Because I am a long standing member of the geek community, I have a copy of the game Scattergories. The game comes with a 26 sided alphabet die, that is perfect for all sorts of letter related mayhem.
The first game I invented is called Alphabet Hop. Roll the die and hop to the letter that comes up.
When was the last time you re-examined an ordinary object? There are so many things that just get cast aside and forgotten. Sadly, they go unexplored, like junk mail that gets thrown away without ever being opened.
Take for example the humble little silica gel pack that comes with every purse or tote bag you buy. Have you ever opened one? If not, why? Is it because the tiny package screams THROW AWAY DO NOT EAT?
Violet came downstairs yesterday with a tiny cup of liquid and asked us to help her "solve the mystery". I smelled it and guessed correctly that it contained soap from our bathroom sink. It also had a gritty substance in the bottom. Violet stirred it with one of the 10,000 striped drinking straws that she keeps stashed about the house and asked us (again) to solve the mystery. Aaron and I looked closer and saw tiny, clear beads amid the grit and soap bubbles.
"Where did these come from Violet?" A tiny bit of panic was hidden in my voice. I imagined gutted beanie babies and snipped costume jewelry.
"It came from the craft room. I opened a little package." Violet was not the least bit concerned, only curious.
I went up to the craft room and found an opened silica gel pack on Vi's desk. She had very neatly cut it with her safety scissors.
After we interrogated our child to make sure she had, in fact, not ingested any silica; we fished some beads out of the cup for a better look.
I am a ridiculous pile of contradictions.
Between the ages of 5 and 10 I loved school. L.O.V.E.D it. I was chipper every morning and looked forward to the END of summer. School shopping was like going to Disney World. I got to browse the aisles of Hill's Department Store, stroking the velour Garanimals separates as I walked past them. My opinion was consulted on potential purchases, all of which were placed in a cardboard box at the back of the store. I wanted nothing more than to follow our box on it's little conveyor belt to the stockroom and keep it company until we could afford to pay for all of it and take it home. The entire concept of "Back to School" was magical to me. No doubt, television commercials and a spectacularly un-stimulating home life played a part in making this time of year so special to me. I was trying to re-create the kind of family life I saw on tv. I wanted the kind of mother who indulged my irrational desire for folders decorated with kittens and pencils with my name on them. I wanted the kind of mother who didn't look at the price tag and meet my gaze with a sharp, "No."
Despite my past love affair with school and school shopping and the imaginary path to happiness that it might provide, I am shielding my child from all of it. No back to school shopping. No lay-away boxes. No mad rush to get a bunch of stuff that no one actually needs. No totally useless fall weather clothes that won't be worn for months. Am I sending my child to school in tattered shorts and flip-flops, without pencils and a back pack? Nope. I'm not sending her to school at all.
I am sometimes conflicted about homeschooling, but when I stop and really analyze what I am so nostalgic about, it has almost nothing to do with the traditional school education I received. I worry that my child will somehow be warped by missing out on the experience of buying notebooks, and kitten folders and toxic, plastic lunch boxes bearing the face of Hannah Montana or some such totally age inappropriate tv idol. I am worried about stuff, stupid unnecessary, "but so-n-so, has one" material garbage. I was brainwashed as a child and the effects still linger.
My daughter has her wants. She wants a pony and she wants to buy Princess gowns and wear them any time she doesn't feel like being naked, but she doesn't want a Hannah Montana book bag or High School Musical sneakers. She only wants what she wants, not what other kids tell her she should want. Her tastes change as quickly as the wind blows, but the wind is totally her creation.
Teaching my child at home allows me to control the various influences in her life. It's hard enough to know your own mind, when it keeps changing and growing and expanding exponentially everyday. When the kids at school and on the tv keep telling you something different, it can be hard to discern the difference between want and need. That difference is really the first and most important lesson of home economics. So, while we skip the trip to Wal-Mart for Tinkerbell t-shirts, in favor of browsing at the thrift store, we are really studying the value of a dollar, not to mention the environmental importance of not creating more stuff than is necessary.
I am hoping that one day, when Violet remembers "school", she will recall the day that reading finally clicked and not the day she got her Trapper Keeper or whatever it is that kids think they need these days. I have no memory of learning to read, but I can still see that Strawberry Shortcake safari outfit I wore on the first day of school and it makes me a little sad.
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How does your family deal with the financial pressures of back-to-school time? The Parent Bloggers Network and Capital One are teaming up to talk about family budgeting and finances. Check it out!
I am on nurse duty. The husband is sick. He is busy sweating all over the sheets I just washed through a fever. I am on my best behavior and trying not to resent him, because after all it's not his fault he got sick. I am just a terrible nurse.
I had no intention of moaning about my Florence Nightingale complex when I started this post. My whole point was to show you yesterday's Project 365 photo. I was trying to distract myself with cute and I failed.
Anywho. Here is a little buddy from Violet's preschool co-op. His mama was on teaching duty, so I followed him around with my camera. It kept us both out of trouble.
Violet is filled from stem to stern with mucous and therefore oozing with exuberance for learning. She only stops pestering me long enough to cough unproductively and then she's all, "What we do now Mama?"
Can I interest you in coloring quietly, in a slightly reclined position, here on the couch? No?
I bought some sand last week for this cool project where I write letters in glue on cards and then we sprinkle sand on them. Finger tracing the texture helps with letter recognition (after they dry of course). You can also cut letters out of sandpaper, but the notion of cutting sand paper makes my teeth itch. I got the idea from a blog called The Write Start. I was all prepared to show you carefully managed photos of Violet wielding a bottle of glue and a spoonful of sand. It was going to be great. Maybe it will still be great, but for today you get Violet playing in sand in a dish at the kitchen table, because I have enough viscous mess to clean off the child without adding glue to the mix.
No. I'm not hosting a craft contest. The challenge was purely personal and totally unexpected. You see, I am working on the getting the nerve up to call myself a homeschooler. I am in pre-homeschool mode right now and I spend most of my time gathering information and organizing my space. Very little schooling happens during our day.
We in the Heathen Family get really excited over nerdy fun. Last night, for instance, Aaron and I went to the county library sale. It's held in an enormous, dusty space at a local event arena that Aaron swears causes him to have an attack of IBS.
*Side note: As a former employee of a bookstore and and a current wife to an IBS sufferer, I have observed that places that sell or loan books suffer from a lot of smelly bathroom traffic. Is it a coincidence or does paper activate the bowels?
Anywhooo, I am sitting on the floor at the library sale, evaluating the 200 picture books that I hastily grabbed from the already ransacked tables and I zero in on a nearby conversation. The mother/daughter pair looked familiar and I soon realized that I had seen them at the downtown library returning a massive quantity of books. I listened to the mother's conversation with a teacher-like person and I soon realized that she was a homeschooling parent. I observed she had about three boxes of books to buy and her daughter was polite, attentive and dressed creatively (not like a member of the Jr. Prostitutes Society). As a pair the mother and daughter looked happy and only spoke in positive upbeat tones. As I turned away from that intrusion, I noticed a young woman sliding her box of books over to my sorting area and I indicated that I wouldn't mind if she moved closer, out of the way of passing people. I commented on a book she was considering and then she started talking to her friend, who inquired about her 2nd Graders. I was then treated to a dismal account of her classroom, where most of her kids were reading at a kindergarten level. She went on to describe how she spent most of her day settling the kids down to move on to the next topic. "The transitions are a nightmare!" Her tone was negative, if not downright venomous. I looked back at the happy homeschool family and decided to take another pass at the tables to look for teaching materials...
I recently had the pleasure (?) of viewing Where We Stand, a PBS special on our nations schools. Coincidentally, the Ohio Public School system was used as an example throughout the program. So, not only did I get a punch in the gut about my daughter's fate as a potential public school customer, but Ohio kicked me in the shins for good measure. The entire show was unexpectedly nauseating. I have entertained the idea of homeschooling for awhile now and this may have pushed me over the edge. I will never cease to be shocked at our country's cultural tendency to view constant growth as the ultimate marker of success. From physical growth charts, to income growth, to intellectual growth, there seems to be no tolerance for standing still. My husband and I frequently talk about how we SHOULD send our kid to public school, to show our commitment to improving education for all kids, but how do I explain that to Violet. "I'm sorry honey, I know that we are putting YOUR emotional, social and intellectual development at risk, but it's for the good of your great-great grandchildren." I have but one child to give this planet and I am not so sure that screwing her up with a 12 year sentence of social and academic bullying is the way to go. I see her so joyfully learning new things and yet I know that after 2 or 3 years in school she will dread every day and start a countdown to summer vacation, as I did. Can we devise a way to teach kids to love learning and maintain certain standards at the same time? Just like with universal healthcare, other countries seem to be doing it and America resists, because America is the best and we don't take orders from no one...Of course, all of this personal turmoil might be mute if I lived 2 miles up the hill in the Oakwood School District. I think that perhaps our gentile poverty may guide us in the right direction, yet again. We are fortunate enough to afford my staying home, but not wealthy enough to afford private school, so the Heathen Family Homeschool is now in session. A strict dress code of pajamas and unbrushed teeth will be enforced!
