against this awful "ed reform" movement who must think I have drunk the Kool-Aid about how America's public schools are failing. Well, politics makes strange bedfellows. It's finally okay to criticize school. School, which is traditionally associated with apples, kids trotting off with their cute backpacks, young minds growing enlightened as autumnal sunlight beams in their classroom windows.  I had a few days like that in school. But mostly I received damaging messages like: perfection is the goal, the reason to learn is to make money, make sure not to question authority too much, girls usually struggle with math, and my "favorite:" when you are excited about learning you are a nuisance to your teacher and classmates.

For this reason I stand with those who say we don't need ed reform. We need an education revolution. No test, no curriculum adjustment, will solve the problems that are inherent in our current system.

I feel stuck. Do I fight against standardized testing while operating in a system that needs to be fundamentally restructured? Would it be immoral to want free, self-directed education for my child while fighting for something different for other children? Even if it's what they and their families want? I fear the answer is yes, which is why I care so deeply about education yet want nothing to do with a career in schooling.

Critics of some proposed reforms, like vouchers, say that these changes will gut our public schools. Silently, knowing I need a three hour conversation to explain myself, I think: good. We need something new, and there's usually a pile of ashes before a phoenix can rise.

Math: Naming How the World Feels

We've been doing the first chapter in Count on Math, which is about attributes of materials. That's curriculum-speak for adjectives. We went to the beach and felt hot sand and cool, rumbling waves. Before the weather got cool, I set up outside water play with toys for pouring, sinking and floating. I listen as Ladybug observes that the sack of potatoes is very heavy, the food is very hot, water is very wet, and oatmeal is very sticky.

The opportunities for discussion are so numerous that I lose track. I have approached this unit with several books, a few planned activities, and a lot of listening. Bug was already excited to talk about her world, so this gave her another way to do it. She has enjoyed Spiky, Slimy, Smooth: What is Texture? and Wet Dog! We also checked out Dry or Wet by Bruce McMillan.

We've done some cooking together, usually where Bug helps me dump and mix muffin ingredients. We also took a walk and collected leaves, which went along with art (and obviously science). The leaves were brought inside and we fingerpainted them. Today we took about five minutes and played with one "hot" coin and one cold coin.

In between it all we've been seeing friends and getting out in the community. Church School began again, as well as Joyful Noise, our music class. Ladybug was overflowing with happy energy during the first music class. I'm reflecting that, much like her father, for this child music is a necessity that satisfies a very deep need.

When I mentioned to my mom that Ladybug likes poems, mom reflected that poems give words to a feeling or experience, often one that we didn't have a way to talk about before the poem. It seems that the life of a small child is all about these types of intense experiences without words. Parents of toddlers eventually figure out that naming the child's feelings can help with temper tantrums and other outbursts. It's so validating. Mom's idea was that poems are a similar kind of validation. For us, this math chapter has been in the same vein: empower the child to express how her world feels, looks, sounds, and smells.

Packing Up Summer, Easing into Fall

Most of the books I ordered for fall have arrived. There was only one I was really disappointed with (Sounds the Letters Make), but I'm glad to have the rest around. As all this curriculum was delivered to our house, I pondered how I can place such a high value on child-led learning and still crave curriculum. The answer seems to be that the books are mostly for me. I like to read through them and cull ideas, which are then filed away and help to inform my observations of what Ladybug wants to do.

Of the books I ordered, one of my favorites is Count on Math. The first couple of chapters are full of sensory-play ideas--actually appropriate for a very young child. This book is perfect for me. The planning side of me is satisfied with having a mathy book with lesson ideas laid out in a row. And the side of me that's concerned with free play is thrilled that the activities are just that: set up an environment for the child to explore as she will. It reaffirms for me that when we are playing at the beach, stacking toys, or digging in the dirt, that Ladybug is doing and learning exactly what she needs to.

Homeschoolers really enjoy the freedom to create their own family schedules rather than follow the ones required by school. I'm starting to feel that freedom this year. As the days get a little cooler, I think to myself, "Is this it? Are we starting? Should I 'ramp up' or do anything 'official' now?" And I answer myself no, just relax. Keep doing what you're doing and ease into it. Last week we spent a lot of time out of the house, so this week we're doing a lot more just hanging out. Going at a comfy pace.

Most of the "school" books are set aside in the basement for me to check out in the evenings. Ladybug did ask me to read "Math Play," so I read the first activity to her and we wound up singing and clapping and stomping "1 2 3!"  Our current Winnie-the-Pooh is Eeyore Has a Birthday, because several friends have birthdays around now. That fits in nicely. And we've continued reading our poems for each month in Treasury for All Seasons. With my reluctance to let go of summer, I was a particular fan of the final poem for August, "What Shall I Pack in the Box Marked 'Summer'?" The image of carefully storing the fun summer memories is a sweet transition to the new season.

Okay, Some Fall Planning

Just days after writing my post, "August," about how I'm not going to think about Fall yet, I have placed a large order of books in anticipation of this homeschool year. I'm thinking of it as our first year of preschool. I just love learning things! The other homeschool moms got me all excited posting their curricula, lol.

So here's what I'm thinking. Unit studies based on children's literature. Books selected based on seasonal appropriateness and from lists of recommended books.  Move forward with pre-reading at a very gentle pace -- whatever works for her. I'll try to borrow most picture books from the library, but I did purchase a lot of curricula today.

Math
Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds

Math Play! (Williamson Little Hands Series)

Twelve Hats for Lena : A Book of Months

Pre-reading - I went a little nuts here. I have no intention of sitting Ladybug down in front of the "Learn to Read" curriculum and doing a phonics force-march. Many of these are for me to read so the ideas are in my brain to be adapted when the moment is right.

Letter Sounds (Rock 'n Learn)

Hape Happy Puzzle Alphabet Puzzle Wood Toy (and the lowercase one too)

Sounds the Letters Make or A Phonic Alphabet

The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons

The Monster Book of ABC Sounds (Picture Puffins)

Teach a Child to Read With Children's Books: Combining Story Reading, Phonics, and Writing to Promote Reading Success

Art - I loved First Art for Toddlers and Twos, so I bought the author's preschool program (ages 3-6).
Preschool Art: It's the Process, Not the Product!

Science
Project Garden: A Month-by-Month Guide to Planting, Growing, and Enjoying ALL Your Backyard Has to Offer

Autumn Board Book

Poetry
Julie Andrews' Treasury for All Seasons: Poems and Songs to Celebrate the Year   

Literature - I'm focusing on Winnie-the-Pooh in Easy Reader format. I blogged about this here. I ordered four more Pooh readers today. Maybe early next year we'll do read-alouds from unabridged Pooh.

Pooh Invents a New Game: (Dutton Easy Reader)

Eeyore Has a Birthday (Easy-to-Read, Puffin)

Christopher Robin Leads an Expedition (Dutton Easy Reader)

Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees (Dutton Easy Reader)

...And because I'm a sucker for anything matched up to seasons: Five in a Row Holiday : Through the Seasons. I might put the word out on the homeschool lists that I'm looking for the rest of the Five in a Row books as well. 

The one thing missing from this order is a bookshelf! There's no way I'm springing all these books at once. Some will need to be stored for later. That shelf will also give me a good place to put all the out of season holiday books. I will have to carve out another corner of basement for this!

Blueberry Unit Study

So it turns out that if you borrow every book you can with the word "blueberry" in the title, you wind up with a pretty well-rounded blueberry unit study. This is what we've been doing for the past few weeks. Blueberries are in season, and we planned a trip with friends to go blueberry picking. So I hit the library. There were several books that weren't favorites for one reason or another. Here are the ones that stuck:

Blueberries for Sal. A classic. But I guess I either didn't read this one as a kid, or I have a short memory, because I hadn't realized that Sal is a little girl, not a boy! Excellent, since I have a girl. Sal tromps around blueberry picking in overalls, with no girly pretensions like hair bows. In terms of fitting into the unit, this book is literature, with opportunity to discuss science (how people and animals save food/fat for the winter). There's also material there for social studies (family relationships) and art. I know Blueberries for Sal is a Before Five in a Row book. My copy of BFIAR is still packed away in a box somewhere though. (Um, yeah it was over a year ago that we moved). Anyway, you can't "do blueberries" without this book.

Peter in Blueberry Land is your Scandinavian, Waldorf-y fairy tale, and it's delightful. There is so much to talk about on each page. We enjoyed this book purely for the literature, but you could launch into math discussions about relative size, as protagonist Peter is shrunk down to the size of the fairies in the story and sees nature from that perspective. There are also obvious science tie-ins. I didn't go there this time, since I'm doing this unit with a very young child who is not yet 3.

Blueberries Grow on a Bush by Mari Schuh. Ladybug has surprised me before by enjoying nonfiction, and this one was no exception. It's straight science, the life cycle of the blueberry bush, including pollination and winter dormancy. The photographs are simple and beautiful. There's very little text on each page, making this great for a toddler. Bug chose to read it several times. 
 
One Little Blueberry is a simple counting book. I almost disregarded it when I saw what it was, but I'm glad I didn't because my daughter loves it. I am less than charmed by one blueberry, two red ants, three ladybugs, etc...But that doesn't mean Ladybug won't enjoy it. What saves this book from being an ordinary counting book is the little plot: the one blueberry stays in the story for the whole book, as the increasing insects chase it, all hoping to get a snack. Insects are a nice tie-in for this unit, and my Ladybug (led by her Daddy) wound up observing a wide variety of insects on our actual blueberry picking trip, including a very cool blue dragonfly. For unit purposes, check off math. We counted bugs, and Ladybug read me the numbers on each page. 

Blueberry Mouse is just plain cute. It's a rhyming story of a mouse who lives in a blueberry pie, and tells how she eats up her delicious house. For our purposes, I'm counting it as language/poetry because of the rhyming. You could take a social studies angle that talks about the houses we live in, friends, and neighborhoods. I didn't feel compelled to analyze this book, so we just enjoyed reading it. 

To me, something just as important as the unit is how it came about. My daughter is young, and I'm still feeling out our homeschooling style. Yes, I borrowed all the books and decided we could have fun learning about blueberries in a way that enriched our blueberry picking day trip. That's me planning and directing. But I borrowed a ton more books than we actually read, and I took her lead on what to really focus on. One Little Blueberry is a good example: I almost left it at the library, but I saw how Ladybug liked it, so I brought it home. And it really filled out the math part of the unit. The unit was gentle, always fun and always following Ladybug's interests. And that's the child-led part of joyful learning that is so important to me. 

Blueberry picking is my new favorite summer tradition. There are no thorns (raspberries) and no stooping over (strawberries). I highly recommend it!

August

This morning around 7:00am I opened our back door and it was quite cool outside. Not "Not-yet-hot" with humidity that promises a scorching day as soon as the sun gets a little higher. No, crisp and cool. 59 degrees, according to Google. It feels beautiful, and I left the kitchen door open to enjoy it. But I'm not sure I like it. August. Since when does August mean cooler mornings? Since you moved to New England, silly. I grew up in the Midwest, with Augusts so hot you could fry that cliche egg on the sidewalk. Opening the back door could often be mistaken for opening the oven door.

Summer here is so short and precious. It will give way to fall, and New England fall is the most glorious and spectacular experience. But I'm not ready yet. The back to school commercials are running on the radio. Another homeschool blogger I read is writing about Fall planning (rightfully so). I just can't do it. Ladybug's playmate turns 3 this month, followed by this cascade of autumn celebrations instantly followed by Ladybug being 3 and then winter celebrations. Then before we know it 2013 is over! Did I mention I just can't do it yet? Last year I wrote "It's Still Summer," so I guess this is a thing for me around this time of year, hanging on to the last bits of heat in an otherwise chilly climate.

I'm not ready to entertain fall, but I will acknowledge late summer. The sunflower seeds we planted in spring have formed fat buds, and one is showing off tiny yellow petals. Instead of getting ahead of myself like I usually want to do, I'm reflecting on late summer as a time to savor. This heat and those flowers were so dearly anticipated back in the winter, when we were buried under 3 feet of snow in our March blizzard. This month, now, is the one we've been waiting all year for. I believe I will play in the hose and walk to the park.

Sunflowers for Summer

Last month we planted a pot of sunflower seeds, and they have since sprouted into seedlings. Ladybug has her own watering can, and we head out frequently to water them, which she refers to as flowers eating water. From the day I bought the flower seeds, I have been super excited about this project. So I'm relieved that Bug is having fun with it too.

Of course, we've been reading books about sunflowers too. Life As a Sunflower was a big hit last month. Nice photography and simple text, so that it's engaging even though it's nonfiction. Then this weekend I bought To Be Like the Sun, and I'm just in love with it. Ladybug likes it too and requested three consecutive readings today. It seems to be art meets poetry meets science meets spirituality. The text is written as a little girl addressing the sunflower seed that she is planting. She notes the white stripes on the gray seed, then tells the sunflower that although she digs the hole, the seed does the real work, sunflower work, following instructions written on its heart. Lovely.

The story takes us through the seasons, and though the words are few, each page is so rich. The girl-narrator observes that the flower bud is like hands clasped around a treasure. Ladybug and I play a hand game, making tight fists like flower buds that we open up like a blooming flower. As the flower grows, the text names the parts of the plant in a simple poetic rhythm. It encourages artistic and scientific appreciation without being didactic. Ladybug has zeroed in on the word stem when we read this page. When fall comes, leaves swirl and cardinals flock to the bird feeder stocked with sunflower seeds. So Bug talks about how cardinals love to eat sunflower seeds, and she can eat sunflower seeds too. The story ends in winter, with the little girl reflecting on the tiny seed, and how hard it worked to be like the sun. Even the end pages are fun, covered in a design of scattered sunflower seeds. Bug chose to count these, so now we've integrated math into our delightful book. I guess it has everything!

Real Counting and Potato Chip Subtraction

Miss Bug has been counting (roughly to 11) for a while now, in that memorized way that children do, without reference to what the numbers mean. More recently, I saw her move to the stage where she properly identified two things. She will carefully arrange her fingers so she's holding up two on each hand, which most adults read as four, but she has her own math language right now. Then, she carefully points to the pair of objects and declares, "Two things! It is two." There was one, two, and many.

Then last week she got to three. She carefully points to each of the three buttons on my shirt, properly counting them and declaring the sum of three. I believe experts say she doesn't fully understand the abstract concept of counting, and believes that each object is being named one, two or three. Whatever is going on, it's a developmental change from her previous stage. Yesterday she counted a row of 7 dots, and though she counted "wrong" because she missed some and concluded that the total was 5, it sure looked like like she understood the task she was trying to tackle. This is all very interesting to observe, and fun to see how it happens without concerted instruction. (However, there's tons of PBS and counting books in our home, plus some nuclear physics for good measure.)

Here's another "how it happened" story. Subtraction: 
We ordered Panera for dinner, which comes with a yummy bag of bad-for-you potato chips as a side. Ladybug saw Daddy's bag of chips and wanted to dig in. Wanting to be fair, yet teach moderation, I said, "How about three chips? You can have three." And I counted them out for her very dramatically. She was appeased (thank god, cause tantrums suck). And she really relished those chips, and talked about how there were three of them. Then, about ten minutes later, she surprised me by announcing, "Now Lady has two chips!" And it was so. Three chips, toddler eats one, equals two chips. So I parroted this back to her, validating her claim. Later, this continued with, "Now Lady has one chip. She does have one chip." 

Although she wasn't watching this video  the day of the potato chip subtraction, I suspect she took her cue from this song, "Elmo's Ducks" where Elmo counts down from four ducks to none. I totally let her watch YouTube videos as a guilty pleasure in the late afternoons, or when I'm trying to have a conversation that isn't interrupted by me being climbed on. So here we are, that's the story of how Ladybug started to subtract.

How Much Freedom? (The roles of the parent and the school)

For most of my life, I've felt protective of the right of the parent to determine a child's education. I think this protectiveness comes from the fact that in U.S. law, the right to homeschool flows from the government's acknowledgement of that right of the parent. The state has an interest in seeing that children are educated, but that interest does not overshadow the fundamental right of the parent to educate their child as they see fit. This is why homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, though regulated to different degrees in different states.

For me, homeschooling meant freedom. I asked my parents' permission to homeschool. My parents told the state that my education was going in a different direction from the government-designed program. Then my parents let me design my own program. As an adult, I realize that many critics of homeschooling are concerned about the amount of time they imagine a homeschooled student spends with their parent. Where's the room for separation? In my case, neither parent quit their job for me to homeschool, so plenty of space remained between my parents and me. Though I definitely communicated with them about what I studied, I was truly self-directed.

So I've felt strongly about the rights of the parent, but also about the value of letting the student be as self-directed as possible. Now that I'm starting an alternative school, I'm meeting all sorts of people who feel the parent should not be responsible for the child's education, because children need a place to go without their parents. I think this idea is using a different definition of "responsible for" than the one I do. In my mind, here's the model: An individual parent has the right and the responsibility to educate their child. They execute that right in a variety of ways, perhaps by sending their child to public school, selecting a private school, or developing a homeschool. In each of these models (to greater and lesser degrees), the parent delegates some of the job to someone else. But they retain their rights, and if school is going poorly for their child, they can choose a different option (ideally, anyway). So a parent choosing a democratic free school isn't saying, "I'm not responsible for my child's education." They're saying that as the steward of their child, this is the education they have chosen for that child.

That's the model (and I suspect I subconsciously adopted it because it's the legal model in the U.S.), but what I really believe is more nuanced. I believe that the role of the parent is one of ever-decreasing responsibility. A child is born and we do everything for them. For Ladybug, I held her while she slept because she couldn't even do that without me. Before she was born, I breathed for her, for goodness sake. Little by little, over the course of a couple decades, a parent hands over the reigns. The freedoms and responsibilities are transferred to the child. I imagine a spectrum that, taken as a whole, represents full-fledged adult responsibility and freedom. The parent begins by being responsible for most of this spectrum, and the child's portion of it grows over time. But, like I concluded in this post, the process is messy and nonlinear, more nonlinear than the spectrum example really depicts.

What does this mean for education? That in each parent-child relationship, you have an intricate and individualized division of labor. Together, depending on how much of the spectrum the child is overseeing, the parent and child select an education for that child. They may pick over and over again, rejecting what doesn't work, honing what does. I know from forums that homeschooling parents are constantly in that honing process, throwing out the curricula their child rejected and looking for something better.

How much of the spectrum a child "should be" responsible for, and at what age, could be the defining factor in different educational philosophies. A traditional public school grants almost no autonomy, such that the idea of choosing what you study, if it occurs at all, is a novelty on a special occasion day. Radical unschoolers and proponents of free schools are going to grant the child responsibility for the whole spectrum of activities surrounding their education. This method, while terrifying to those only familiar with the traditional model, has been an effective education for many students.

I am helping to establish a free school because I believe in the power of educational options, and that many students flourish within the free school model. But I am captivated by the notion of a school that manages to exist somewhere in the middle, ceding autonomy to students as they grow into it, on an individual basis and with respect for the role of the parent in that process.

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Edit: A note to the grammar nazis out there, including beloved English profs. I am a huge fan of the "improper" use of the pronoun "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. So is everyone who speaks our evolving English language. Particularly since this is a blog written in an informal tone, I will continue to make liberal use of this form/device/error. Thanks ;)

Summer Begins

This is one of my favorite pictures from this week. The weather got hot just in time for the beginning of June, and we played at the sprinkler in one of the local parks.

In The Messy Space

My free time has been filled with reading books about Sudbury Valley School, which is one of many democratic schools like the one I'm working to start. More personally, I've been faced with the challenges of a  2 1/2 year old who whines and cries for me if anyone else so much as looks at her. Ladybug is sensitive, but this has been a new level of needy, and it's been going on for about two months now. My strategy of leaving the house in the mornings for outings and play dates has been shot to hell, because Ladybug screams when she sees other children. I know it's a phase. This week, I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel as her behavior mellowed.

I mention my struggles with Bug's behavior because it's nearly impossible to study an educational philosophy that espouses hands off, child-led learning and not wonder if you're being overly-directive as a parent. Is that why she's so upset lately? I've been pushing her? (Nope. It's just a phase.) I try so hard to be relaxed with her. As my blog description attests, I really believe that it's best to follow her lead.

Planning a radical free school while struggling to teach your toddler to control herself is a recipe for self-doubt. I guess parenting is a recipe for self-doubt, if I'm honest. And that's just the point, isn't it. Parenting isn't the same as running a school. There's some overlap in skills, undoubtedly. Legally speaking, schools act in loco parentis, "in place of the parent." All schools have to consider the role of the parents, and the best ones find a good way to keep the parents involved.

Schools must find the right balance of parental involvement, just like parents are constantly walking the line between enforcing rules and letting children grow more independent. It's not a smooth process. Before you have kids, you might decide that you will let your children do things for themselves, even though it will take longer, so that they can learn. Great! Simple, right? Well, what about the things they want to do but physically cannot? And they insist, and you let them, so they struggle and get all mad as they fail. And this process is healthy and good, but your blood pressure is rising because your kid is melting down and screaming her scream that has specially evolved to make you lose it, and you're already late for wherever you're going. Then you wonder if you wouldn't have done better to skip the struggle this time.

As I reread this meandering post, the themes I see are doing your best while feeling uncertain, learning by making mistakes, and struggling with the simplicity of principles versus the mess that is reality. Learning isn't a linear process that can be cleanly plotted out by a textbook publisher or parenting manual. Instead, in a democratic free school or a toddler homeschool, there will be a messy struggle to grow. It's the space for struggle, the time to run behind schedule, that leads to authentic growth. In the messy space, we and our children find ourselves.

Starting a School

I have been pretty quiet on this blog for a while, ever since I wrote one post about the conference I attended at the end of April. Well, here's what's going on. I'm starting a school! I can hardly believe it, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a pie in the sky thing, but it does seem to be real and not just a happy dream I've stumbled into.

At the conference I met and had lunch with several other youngish people, all interested in transforming education. One of them, a woman named Brooke, is in the early stages of starting a democratic school for self-directed learning. And she needs help. Since I've been fretting about, raging against, and generally questioning public education since I was 15, working on this project really is my dream job. In my life before I had a daughter, I was never satisfied with my career. I knew I wanted to be doing something related to education and that I had some pretty radical ideas about what was wrong with the system. My day jobs were always unrelated to my passion for education, and I ultimately decided to have children earlier in my timeline, and return to the education career later. I think I'm returning. As startling as it is, later seems to have arrived.

The school we're starting is very liberal. It will be a place where students don't have to do anything they don't want to do, which looks to many adults like a lot of wasted time. There's a method to the madness, however. When people are actually free to confront their own boredom, they have the space to learn who they are. When you are fully responsible for your own choices, you are able to learn from your mistakes without blaming another person for them.

If you're reading this and you're interested in helping with the school, please let me know. We're in the very early stages and actively looking for people who are interested in joining the team. 

Alternatives to Compulsory Education - My Radical Roots

This weekend I attended the Alternatives to Compulsory Education conference, presented by four speakers who wanted to begin a dialog about the need for alternatives and what they might look like. I am full of ideas and have decided that the best way to organize my response is to tackle each talk individually. I am hoping to be able to update this post with links to the video recordings of the talks.

The first presentation was by Cevin Soling, director of the documentary The War on Kids (available streaming on Netflix). Cevin's talk was darkly funny, deliberately provocative and radical. It really reminded me how I felt about school when I was fifteen. That's not an insult; I'm not saying his talk was like the shallow ranting of a naive teen. He validates the misery and suffering that many--most-- students feel when trapped in school. Here are some of my favorite points from the presentation, and the thoughts it prompted for me.

There is a nostalgia surrounding school, and many adults have a selective memory about their experience. There's a difference between liking school and remembering you liked it. Further, just because some people like a thing doesn't make it good. Did you like school? How did you feel about your teachers? What you were learning?

Failure is endemic to the system. Even if we created an ideal school with experienced teachers, low student:teacher ratios, and students with perfect home lives, 20-30% of students would be labeled failures. The system is set up so that there must be winners and losers, and someone has to score the worst on those standardized tests.

That point reminds me of the summer my husband taught a college physics class. This was during his grad school career. Chris is an effective teacher who worked hard to help his students understand the subject. He was given the "Distinguished Teaching Assistant" award for his dedication to his students. But because "too many of them" did so well in the class, the university re-normalized their grades to reflect an "ideal" bell curve. This curve did not reflect the rubric presented in the class syllabus. Chris and the students fought the changes, but the lowered scores remained, and Chris swore off a career as an instructor. What's the point of doing good teaching if the institution punishes your and your students' success?

Bullying is endemic to the autocratic structure of schools. We won't be rid of bullying as long as young people are legally required to attend institutions where their rights are violated and they have no power. Teachers bully students. In an environment like that, some kids will cruelly take out their aggression on other kids.

Compulsory schooling creates a monopoly on community. This is what people are really talking about when they ask homeschoolers, "What about socialization?" They don't mean that cliques and bullying are healthy ways to socialize children. They want to know how that child will experience community when all the other children are in school. The good news is that not all the children are in school, because many parents are choosing different options, then actively seeking out and creating communities.

We defang our arguments when we criticize school. Cevin criticized the TED Talk Do Schools Kill Creativity? for its polite descriptions of school's shortcomings. I know I have been guilty of this, diplomatic to a fault. Most teachers and administrators are very good, well-intentioned people. We all know what the road to Hell is paved with. But we're reluctant to offend anyone, because our relatives are teachers and all our friends send their children to school. We don't want to raise hackles lest people quit listening to us at all. I really struggle with this one.

"But Not in My School." A few teachers and administrators will admit that some schools are troubled, but assert that their school is a very nice place where students are respected. They will make these assertions even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. The point here is that criticisms of compulsory school are not isolated examples that have been exaggerated. The problems are widespread: students are being abused, minor misbehavior is dealt with as criminal offense, rates of childhood mental illness are rising, and human beings cannot learn in these types of dysfunctional environments.

My First Homeschool Planner

Yesterday I had a great day for homeschool planning. I visited the local garden center and came home with a large planter and a packet of sunflower seeds. I just need to buy enough potting soil, and we'll be able to plant flowers together. I am very excited about this project!

After the garden center, I made a quick stop at Target and bought my very first homeschool planner. It's a typical student planner with monthly and weekly layout pages. It's pretty too, with a trendy blue and green chrysanthemum pattern on the cover. Lately I've had too many ideas for just the sticky note program on my smartphone. And given the way that our homeschool revolves around the seasons, I like being able to plan with a calendar in front of me.

I mostly want to use my "planner" as a record book, to write down after the fact what we did on a given day. It gives me another way to reflect, come up with more ideas, and correct imbalances. I can see, for example, if it's been way too long since we got to the playground. Although I have gotten plenty of things for Ladybug's education lately (like sunflower seeds), I kept coming back to the idea of a set of matching cards/tiles to play memory. I couldn't figure out why my brain refused to let go of this idea, or leave it for another time. Then, after jotting notes in the planner, I realized that the memory game is the next math activity, and there hasn't been much new in that subject lately. So I quit fussing over it and just bought the game. The planner helps me make decisions and clarify my thinking.

Something about having this first planning book, which begins its dated pages July 2013, makes me feel like I just officially signed up to homeschool preschool. 2.9 - 3 seems to be a magic age for preschool entry, as well as readiness for so many fun activities it's overwhelming. I think that's why I intuitively reached for my planning book around now. There's so much to choose from, yet some days are filled with illness, bad weather, and tons of TV. When I get down about these times, it really helps my mood to have a record of the big picture, in brief notes about how we spent our time.

The cover of the planner reads "2013 // 2014," and with those tiny dates it creates a school year. A host of holidays, Ladybug's 3rd birthday, rotating seasons that will wind up somewhere in summer 2014. However we fill the time, it will be her first year of preschool, and -- it's official -- we're doing it together at home.

Loose Tooth T

I read a great blog post today about the growing movement of people who are homeschooling their preschoolers. The emphasis of the post is that young children learn best through play, and we adults would do well to let them do it. No need for flashcards, scripted lesson plans, or worksheets. There can be a lot of pressure to do early academics, and it can be hard for geeky parents like me to resist it. So I welcome any reminder that play, and usually free play, is the best way for young children to learn about their world.

I focus on setting up our home so that it is a rich environment (like having a special art corner). We read, we play games, we go out in the world. We listen to songs and dance around. We even watch TV sometimes (gasp! a perfect mom "no-no"). I do all these things, but because of what I know about the importance of free play and the lure of early academics, I avoid lessons and direct instruction.

I am starting to see how fun it is to watch my daughter learn academic type things in her own time, as a natural corollary to the way we spend our day. For example, we have been reading abridged Winnie the Pooh stories, which are divided into tiny "chapters." Of course, each chapter is numbered. Bug is starting to make a game of talking about and identifying the number at the beginning of each chapter. Cool! I wasn't even thinking of that as a "learning opportunity," which is what helps to keep it fun and keep me relaxed. If I'm not counting on her to Learn Something, I'm not going to be pushy or slightly tense. I can focus on our relationship and her needs. All this is part of my grand desire to let learning be fun. Not make it fun. It already is fun, when you stay out of the way. Let it be.

Approaching learning this way, I am collecting little "how it happened" stories. Here's how letter recognition happened for Ladybug:

Our fridge, with "Chicka Chicka" magnets

Over Christmas, Ladybug and Daddy took a trip together, and on that trip Daddy bought the classic book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. It's a rhyming alphabet book where the letters each climb a tree, fall down in a crazy pile, and one by one climb up again. The letters are distinguished by the various bumps and bruises they suffer when they tumble out of the tree. Ladybug's favorite letter is "loose tooth t." For a while, Daddy read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom every night, and the two of them played seek and find the letter. Suddenly, when I was reading various other books to Bug during the day, she was captivated by the presence of loose tooth t on many pages. A few times she even held down a page I was trying to turn, so she could point out and just ponder the fact that loose tooth t was in this book too. I felt like I was revealing an ancient secret when I said, "You'll start to see that all the letters are in all the books!" I guess it is an ancient secret, but we'll get to the Phoenicians later.

One day in particular, Ladybug was captivate by the word "OUT" written in large type. It was in a book about a bat (a follow up since she so loved Stellaluna). She kept flipping back to the "out" page and recognizing each of the letters, and saying "out" and not really reading, but still taking some step towards understanding that the story was coming from this code. What's memorable to me is her intensity. She had a glimpse of what that "out" word stood for and was so determined to study it more, to understand. I told my husband that I was glad he was there that day to see it happen, because I would have thought I was making it up otherwise.

Teaching reading can invoke so much stress. Should you take a phonics or whole-language approach? Do you need to be an expert to teach it? What if you mess it up? In all the homeschooling guides I read, there is a special section devoted to easing parents' worries about READING. I have always believed that I wouldn't need to worry about this too much, that the child of two bookworm parents who is lovingly read to will also blossom into reading. Am I excited by these first little signs? Of course. But I promise, at least for now: no flash cards, no scripted lesson plans, no worksheets.

The Art Area

I finally got a corner of our basement cleared out and set up to be an art corner. Here are my before and after pics:

I owe a big thank you to my husband for assembling the little table and chairs while I was away at a conference. Ladybug is very excited about her art corner, and I'm very excited to have a relaxing art space that doesn't need to stay perfectly clean.

This morning we did another project from First Art, making homemade puffy paint and squeezing it from a squeeze bottle. I donated one of my icing flood bottles to this cause, chopping off the tip for easier paint flow.

Ladybug can still be very fussy and sensitive during her art time. I'm thinking that I've introduced a lot of new art projects (not to mention the new art corner), and it's time now for some repetition. For my sake, I'm going to list what we've done so far so that I can refer back to it and repeat projects:

• Paper Stain Painting (Supposed to paint with wet crepe paper and the ink will bleed. Didn't work for us.)
• Color Mixing (tempera, brushes, cotton balls)
• Stretchy Dough
• Foil Squeezing
• Easy Big Beads
• Making Marks
• The Need to Squeeze (that was this morning's puffy paint)
• Touch and Pour Explore
• Simply Stickers
• Early Scissors Experiences (Stage 2: Yarn Factory)
• Busy Printing (boy was she crabby about this one. I don't think the print pads were to her liking.)

 

Mixing Colors

The paint and brushes arrived last night, so today Ladybug finally got to paint. Wow, the smell of tempera paint takes me right back to my elementary school art room, and our kind art teacher, Mrs. Kerr.

I don't know why I didn't learn from my mistake yesterday, but after letting Bug play in the paint for a while, I couldn't resist putting brush to paper. Instantly, same effect as last night. "Ladybug need to paint! Need to paaaaaint!" Oh jeeze. I guess there won't be any side-by-side art. I was able to calm her after a while by throwing away the paper I had painted on (just squiggles this time, no "advanced" flowers), and by refilling her paint cups.

Looking at all this fun art stuff and not getting to do any myself makes me think I need to have my own art time during Bug's quiet time. Maybe I will paint something to decorate my empty walls.

After cleanup (which definitely involved the bathtub), we read The Color Kittens. That one has long been a favorite, but it's a must read on paint day!

Making Marks on Aluminum Foil

Tonight's art time was with markers and aluminum foil. This comes out pretty, and it was fun to watch. Then Ladybug started playing in the bucket of soapy water, and I idly doodled a flower on the foil. Well, that was a mistake! Bug flipped out because she wanted to draw a flower and she can only make scribbles. This was a source of intense frustration. She kept trying valiantly, then insisted that I hold her hand and guide her in drawing a flower. So I did, but the frustration was not over.

The art book I'm using did mention not to create samples for children to imitate. And to just sit back and watch their process. I was on board with all of this! Guess I will remember to stay out of her process!

Stretchy Dough

Ladybug has caught on to the fact that fun things happen when she brings me the art book. When I first bought it home from the library on Saturday, she zeroed in on the drawings of paintbrushes and very specifically requested paint. I told her I would buy her paint and brushes. Today she brought me the book again, looked at me and said, "Mama gonna get you a paintbrush." She was mostly satisfied when I told her I had ordered the paint and it would get here tomorrow. But she still wanted a project for today. And why not?

Saturday we did a "sticky" project with glue, and I want to rotate through the chapters in this book (paint, dough, drawing, gluing, printmaking). Ladybug saw a drawing of measuring cups on one of the dough projects and told me she likes to mix. So I found a playdough recipe that I had the ingredients for (note to self: buy cornstarch), and we were off. She helped me tape down freezer paper to the kitchen floor, and I grabbed the measuring cups and spoons that live in her play kitchen.

"Stretchy Dough" is a very oily dough, which is kinda great because there's no goop sticking to your hands. You have to deal with being a little oily though. Ladybug helped mix, and then when it was time to knead, squished both hands in. But she didn't use her hands for long. Very quickly she was enamored with walking in the stretchy dough, getting her feet all oily and sliding around in it. Awesome sensory play. She gave me her highest form of approval: "Ladybug likes it!"

Early Spring: Puddles, Chickens, & Baby Goats

Receding snow at our nearby park

My friend said it very well today: "It's cold, but it's spring cold." Not so bitter and bone-chilling. There's more light and longer days. The two feet of snow from our blizzard has almost melted away, and when I walk outside I can smell mud and new grass. Yes!

Getting in some serious puddle time.

Last week Ladybug was in no mood to participate in farm class, which was not her fault. We'd just had a pretty miserable slog through a lot of snow, trying to walk from the train station to the farm. What was normally a ten minute walk took an hour. Yuck. So when we did get to the farm, we warmed up in a side room, reading books about insects and sheep. Then Ladybug played in puddles, and we got to see two foxes! I was more excited about the foxes than she was. Her favorite was a rabbit burrowed in a little hole. 


I mentioned in this post that I went a little overboard on winter books. This week I returned most of the forty picture books I had borrowed from the library for Valentine's and winter. I checked out a much smaller number of springtime titles. One of them is Big Fat Hen by Keith Baker. It's basically the classic "One, two, buckle my shoe" rhyme, with a little added fun at the end when all the hen's friends show up and hatch their chicks. Ladybug has also learned "Los Pollitos Dicen," a traditional Spanish children's song about a mother hen and her baby chicks.

All this reading and singing is why I was very excited that farm school this week would feature chickens! And the great part is we made it to class, with Bug in a good mood, so she got to enjoy seeing them. We even got a special peek at the "Employees Only" room where all the baby chicks live in their incubators.

    

After the visit to the poultry house, we saw three baby goats who were just days old. Ladybug explained, "The baby goats are asleep next to their mother!" Yep.

The little pile of three sleeping baby goats.

I'm so glad spring is finally here.

First Art

Today we started doing art. Not that I haven't given Ladybug fingerpaints, playdough, crayons, and markers before today. But today I finally got my hands on an art curriculum for toddlers that I have wanted to check out. After reading and implementing it, I'm very happy with it and thinking of buying my own copy. This is First Art for Toddlers and Twos, by MaryAnn F. Kohl.

There are certain classes or parenting philosophies that make me feel relaxed, and help me to observe my daughter while she learns in her own way. Following the lessons in this book brings on that kind of relaxation. All the emphasis is on process, not product, and the lessons are about creating an environment for the child to explore. There's instruction about how to provide the child with a comfortable space. After reading, I actually got online ASAP and ordered a $30 play table and chairs from Ikea. I realized that in our home we didn't have a low table where she could comfortably sit or stand to do her art. I've been putting her at the dining room table, where battles ensue over standing up on the bench. Also, I just put up beige curtains in the dining room. Tempera paint splatter is not the "look" I'm going for!

I am grateful for one simple piece of advice that I've been able to implement immediately. When setting up an art project for a toddler, provide them with a small bucket of soapy water and some cloths for their hands. I am so used to doing hand washing and cleaning up after the project, so I never thought of this. But my kid is exactly the type who needs it. I tried to introduce finger paints when she was about a year old, and she stuck the tip of one finger in the paint, then looked at me like, "Why would anyone do that to their hands?" Now that she's a little older, she wants to squish paint between her fingers for the sensory experience. But then she looks at what she's done to her hands and flips out. Being able to immediately clean her hands is going to make such a difference in her ability to enjoy playing with art. Tonight I set her up with some q-tips, cotton balls, and glue. She played with the glue a little bit, and told me she really liked it. But she spent the majority of her time exploring the tub of warm soapy water. Fine by me! The sooner she learns that it will always be part of her art time, the better.

The book is divided into five sections:
1) Primarily Paint
2) Hands on Dough
3) Making Marks (drawing)
4) Sticky Business (glue, contact paper)
5) Great Impressions (printmaking)

I like the idea of rotating through the chapters, so that we're playing with a variety of media on a regular basis. The author reminds the reader to be sure to repeat projects, because children thrive on repetition. We'll see how it shakes out for us, but I'm committed to setting up a regular art environment for her.

The best part of this evening's art time? Me, sitting back and relaxing, observing her play. Unasked, she repeatedly said to me, "Ladybug really likes it!"