Oh no!

I just realized that Part 2 of the how to write your own curriculum is missing. Not sure how that happened...I'll see if I have a copy anywhere...

Checking in ...

Hey, all!

Now that I have a laptop, I hope to be able to blog more. (If I can download my mail, rather than checking on the web interface, I should be able to spend my cafe time on blogging and facebook, right?)

We're going on 'a quarter of a year' since we went to no Internet at home, and it's going reasonably well, though I have started to feel a little cut off, since I can only check my mail once a week or so if I have to sit somewhere to do it.

I would have expected lack of Internet to result in a far tidier home and a far more organized life -- but it hasn't so much.

The up side hasn't been what I expected, but it has been wonderful in its effect on the family dynamic. These days we do e-mail deliberately and we spend far more time interacting as a team. I am loving that!

The attached photos are of Jack's Mesopotamian robes, as described in Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors.

He seemed pretty excited at the idea when I read it to him. He seemed pretty excited when he was choosing the cloth. He seemed pretty excited when we started...but as you can see, he doesn't find robes all that comfortable. *laugh*

OOps.

I can certainly understand that -- in my old age I haven't found much patience in my heart for dresses, either, though I still like the way they look.

I have also been making progress on my Yule cards for this year. Our minimum total (for family) was 50 and I am well more than halfway done. I may be able to manage a few extras for very close friends this year! I'm ambivalent about whether to post them here, though...

Jack had his annual "I love my friends" party last weekend. I haven't managed to get the photos from that onto this computer yet, so I hope to blog that in a day or two. The short version was that I was amazed at how well that came off...in spite of my silliness in giving out various start times depending on when I was asked. *embarrassed blush*

On the health front (we're gotten old enough that there always seems to be a health front these days...) Rod is doing amazingly well since he got off wheat. He is healing just fast enough top be frustrated at what he feels like he ought to be able to do. He got "poisoned" once and it was very, very clear that he is going to have to be very careful -- his gasping for breath all night was really scary and it took over a week before he was starting to get stronger again.

I finally entirely stopped being dizzy a few weeks ago...only to be hit by pleurisy on the same side on which my ear had been giving me trouble. Now that has cleared up, too, and I am finally starting to feel human again, just in time for my doctor appointment to finally come.

They say "Old age ain't for sissies" but I'd say middle age is no picnic, either. (Oh hush! I am too middle-aged. I won't be old until I'm over 90.) ;)

I think I have started to pull together that last installment of the writing your own curriculum essay, too. Anyone have anything they want to make sure I include?

What else? After all this time there should be more. I'll work on another blog to be uploaded on Saturday or Sunday. Have fun!

Rules for sane mommies

As I was cleaning up today, I was also pondering how my standards have slipped since I was a single woman living alone. (For a very brief period before I married Rod, my friends actually teased me about being a "Marth Stewart" type!). But I also realized that my standards pretty much had to slip if I wasn't going to make myself and my family nuts!

That got me to thinking about all the ways our standards, our assumptions about 'how it ought to be', have to slip if we're to stay sane while our children are young.

There hasn't been much time for introspection lately, so in leau of anything really profound, here you go: rules for sane mommies

1) It doesn't have to look like you just cleaned, so long as it doesn't usually look like no one *ever* cleans.

2) They're going to blame you at 14 anyway, and as long as you actually *were* trying, they'll forgive you by the time they're 40, so you may as well do what you have to do without feeling guilty about 'always saying no", or insisting they eat their greens or whatever it is that gets you feeling like a bad Mommy.


3) Playing with your kids is fine, but it's important to realize that they will have many friends over their lifetimes, but only one set of parents. You can play with them if you want to, but if you don't want to, save your energy for parenting them.

4) Shouting "You're driving me crazy!" isn't a good example to set for your kids. However, if you save it for times when they really, really, *are* driving you crazy, it does send a clear message.

5) Kids don't like rules for rules sake, but they do need them. Being reminded all the time to always put their toys and shoes where they belong may not be fun and may not foster creativity or self esteem, but it does mean they will be able to find them when they want them -- and no one will break their neck walking across the floor and possibly break the toys! (And knowing whwere their shoes are may, indeed, foster self esteem.)

6) There isn't enough time to do everything, and childhood is amazingly short. You tell your kids what's important to you by what you make time for. Spend some time thinking about what you'd like them to remember, because once they've grown, there are no "do-overs". Which is more important, listening or ceaning the bathroom? A hug or being on time? reading together or an immaculate lawn? That isn't to say you shouldn't clan the house or rake leaves, but it is to say "think before you rush past your child's ouytstretched arms. Soon enough, they stop asking.

Reasons to love autumn

Autumn has arrived with bells on! I love this change of seasons! (Well, I love every change of season...after a couple of years, I was pretty bored bored by the year round summer
of my youth. Rainy season was a change, and a nice one, but there's nothing like an extreme change to make you come alive with the possibilities.

Anyway, among my many reasons for loving autumn:

* The earth is changing her, by now dusty, green gown for a riot of reds, yellows, and oranges.
* it's finally dark early enough to eat dinner by candle light
* hot chocolate in front of the fireplace!
* pumpkin custard and hot apple cider
* corn mazes
* yummy, warm soft sweaters
* piles and piles of fluffy, lavender scented quilts
* vegetable soups, thick and comforting with stock, and beans, and warm herbs
* the smell of baking cinnamon
* an excuse to hole up in my nest and play with scraps of paper

Perils of homeschooling

There are times when the realities of life as a homeschooling family are just not as dignified as we might wish. We had one of those times last weekend.

We had turned out parlour into a quasi “artists’ garret”, and our dear friend Linda came over to play. The light through the window was just right, we improvised easels and work areas for everyone and put on a couple of Bach discs for background music to help us focus, and the four of us set to work with great seriousness on painting and drawing …

Then, right in the middle of it all, we were brought up short by an unusually bouncy tune coming from the stereo…

I'm a verb. I'm a verb, verb, verb - I'm an action word.
So put me where the action is 'cause I'm an action word.

Hmmm. One of Jack’s learning with music CDs was still in the stereo. Linda, being a delight and a good sport, laughed, picked up a much more “spirited” colour and got into the music as she drew. I shook my head and thought darkly for a moment about submitting the whole thing to the Home Schooling Horror Stories column of our favorite magazine…except of course, that it wasn’t really a Horror Story – it was “just us” and Linda knows us far too well for this to have injured her impression of us. We can try – but we really aren’t “serious” about much of anything and she knows it.

Oh well – we had a lot of fun, and once I got over myself, I had to admit that the change in music may have changed the mood – but that isn’t entirely a bad thing.

My apologies for the hash

I did my best to clean up up the previous post--but the laptop has decided that it's had enough of me and is refusing to work properly so that it's taking a veeerrrry long time to accomplish anything. *sigh* Back to Clover. ;)

Studying art

Jack and I have been studying art lately. Jack had chosen Van Gogh as the artist he wanted to study. We picked up a bunch of books about Van Gogh from the library, and while we were there, I, knowing no better, picked up a video series about the Impressionists, based on the similarity of the cover art to Van Gogh?s. I thought they might ?have a section? on Vincent.

Of course, since Van Gogh is ?post impressionist (as I learned later) there was nothing about him in that video, but Jack and I were captivated in watching the artists at work. Unlike my beloved Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this looked like something we could learn to do. Not that we?d ever be mistaken for Manet or Degas?but we might be able to learn some of the techniques they used and be able to create something attractive. So, we pulled out our paints.

To understand the significance of this development, you have to know that Jack had never been happy about painting. Most of his works ended up looking like this:
and he was pretty unhappy about the muddy effect, but when I offered to show him things he?d grumble ?No thanks. I?m just no good at painting.?

So that he was suddenly energized and eager to try his hand at painting again was *amazing* and wonderful!

We had been reading a series of books about ?How to Look at Art?, in which we had seen a colour wheel. We decided to start there, since it looked like something we could accomplish.

Sadly, Mamma is no good at geometry and we couldn't find a compass, so what we ended up with wasn't really a color wheel, but we do what we can.

We traced a circle on the paper using a circular cutting tool from my stash, and then we used a ruler to draw the sections. They didn't come out even, and we ended up with more than we
intended?but we decided it was good enough for now.
Then we put three colors of acrylic paint in each of our pallets, and painted the primary sections. That went well so then we started combining the primaries and putting the secondary colours in place. Since we mixed our own colours, we were amused to see that we came out with different shades of the secondaries and Jack was highly tickled to discover that his shades were prettier! (I also like how the colour wheel Jack made almost looks alive -- like it s growing and moving. Mine was much more rigid and not nearly as pretty.)

Then we mixed all of the colours we had left to see what happened, and we decorated the edges of our paper with that colour.

That worked so well that the next night, after we?d watched Part Two of The Impressionists we decided to work on colour layering.

We chose two colours to work with (yellow and red this time), and painted a yellow background. While we waited for that to dry, we mixed up some orange to layer over it. We talked about a technique to make flower petals, and Jack tried it, and then embellished his flower. We also talked about how he had developed a great deal of texture in his background and that was a very nice effect.
Of course, a flower needs a stem, so Jack got out some green and I dipped a clean brush in it for him. Et Voila! Sunflower!

We had quite a bit of paint left over, so he decided to practice some more with the flower petal technique. (And a heart, which he painted and then I outlined for him)
Last night, we finally got a chance to see a video about Van Gogh. The BBC's Private Life of a Masterpiece had a segment on Van Gogh?s The Sunflowers. That was interesting ? it finally explained the answer to Jack?s big question (Van Gogh shot himself) and it introduced the idea of texture.

We decided, after the movie, to experiment with texture. Jack had a different idea of what that meant than I did, but I have to admit that he got some very interesting effects ? first he did a very watery background and then he layered texture on top. (And because we continue to work with two colours, what could have been more mud, was actually some interesting gradations of green.)
And then, because he had a lot of paint left over, he decided to paint another piece. This one he calls The Battle at the Great Wall of China. The big blue line is the Great Wall. If you know how to look, you can see enemies scaling the wall, you can see caves, and secret passages, and troops on the move and great battles taking place.
I particularly like the cloud effect at the top. I am trying to figure out how he did that so I can use the technique myself!

Anyway, it wasn?t really quite intentional, but combining art appreciation with technique study seems to be working very well ? and starting with the Impressionists seems to be one of the better ways to start.

We studied Pieter Bruegal last unit, and Jack wasn't at all inspired to try to imitate what he saw. Nor did he seem terrible interested. Then again, I am learning "art appreciation" right alongside him, and I may be approaching picture study all wrong. At least -- all wrong to meet our needs. Watching videos of real art historians discussing the paintings works better for us.

I have to say that even if we don't go a lot further, we have successfully enough experimented that I think Jack will at least feel that he *can* learn to paint if he wants to. We both watched in utter amazement as Rod used two colours to make a very interesting Impressionistic portrait of Voldemort -- we'd like to be able to do that! Maybe someday we will.

The minor joys of a gardener

Yup. That’s a slug. On my kitchen counter. Evidently it was hiding out in the most recent harvest.

See how fat he’s grown on my cabbages?

Yuck.

Happiness

I have been pondering the irony of happiness lately.

Doesn’t it seem odd that at a time when personal satisfaction and self esteem are the major focus of what we expect to accomplish for ourselves and our children, teen suicide, divorce, depression, and all the woes associated with a monumental lack of happiness and personal satisfaction should be at an all time high?

I have been giving a lot of thought to why that might be.

It seems clear that we have, as a culture, lost track of what happiness and personal satisfaction really are.

The old wisdom tells us, that “Happiness is not a destination, but a mode of travel”. You can’t “finally attain” happiness, and personal satisfaction can’t be purchased. Real happiness is more about the way we decide to see life, how we live and what we expect.

I don’t mean that if you decide to be happy, nothing will ever happen that make you sad, to frustrate you, or to prevent you from doing what you want to do. Of course all those things happen in everyone’s life. What you can change is how you decide to view those frustrations and setbacks.

There are a couple of things I think might make a difference. One is that we are sheltering our children, as much as we possibly can, from failure. Not failing *should* give them better self esteem, right? Well…um…

No.

Actually, surmounting obstacles and achieving things at which we could have (and perhaps have in the past) failed raises our self esteem. Protecting kids from challenges actually lowers self esteem by sending the message that we think of them as incapable of achievement on their own and on their own terms. It also develops in them an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Neither is a recipe for real happiness.

W. H. Auden said “We are here on Earth to do good to others.” It seems that as our society has gotten more and more focused on ourselves as individuals and our own happiness, we’ve become less and less happy.

I’m not under the impression that everyone was happier on some mythic time when we were more focused on contribution to the community, but my on experience suggests that focus on what we can accomplish and what we can contribute to the community does a lot to lead to satisfaction with our selves and out world.

Just a thought. It seemed profound until I wrote it down. Funny how that works.

Update on homemade laundry and dishwasher soap

We started making out own dishwasher and laundry soap a while back and I wanted to update you on how that went.

Dishwasher soap was a loss. It got the dishes clean, but it left an ugly white film of borax on the dishes. Yuck! Adding citric acid to the rinse was very effective in removing the film…but then the process was prohibitively expensive. We’ve gone back to Trader Joe’s environmentally friendly dishwasher soap, though I may try again if I come across any new ideas for how to make it work better.

The laundry soap worked beautifully…until summer hit. The homemade laundry detergent is good for run of the mill laundry, but it just isn’t up to the heavy-sweating, garden grunged, ‘damp basement with a mold problem’ summer laundry. To be fair, neither is Trader Joe’s environmentally friendly laundry detergent. We’re getting a big bottle of Tide to get the smell and grey out of the clothes, but we’ll go back to homemade once the weather cools off and save the rest of the Tide for next summer. It’s a lot cheaper, and I didn’t notice any difference until we started getting really dirty—which has been an issue every summer of my adulthood. That’s why I keep going back to Tide.