Are you really the Baron Munchausen? (Week 32)

How did Kit and I ever miss this movie? It came out in 1988, and we've never heard of it. The kids have watched it about 6 times now, and it has inspired many discussions, make-believe duels and art. And it's just a fun flick.

This week has been very much about SPRING!!!




It is finally here, sort of. We've been spending lots of time in our backyard, and noticed little birds (house finches?) gathering nest supplies out of our side nursery. Bits of cardboard and moss. We've had a few haircuts here, and we put our hair clippings out for them, and they snatched them up in under an hour. The kids have been watching for birds of prey and have called me out to watch a turkey vulture circle above.


Our big excitement, especially for Ivy, was that we saw an owl this week. It was fantastic! It was up in a tree at the side of the road, so majestic and still. It was hard to get Ivy to really see it, but she eventually did. We agreed it was definitely a Barred Owl and then debated it's gender for about 30 seconds. Who cares, really? We just felt so lucky to see it. Now we'll keep our eyes out for them more often.


Just to mix things up, let's talk about Ivy first. I'd never want her to seem like 'last' in my mind, just because I also talk about her last. :)


She's adopted a new thing this week. Reading glasses.





Now, whether this is because I wear glasses daily, or because both her grandmothers need reading glasses to read books to her, who knows? But now when I say 'Let's read some books" she goes and looks for her glasses. And if we can't find them, look out!

Every day, she likes to go outside and spend some time 'in her car'. I found this thing by the side of the road, with broken wheels. It's the kind of kid's toy that costs too much new for me to bother with, and takes up too much space for me to justify owning it. Yet somehow it being free means it's temporarily ours, and thus takes up less space. Er . .

Imagine her as your salesperson, if you will.

"Look at this lovely car! It has all the latest features. Squeaky red horn for saying hello, and a decent trunk to store your many, many little bouncy rubber balls."





On our paper route, we pass a house a few doors away, that has a front yard filled with little toys for us to set up and re-arrange. Ivy likes to spend some time there, and it's a great little neighbourhood destination for her.




Ivy is learning the alphabet, with help from lovely Hannah. Hannah holds up the magnetic letters for her and tells her what they are called. Then she puts them together on the wall and creates a word (or a non-word) and Leif tells Hannah what it says. It's like a split-class, only way better. :)

Hannah has been spending each morning on her Reader Rabbit Math computer game. She completes activities to get boat parts so she can re-build her damaged pirate ship and sail off the island. She told me next week she wants to get going on her phonics RRabbit game, so she can learn to read. Okey-dokey.

Hannah was working on writing an Easter card this week, and asked me for some spelling tips. I only offer if asked, and never correct her own spelling. So this week her questions led us to a chat about how an E after a vowel+consonant combo, make it a long/sharp vowel sound. Hat vs. hate, ma vs. mate. It's a first step.

Hannah's been bringing me many, many vases of dandelions. I was glad that one night she noticed that they had all closed up. I explained that they knew there was no sun so they, in effect, went to sleep (this wacky thing has a wacky name, Nyctinasty). We checked on them in the morning and voila, they were open. Hannah was very impressed. "You mean they can tell there's no light, like they can see, but they don't have eyes?". Yep, it's pretty cool huh?

Hannah has been getting very crafty lately. Besides drawing a new animal face on herself each morning with markers. :) Whether it's cutting out paper eggs to colour for Easter, making cards for each of us, or making a dragon puppet


. . or making a Blair-Witch-like self-portrait with popsicle sticks (she hung his up herself, I swear)




. . it's nice to see her doing something she loves and sharing it with all of us.


Speaking of loving things, Leif loves to juggle. It's the coolest, craziest development. He just picked them up one day (I bought these juggling balls for Kit years ago) and started tossing them around. Then he did it more, took them in the yard, started juggling in bed at night (that was very awesome to watch from the hall) and now he's working on training his left hand to juggle solo as well as his right hand can, so he can practice a two-handed but separate juggling thing he saw on youtube.

Here he is the backyard, juggling three balls in both hands, and juggling two balls in one hand.






I happened upon another set of these same balls in a store the other day and snatched them up. Now he and Kit are inspired to work on something together. I've vetoed practicing in the kitchen, after a ball hit a bowl of salsa and flung it all over the wall today.

Oh yes, and in other news . . . . our caterpillar larvae arrived this week. Wooohooooooooooo!!!!!

Now, I'm a gal who actually gets creeped out by clusters of bugs, and thinks tent caterpillars suck, spray them to death Kit. But we'd tried (and failed) to raise caterpillars last year, so this year we gave it another shot.


On Tuesday we got a little jar of tiny, tiny caterpillars in the mail. They'd been mailed as larvae, with a paste of food in the bottom of the jar. They hatched en route and became ours. We got a packet of food paste with them, and spread them out into some more containers.



We had ordered the standard 'classroom' package, 33 caterpillars. They sent us about 80!!! We also got a poster and some butterfly pics, so we taped them up on the dishwasher, right near our caterpillar jars on the kitchen island.



But it kind of sucked to have them in tons of plastic containers, eating a floury paste. Hardly a 'natural' scenario. so, after checking with another homeschooler's butterfly blog, we went ahead and constructed a caterpillar condo in our terrarium.



We had to find the leaves they'd like to eat, through trial and error. Our cold spring had left us odd choices. But once we hit on the right ones (Hollyhock and Jerusalem Sage), they dug in and never stopped. They eat through piles of leaves three times a day!






And they grew. And grew. and I was fascinated. We took some out and let them roam around on our hands. They have these great furry bodies, with crazy white wisps of hairs longer than the rest. Kind of remind me of lions.




They molt 5 times between larvae and chrysalis, and to do this they shed their outer skin layer, AND THEIR FACE!!!! Yes, we find tons of shiny black bug faces on the ground in the morning.


We noticed that out of our many, many caterpillars, one was white, not black like the rest.



She is now The White Queen.

And we learned not to leave the terrarium lid open.





And then it was Easter. Hannah had been counting down since the first day of Spring.

The kids had been to another seasonal craft class with Ana. They crocheted great egg decorations, to hold blown eggs.




They also did cool egg card art by putting paint on squares of solid gelatin and then creating patterns and pressing the paper into it.




This is a photo essay of Ivy's first (aware) Easter, which was priceless.








She got new shoes, velcro "like Hannah's"



And sunglasses, of course. It's Spring!



Next week, soccer starts up, the caterpillars may cocoon-up, and mysteries may be found around any corner.

C

It's all about the birds . . . (Week 31)

I've always had a thing for birds, whether it's the birds I hated (the bastard crow who woke me up a 5 am each morning for a year) or birds I saw often but had no idea what kind they were. Lately, they are falling at me feet trying to get me to learn about them, so I'm listening.

Last week at our Wilderness camp, we each were given a wooden disc with an animal's name on it. This was our guide for the day. Leif's was Raccoon, which was fun because we saw one just that morning. Hannah's was a Spotted Towhee bird and mine a Flicker. I have no idea what either of those are, so this was a good starting point this week.

We have a great little book that we use to try to identify a song or bird. It's limiting because it doesn't give you various views of each bird, so ID'ing them can be uncertain. But the audio song for each bird is great. We looked up the Towhee and the Flicker, and it did not register for us at all. None of us recognised them from our yard or camping trips.

Then on Leif's paper route this week, I spotted a bigger-than-robin-sized bird up in a tree. As Leif and I watched it, our eyes adjusted and realised there were about 5 in that tree. What were they? We guessed woodpeckers, because of their longer beaks and spotted wings. But they had the Robin-like tummy. So home we went to look up Woodpecker's and hear their song. I don't know that we've made a match, but it has piqued our interest, and we'll pay more attention as the days go by.

As if a household could not contain enough Lego, we have more. No really. Leif read about a new set in his Lego magazine (ah yes marketing blatantly disguised as a free subscription to children. nice.) and we went to check it out.

Before going, I shared a dilemma I was having with Leif. He was excited to go because he has lots of paper route money saved up, to spend on whatever he likes. Hannah does not, and this was my dilemma. I do not think it's fair for Hannah to have nothing; she is 5 and I completely understand why she does not want a paper route, does not want to work for money, and so on . . . but I do not want to buy her stuff and then upset Leif because he has worked so hard to earn this money, and here I am just giving it to Hannah. He said he was okay with me buying her something, and understood why she is not earning her spending money yet.

So off we went to the big mall. It was their first time in this big toy store, and they had eyes for nothing but the Lego section. After much thought and comparing set contents, Leif chose this one, and Hannah chose this one. It has led to many hours of interesting experiments with physics, as these sets have working parts. Can we catapult the rock monsters right into the machine? How fast must the machine be going to pick up the crystals? Do the claws actually help load crystals into the digger scoop?


A few days later, Leif had a moment of misery because he felt he was being jipped that I bought toys for Hannah and he bought his own. So we discussed it again, never with the goal that he see my point of view, but that we are all heard and considered, and a solution is found that suits all of us. I pointed out that up until now, for 8 years, I've bought him anything he's wanted. And that at some point Hannah too will take some responsibility for earning her toys. Then he was alright. Phew.

Leif's colour blindness came up this week, though it took um awhile to figure out that was what was happening. Hannah had launched a copter thingy into our big willow tree, and we needed Leif's stellar climbing skills to get it down. We pointed to where it was but he couldn't spot it. I kept pointing, describing it, going over below it, but he still did not see it. Then it dawned on me; it was a turquoise copter in a green tree. That is the same colour combo he could not see on one of the tests. I explained this and then had him use his 'owl eyes' to see the diff shape the copter made in the curly branches. He got it then and climbed up to fetch it. It was great that he was not bothered by his inability to see it by colour, and that we found an alternate way for him to 'look' for it.


A friend from Wilderness camp invited us out to Uplands Park to explore and build shelters. Hannah was not interested in 'going outside' so we took her to Grandma's and then were off. It was very, very wet and muddy. Leif practiced his skill, throwing sticks at prey (imagined prey, please), and Christopher collected sticks for a shelter. Again, birds were in abundance and we looked at them to find which ones were the same and which differed, and was that a damn Robin or not? Christopher told us about his project he and his sister are doing for the Homeschoolers Science/Project Fair this week. It sounds very interesting (he is setting up the battle field for a war that his much older sister is doing a report on).

An exciting event this week was the annual homeschoolers science and project fair. It started out years ago as your typical science fair, for homeschoolers to showcase an interest they have. But then other kids needed and venue to display non-science interests, like dancing or playing an instrument, or showing a collection. Now it is a grand melee of science, books for sale, tap dancing and this year a ballet interpretation of the life cycle of a bee. Good times! It's a great place to see other homelearning families we do not see that often, and check out what some kids have created. Thus far neither Leif nor Hannah show any interest in showcasing their own interests, and that's fine.

On the way home from the fair Hannah asked me "Does o-p-e-n spell open?", and then proceeded to correctly add up numbers totaling more than 10, a first. "3+3+3 is 9, 9+9 is 18, 6+5 is 11, 6+7 is 13". Sweet!

On that same car ride the CBC news covered the arrest of a Bacon Brother in Abbotsford (a known crime family) for a murder a few years back. Leif asked about this story and we discussed how the police may gather evidence (undercover, phone taps) over a long period, hence it being 2 years later and they are just now making an arrest. That you need a judge's approval to monitor citizens, that they cannot arrest anyone without having strong evidence that they may be involved in the crime.

Another in-the-car chat Leif and I had this week centered around the current economic situation (they reported more job losses on the news), and my own belief that it links in to globalisation and the practice of out sourcing jobs, started over a decade ago. He followed the topic well and shared his opinion of things. I want him to form his own opinions, not just parrot mine, and feel giving him one point of view is part of explaining the topic in general. I'm always clear when I'm branching out into my own opinion.

Hannah challenged Nana to a game of Battleship this week, and is still struggling to grasp the concept of marking your misses to determine where to shoot next. It is a big thing to figure out, when you really think about it, and involves an understanding of mapping, ariel views, seeing the ship's shapes on your 'screen'.

We got a bunch of new Families Around the World DVDs from the library this week. Hannah's not too interested, but Leif and I are. We watched Brazil, Korea, Canada and China. We are intrigued at how other families live and what is expected (or not) of children in other countries. We both can't get over how little sleep (in our opinion) other kids get!

Hannah prefers to watch The Magic School bus, and this week was all about germination, symbiotic relationships in the ocean, and weather.

I've been leaving them a bit to their own moderation in terms of going to sleep, so many nights are spent in bed drawing, or playing with lego, or talking in the dark. Leif created this comic strip one night, and Hannnah drew a fabulous picture of me lounging in a beach chair under and umbrella and the stars eating a giant orange popsicle. It's great!






Kit is gone this weekend to an Ulti tournament up island, the first of the season. I had hoped to take the kids into Science World in Vancouver for their big Lego display, but Ivy's sudden cold has nixed that. We've made plans to go in to Vancouver after Easter. Hannah could tell you that Easter is 8 days away. It's all about the chocolates friend.

C

Can you see 2 digits? Week 30

Take a look at these. For whatever reason the topic of colour blindness came up one morning this week, so I Googled some tests and info to help them understand it. I pointed to the test and said to Leif "See the 2-digit number there?"

He said "What number?"

"The number there, like 64 or 28, it's a 2 digit number like that, do you see it?"

"No"

Then Hannah walks by and says "You mean the 25 right there?"

Hmmm . . so Leif is mildly colour blind. You learn something new everyday huh?

This week has been chock-full of discussions, observations and good times.

To make up for the loss of soccer activity Leif and Hannah have been playing soccer with their Lego set. They set up a spectator box, ticket booth, medic, video camera guy, referee . . check it out.



They played with it for hours. Leif named all his players; Mike West, Jack Hornby and Carlos Rodriguez. He knows some of the best players are from South America.When Leif played with Taro, it was sweet to hear him give the score by saying "I have 6 and you have 3, so I have twice what you have. But you can still catch up Taro".

Leif and I went to the Jackson Cup this weekend. Some of his coaches from soccer camp were playing in it. It is a local soccer final that sends it's winner on to the Provincials in Vancouver. The kid's coach Steph is the coach for the Gordon Head team who were playing for the cup at this game. Unfortunatly they lost, badly. But Steph told us in the 25 years they've had the cup games, this is only the second time his team has gotten to play in them. So it's exciting to have made it this far. Hopefully we can catch the Provincials on tv or find out the stats so Leif can follow along. It was nice to go out with Leif, just the two of us.

When Taro was over to play, Leif needed to do his paper route. He asked if he and Taro could do it by themselves. I wanted to honour his readiness for independance, but knew I was not comfortable with just sending them out entirely alone. So we compromised that I'd stay at the end of one block, and they'd go up that block, then around the end and I'd meet them at the next block. They were satisfied with this and did just fine. The next time he did his route, I asked if he'd like to do it that way again, and he said no, he'd prefer some company, so we went together.

In the car I try to get some CBC radio time when I can. They were following the trial of the Polish traveler who died at YVR from the taser use. Leif wanted to know what was being discussed, and we ended up having a big discussion about tasers, the police, why we call the police, when they use guns, how a bystander's video brought this situation to light, the court process, and reporters in the courts. It was great, and he seemed to follow it.

They are both starting to wrap their heads around the concept of movies, how the are made, that they are fake, and what actors are doing in them. After watching Annie we watched The Making of Annie, with all the auditions for the lead role, and saw the actors out of costume and character. Then Hannah noticed that the actor in Sound of music is the same actor as in Mary Poppins.

We got in some visits to the pool this week. At one visit we were all in the family changeroom and after a discussion on why we use those changerooms in particular, Leif asked if a person could ever change their sex. I told him how you can change your appearance to look more like the other gender, using hormone drugs, surgeries, etc. . . but that your body will never 'function' like the opposite gender, in terms of reproduction. Then we talked about how cold water makes your penis shrink. We always strive to cover all the important stuff. :)

Leif and Hannah watched an old favorite, School House Rocks, this week. I explained what was going on in the grammar section, how adverbs differ from adjectives, and what conjunctions do, nouns and pronouns.

They were both excited by a discovery they made in the bath this week. When they half-filled a bottle with water, then overturned another full bottle of water on top of that one, with their spouts connected, the water changed places with the air very very slowly, but it did happen. And once all the air was gone from the lower bottle, no more water moved into it from the upper bottle. They repeated this over and over with different quatities of water. Hannah cried "We've made an experiment!".

We finally have pictures to share of our knitted Inuit people. Since it is now Spring, we dismantled the winter table and put our Inuit guys out with the daffodil fairy. Maybe this is why it's still so wintery this Spring? Ivy's is the tall dark blue one, Hannah's has blonde hair and Leif's has dark plum hair.



The kids set up their own Spring nature tables in their room, using all the crafts they've made in years past.

Leif's


Hannah's



Hanah's after she added blue sky and green grass. Can you see it?



Then Hannah added a bear she drew and cut out herself



And a super-cute litte brown bunny with fuzzy wool fur. Love it!



Hannah is churning out the questions as usual. After watching the Sword and the Stone we discussed how Merlin the Magician won the duel, by turning into a germ, which is not invisible, just so tiny we can't see it very easily. This lead us to contagions and how illness is spread.

As we got dressed one day she asked again who made space. Leif explained to her how earth was made (two asteroids colliding) and she said we could also just ask the people who were around then how it was made. So this led us to a discussion about history, and how it is documented by those who survive and that prior to our existence nobody was writing stuff down. So we rely on the fossil record and carbon dating and things like that to make a sort of written history of the planet.

Hannah is starting to sight read some of Ivy's books. And her spelling is starting to incorporate vowels, if she tries 3 letter words. Longer stuff just gets confusing. Pig, cat, bat, hat . . .

All 3 of us had a great time this week at wilderness camp. It was a one day class with a group from Saltspring called Wisdom of the Earth. They teach tracking, survival, hunting, stewardship of nature, and aim to keep the dying traditions alive of the First Nations and other hunter gatherer societies. We only got a taste of things at this class, but they are hoping to offer a 6-week course this spring, so hopefully we can get in on that too. Ivy stayed and grandma and grandpa's, so I could fully participate and spend the whole day with Leif and Hannah. We learned about stalking like a fox, seeing like an owl, and listening like the deer. We played games that taught us about the food chain and how you need a balance in nature for everything to survive (deer eat plants, cougars eat deer, illness hurts all). We learned how to hide, to blend in with our suroundings so we could sneak up on our prey, and then how to throw a thick stick to kill it. We learned some basics of tracking, such has weight distribution on the feet, and how running tracks differ from walking tracks.

And then our class had a strange interruption. The trout truck arrived.



The truck had come to stock the lake for the summer fishing season.



I admit to being clueless about this practice, and found it very strange in a Brave New World kind of way. Growing fish so others could go catch them and feel sporty? The very nice guys working the truck let the kids dump some buckets of fish into the lake, before they flushed about 1000 fish through the big hose at the back of the truck. They said they're stocking bigger fish this time, so it's easier for fist-time fishers to catch any. Again, wierd huh? I guess my view of just letting the lakes sit empty as a clear sign of the damages of over-fishing and how we are messing up the planet as a whole is not so positive. But why create a false reality when things are in such a crappy state? Why not learn, learn, learn from our mistakes? oh well, I'm not a fisher, so I may never understand.




Leif is still figuring out the finer points of dominoes.



Then he built a functioning catapult out of Lego.




Ivy's been nurturing a sweet obsession with owls, so crafty mom made her this little fellow out of wool. Ivy seems happy with it.






And Hannah is starting to share her espresso-making skills with Ivy. Why not start them out young right?



I've been starting to give them some minor responsibilities in the house, in regards to taking care of their own upkeep. Loading their dishes into the dishwasher, making their beds (yes, even Ivy). We're not a 'chores list' type of family, by far, and my goal is not to force these things on them in an overt way. But rather to simply expect that little bit more, as they grow up, so they have a sense of what needs doing, so that when they become teenagers this is just a normal part of life, and when they move out and live on their own they are not wholly incompetent at this stuff. So for right now, it's putting your dishes away, and of course they put their own laundry away. Then we'll move on to doing their laundry and cooking some basic foods.


As for Kit and I, we are well, as always. Kit is off to pick up his new Bobcat excavator machine, and is gearing up for a big season of Ultimate. He has 4-5 tournaments this year, and they are trying to field a masters (over 34 years old) team to play in the preliminaries in Vancouver. The winners go on to the Nationals in Winnipeg. I'm still working on running farther and upping my totals for push-ups and sit-ups. I seem to have a hit a wall in all areas. I'm signed up for a 6-week knitting course and working to find the time to follow my own interests. After 8 years of parenthood, I see some room for my own needs, maybe, to get some atttention.

I'm reading alot about unschooling these days. I used to refer to us as unschoolers, because we do not follow a curriculum nor strive to replicate school at home. I've always believed you learn through life, and if you need to know it, you'll figure it out. Then I met other unschoolers and there seemed to be a check-list of things you DID if you were a homeschooler, and we did not do all of these things (unlimited tv, no bedtimes) so I stopped using that term. But now I'm curious about how it all plays out, how it fits together for those who do do it. I understand that i do not know what the future holds, so how can I accuratey tell them what they *should* know. So I'm reading a lot, gathering the info, asking the questions. I'm never going to be someone who follows any dogma, of any group. But I think there's a benefit to learning more about something you don't understand.

Happy Spring!


C

Super Socco! ( Week 29)

. . . the 'real fruit' drink of the 80's, made by Dairyland, of all things.

I recall only ever having the kind in the all-white box, I think it was lime, or some equally obtuse 'fruit' juice flavour. That, being afraid of being put in goal (oh the pressure!) and doing a strange marching routine in my bedroom that involved saluting while listening to the Whitecaps theme song on a 45, is my total soccer experience as a child. You must recall their catchy theme song.


*****

White is the colour,
Soccer is the game,
We're all together and winning is our aim,
So cheer us on through the sun and rain,
Because Whitecaps, Whitecaps is our name!

- Whitecaps theme song


And so it is with an odd happy-yet-anxious childhood perspective that I escorted Leif and Hannah to a week-long soccer camp over Spring Break.

Every day from 9-12, every day that it rained, some days a lot, other days only a bit. With a bag of snacks, another bigger bag of wet weather gear, and Ivy bundled up in every possible outdoor layer she owns, we ventured out to the fields. Hannah and Leif insisting on wearing the same outfit every single day (washed nightly by yours truly to remove the stink and damp of hours in the rain) of soccer shorts, leggings, double socks, shin-guards, long-sleeve shirt, and new Star Wars tees on top. Oh and the toques, of course. They divided them up by age, then had them play a bit and re-organised them into better-matched levels of skill.

Hannah found her niche in the 5-6's, and spent all her time running around, or reminding her coaches of the various rules they'd just taught her. I'd worried initially that this might not work out for Hannah. Though she loves soccer, 3 hours is a long time to keep that love going, and not just burn out. I stuck around for the first hour, watched her find her groove, and then went to run a few errands. I returned an hour later to hear her 'offering' up her rule-reminders to the head coach, and I knew she'd be alright for the rest of the week. Overall she has had a great time. Even though it gets tiring, she never gives up. She runs and runs whenever they tell her to, does the drills, plays the games, partners up. She asked me often why the two other girls in her group of 10 spent all their time trying to kiss the boys in their group. I told her those were silly, silly girls. There were rough kids, bored kids, the kissers, and Hannah just navigated around them, scoring or missing or forgetting to pass the ball.

Thursday was a hard day, because it ended with a game that sounds fun (Star Wars!) but in reality was for Hannah, a real spirit-breaker. Two teams, point of game to run to other end of field and steal a ball from the other teams pile. Do not get tagged by said other team or you must start again. I've never seen her run so fast, doing figure eights, kids falling in her wake trying to keep up with her. And yet, every time, she got tagged. And after about 8 tries, it hurt. There were tears, we tried to create a positive try, one coach helped her, encouraged her, played defense for her, but still, she got tagged. The day ended in tears of frustration, the heart break of losing ("Mom, our team won!". "Be quiet Leif!"). I tried to slide in the reality that sometimes we just lose, even when we've tried our hardest. Other times we win and feel great. Pointing out how hard she tried, and that that is so important; that she never gave up, she kept at it. And that it just downright sucks that there is no reward for all that effort. But maybe another time, there will be. I fought the desire to buy her a treat and 'make it all better'. It was all better in 10 minutes anyway. Overall she had a great time and came away with a new experience in her repertoire, and a new soccer tee and water bottle. Wahoo.

Hannah's latest pre-soccer dance tune My Door Bell by White Stripes

She's not yet seen this video for it, knowing there's all these kids in the video will just make it even cooler for her.

Her other favorite song right now is Soobax by K'Naan


Leif had an equally challenging week, in a different way. On the fist day he was bumped up to the 10-13 year olds group, to his absolute joy, and he stayed there all week. I'd look over at his field and see him go head-to-head with an opposing player, both hopping around to get control of that ball. He was challenged by bigger players, and sometimes overcame them and felt great pride, other times being defeated but taking it in stride. When he made a great save in goal the coach would say he was 'on fire', and he'd repeat this to me later. When he had the ball and other players would yell his name for a pass, I know he loved being part of that group. they taught him new ball moves that he has yet to master, which is great, because it gives him something he can work on on his own time, and reminds him of how much there still is to learn. Yet he can look back on all he has already learned and know he can do it, but it takes practice.

We're now moving into a break period between soccer seasons, and it will be a noticeable lull in his days. But his coach asked him back to the last 2 team practices, and he begins a new regimen of soccer 4 times a week in mid-April (reg class, first team sessions 2x a week, plus summer league). He's really excited about that.

Here's a soccer clip we love to watch.


Leif has found a new interest this week; dominoes. He began with a simple set-up, and then tried more interesting things. Here's one from the beginning of the week. he's since tried even more complicated things, and learned what works and what doesn't.



He asked me if ambulance drivers were doctors and we had a discussion about how they are not necessarily doctors, but that they have the medical knowledge to handle specifically emergency situations. To keep you alive until they can get you to a doctor. How do they do *that*? he asks. And I explained. This lead us to talking to Hannah about how to call the ambulance (or police)if she needed help. This jogged my brain to do a little safety session with them both, now that Hannah is older, about staying safe, getting safe, and getting help. We'll start this next week perhaps.

Leif and Hannah got some mail this week. My mom wrote to them to stay in touch when she cannot come to visit. They each got their own letter and got different, personal information. I suggested (lightly) that they write back. Leif was stuck at what he should write, how do you know what to write? I suggested writing his thoughts on what Nana had written (her dog is unwell) and then he could tell her a bit about his week. He opted for the latter, and with only one or two questions about punctuation (no spelling ones), this is what he turned out.



I think his attempts (and successes) at punctuation are great! I grabbed a kids punctuation book out of the library so we could look at it next week. I hope my mom and Al write back and we can continue this exercise.


Hannah's letter is precious. She never asked me what to write, nor how to spell anything, and just had the idea to parrot back what my mom had written to her. I love that she wrote 'are you' as 'R U'. Of course! To help you see her genius, here's the beginning translated for you. " Hi Nana and Al. I (heart) U both so much. How are you doing?" (HAW R U DOING). The rest is her own uncertainty at the idea of St. Patrick's day (I don't know what the green people are for? she writes) complete with 4-leaf cover art. I hope the recipients save these treasures!




On our paper route walk Hannah asked me about the word 'adjective', and could you use 'adjec' as a short form of it? No, sorry. I asked her if she knew what the word meant, which she did not, so I explained it to her. Then we brainstormed some adjectives. I said my tea is 'hot', she said 'or your tea is warm'. This is child-led learning, as opposed to rote grammatical worksheets. Yay.


Leif has been experiencing an uncomfortable bout of eczema and I suggested he go off wheat for a week. Before he did, he had one last big bowl of the beloved buttery noodles.



And a week later, his rash is 99% gone. It could be the wheat, it could be just a coincidence. We're adding wheat back in to see.

After all the Robin Hood reading and watching last month, it was only a matter of time before the castle playmobile stuff came out again. Now the basement is wall-to-wall Kings Feasts and then thieves try to sneak in and steal food for the poor. I can think of worse ways to spend your days. :)


As usual, I leave you with some Ivy moments. Th other day I bought her some new socks, and when we got home she wanted to put them on. I said no, she already had socks on and her new ones could get put away in her drawer for tomorrow. I noticed later on that she was in our room with the door shut, which is not an unusual occurrence. She likes to just hang out in the quiet sometimes. When she came out, the grin on her face made me immediately look at her feet. Oh yeah, she was proud. She'd put on her new socks if she damn well felt like it thank you very much!



Ivy loves to arrange her 'people in her 'stuff'. Her Wild things guys, or old rubber babies, or stuffed gecko, wrapped in blankets or stuffed in bags, put into her wooden carriage (used to be mine), or propped up in her high chairs. Here she is at her puzzle table where she's arranged her Max doll in a high chair with a piece from her puzzle, so they can work on it together. Golden!!!!!!!!




And at the end of the day, her stuff is all set up, waiting for her to wake up and get it all out again the next day.

Life inside a snowglobe (Week 28)

That is how we started this week. We woke up Monday morning to a glorious flurry of big fat snowflakes. We sat at the window and just watched them fall. We talked about Wilson Bentley again and his photographs of flakes, and still cannot believe they are all different, and yet we know that they are.

This tied in perfectly with our new french videos. I'd purchased two volumes of Passe-Partout, a french series I watched when I was younger. This first series was all about springtime, and the first episode about sugar shacks (cabane a sucre) in Quebec, and how they tap sugar maples for syrup in the winter. How they can eat so many foods and put syrup on them (pancakes, scones, ham, eggs, potatoes). How the syrup starts out as just a mildly sweet water from the trees, and must be heated over long periods to evaporate the water and leave behind the tasty syrup.

And since it was snowing RIGHT THEN, we put some syrup on the stove to boil, collected snow in a frisbee, and poured the hot syrup over the cold snow. Voila! Tire-sur-la-neige. Snow taffy. Oh my it is tasty, there is no flavour like it. The Francophone Society of Victoria is putting on a sugar shack festival this weekend and we hope to get to it, even just to have more snow taffy. Mmmmmmmmmm.


Hannah is asking more and more questions, most of which I can answer. What are our brains for? How come if you whisper 'bee' it sounds like 'pee'? Who made space? Like I said, I can answer most of them. She wowed us all by effortlessly counting to 100 this week, and then tapped into her creative side when I unpacked the groceries. I almost always, always bring my own bags. But if I forget, I get a paper bag.

So Hannah made this:



Robert Munch's Paper Bag Princess. Wohoo! sShe stores it upright on her dresser, the crown and Leif's ring from the dentist perched on top. She's 'keeping the ring safe for Leifer". Okaaaay.


And to give our youngest one her due, here is the Paper Bag Sister:




Since soccer classes are over now, we took to the local field and did our own thing. We played games, practiced skills, and just got out there with our cleats and enthusiasm for the sport. Next week both kids are in a 5-day soccer camp for spring break, and they're very excited. Hannah asked if she could be in it, though it's for 6 and up. Her coach said she would easily fit in, skill-wise, so we'll see if she can actually last for the 3 hours a day it requires. I'll be sticking around the fields just in case.


Leif got a great surprise this week, and we had an important little chat. His paycheque for his new, bigger paper route was deposited in his account, and it was $50 too much! I told him I'd found this error and had called the paper company to correct it (partially true. I already knew why it was higher, but had never told him to expect this). He said 'Don't TELL them!". And so we had a chat. About how keeping the money if it isn't ours is stealing, and how they could likely find the error, he'd have to pay it back anyway, and then how woud he look for not reporting it in the first place? "Okay, you're right". But then I explained that the money was a bonus for having his route for 6 months. The paper has a high turnover because it pays pennies, and they offer this incentive for carriers to stick with it. I'd never told him because I didn't want it to be his only motivation to do and keep his route. They don't give it every 6 months, just this first time. Had he known about it he could just quit once he got it. It worked out really well as another learning experience about work, and sticking with it, and not expecting a reward simply for doing what you'd agreed to do.

Hannah had a different but similar chat with me this week as well. Unfortunately she spent most of it looking past me out the window, and really got nothing out of it. Oh Hannah. :) In a fit of discord with Leif, she tore a library boook in half down the spine. I explained that we'd need to tell the librarian and perhaps we'd need to pay to replace it. This brought on tears about spending her remaining bit of money and then having nothing left, and we talked about how not being caught is not the goal when such a thing happens. That she's not in trouble, she is just doing the responsible thing, to tell them what happened and find out how she can help fix it. In the end they simply taped the book back together and we took it home. Hannah was not really present with me to get this little life lesson, but now at least we have it in our history to refer back to when another such situation comes up. And since she's already acting exactly like me as a child, I know more suh situations will come up. :)


She spent the rest of her library time like this.



In a fit of culinary creativity, I made dinner sound appealing by giving it a Star Wars name. Woohoooo. We made Nabooo Nachos together, complete with Slave I ship and Hyperdrive Ring ship nearby.




Leif decoded Taro's note this week. I hadn't realised that Leif had spelled DUDE d-o-o-d in his letter to Taro. To Taro it made perfect sense, of course, so he used it in his reply salutation to Leif. "Hey Dood". Be still my heart. Taro's mom and I both grinned about it, and in our usual teaching method, we don't correct it at that time, as we know they'll come upon the correct speling over the next few weeks. It's a word they use because we use it often, and write it often. To us, it's more important that they carry on a written dialogue than have perfect spelling at this age. We now that reading and spelling are not linked in such a way that once you can do the former you also can do the latter. Spelling correctly comes much later.

In this same vein, Leif has developed a keen interest in being asked to spell words, like a speling bee. Sushi, avocado, laptop . . . this will be a fun one to pursue over the next few months.

In Leif and Taro's coded correspondence, they talked about their favrite species. Yes, species. this led us here in our house to discuss whether zebras are the same species as horses (which they are, Equus) and to take a brief, brief look at some different taxonomic classificiations. Zebras, horses and humans. Leif asked about all the h.sapiens and homonideae classes used in our own classification. I hope to expand on this interest with some good library books.

Next week our library books are all about spring, and ducks. We are seeing some lesser-known ducks at the beach these days, and need to get to know them.

I leave you with some beach shots. Leif spent our many beach visits throwing logs into the ocean, Hannah spent them collecting bigger logs and rolling them into the ocean, and Ivy, well, she just liked to lay all over the logs.









C

Tiddlelipom and piddleliday! (Week 27)

I have no clue what that means but Pippi Longstocking sure does, and she says it all the time. We've had a lovely bit of luck this week. We'd recently finished reading Pippi Longstocking together, and then we learned that the local private school was putting on a production of this same tale. So we went, of course.

It was a great intro to theatre for the kids. Hannah was full of questions, about the program, the stage and set, why it didn't start when they said it would, what's with the music? She watched it with her usual serious look. Leif being older could follow the dialogue and got the jokes and the various characters. They both asked why the play didn't show the fire scene, or the big boat scene, and it took some time to explain how that was not possible in a stage, how movies differ. They set the play against a background of 80's music, so that's my next project for Hannah, to get her some great old-skool tunes.

Our winter craft class ended up meeting one more time. While we are not yet finished the knitting portion of our project, I do have pictures of what they've made so far. Now, I did help a smidge here and there, but overall the kids made these themselves. Stitched, glued, etc.


This is Hannah's beige Inuit dude, igloo and seal.



This is Leif's brown Inuit dude, igloo and seal.




Aren't they great?!!

We finished up soccer classes this week. Hannah is doing really well at it, both in her skill level and that she's enjoying the class. Her class is right before Leif's and then she is able to join in for Leif's class as well and play alongside the other kids. I feel great about this because she is happy, she's willing, she really does like playing soccer. Leif helps the coach out with Hannah's class, and he is working on playing down to the level of those kids; not being Mr. Hotshot all the time. We've talked about how important it is for their age to gain confidence, to feel that you can accomplish these little tasks well, and how he can help give the younger kids that feeling, and it doesn't change how good he is or how others see his own skill level. Phew.

The kids have spent a lot of time in the hot tub this week. It's become a morning ritual to jump in and play for a hour. They've developed a whole world in there. They get frisbees and lots of plastic animals, and create herds and families, and ferry them across the tub in the overturned frisbees. Some sink and must be rescued, others are adopted by bigger animals because there is no mother or father of that species.







Leif received a coded reply from Taro, but I'm not telling you about it until next week. Mwahahahaha . . . . (Okay in truth, he hasn't opened it yet).

C