Three Plus Two

Seven Quick Takes

One

I'm trying to avoid typing any word with the letter k because Chipmun - k pried various k -eys off my k - eyboard with a for- k the other day, and the only one I can't get bac- k on is that offending letter that we've been tal-k-ing about.  So I have to remove the flat top piece and push the little rubber thingie underneath in order to... use that letter.

Two

I should be working (that letter again, slowing me down) on Katydid's IHIP right now.  My brain is not in gear, though. Ragweed season just started.  How do I know this? Because my cold that was not going away because of my allergies just got worse again.  And because there is goldenrod blooming in my field.  And because I noticed the first red leaves on one of our maple trees yesterday.  And because yesterday night at soccer we saw three wedges of geese flying south. We had 2 whole days of 80 degree temperatures, and now it is apparently fall.

Three

This is why I confused the heck out of my allergist.  She asked what time of year was bad for me, and I said spring, summer, and fall, and she looked at me kind of funny, and I said, well, ragweed season, and she said, oh, late summer, and I thought, I am in the wrong part of the country, aren't I?

Four

This is what my house mostly looks like right now:

Books everywhere.  I'm not going to show you my bedroom floor.

Five

Jen's post about aprons reminds me that I should wear mine more often.  I asked for aprons for Christmas a few years back, and Andy bought me 3.  I only remember to wear them when I'm already covered in flour, though, and they're a little difficult to wear in summer because they're full aprons, and we don't have any air conditioning.  (Not that we need air conditioning, mind you, but it does get a little warm here every now and then.)  What I really need to protect my clothing, though, is some kind of Mommy clean suit.  Jen says she can sometimes go a couple of weeks without washing an apron, but by the end of the day, particularly in the summer, I am almost as dirty as the boys.  Also, why is it that I find those books about homey hand-sewn creations like aprons and quilts so appealing when I can barely sew a crooked stitch myself? Living vicariously, I guess.  I also happen to be an inveterate armchair traveler.

Six

I made my first salsa of the season today, but the pepper I used (the first off the plant) had no heat.  Too much rain and not enough sun. Still, it makes me happy to have fresh salsa.

Seven

Last night we arrived home to find that tornadoes had touched down only miles away from Andy's family in Memphis.  A quick phone call and we were all grateful to hear that everything was okay.  Today we are getting the rain from that front -- an all-day soaking rain, but no tornadoes, thankfully.  On Wednesday, we did have a few storms and some torrential downpours... which knocked out power to the Amtrack trains, which Andy happened to be taking home from New York City, which meant that a 2 hour ride turned into a 6 hour ride.  He did, however, make it home for our 15th anniversary, which was yesterday.  We celebrated by eating McDonald's at a soccer game.

Country Diary: July Garden

I was going to name this post "Tomato Madness," but then I thought, well, there are other things going on in the garden, too.  So instead I went with the boring "July Garden".

Weather: 75 ish and the sun has come out again after a few brief rain showers.  I believe it has rained almost every single day this month -- at least a few sprinkles.  We have spent more than a few soccer games huddling in sweatshirts.  I made Italian sausage and onions Friday night.  It was raining again, as usual -- a steady cold rain -- and as Andy sat down he said, "Boy, this is a good dinner to warm you up..."  And I finished for him, "... on a cold July night."

In Bloom:

Black-eyed Susans at the edge of the comfrey bed...

Katydid's miniature wildflower meadow...

A closer-up view of Katydid's flowers...

The roses, which are a bit past their prime.  The old growth is already spent, and now only the new growth is blooming.  I'm not deadheading the flowers because I want to try to collect rosehips in the fall. 

The milkweed smells wonderful and has been buzzing with bees all week.  I haven't seen any monarch caterpillars, but...

Katydid found this Mourning Cloak caterpillar on the driveway and brought it inside to see if she could watch it form a chrysalis and turn into a butterfly.  We see a lot of Tiger Swallowtails around here, but we've never seen a Mourning Cloak, so it should be interesting.  The caterpillars feed on birch and wild roses, so it's strange we've never seen one before (as we have both in abundance).  Katydid has been taking pictures every day to chronicle the caterpillar's progress.  She reports that it has formed a complete chrysalis already.

Another insect related to blooms...

The milkweed beetle.

In the Barnyard:

Turkeys.

Actually, they're in the orchard with the elderberries.  The elderberries were teeming with Japanese beetles, and the turkeys love to eat Japanese beetles, so it seemed like a good match.  We have them enclosed with electric poultry netting, which does absolutely nothing to stop them from getting out.  Heritage turkeys are exceptional flyers.  And they don't seem to care about getting shocked by the netting either, which I find strange.  Their favorite place to go after they get out of the netting is the chicken coop, where they eat the chickens' food, then fly up to the roof to roost.  They have good personalities, though.  They're very inquisitive and people-friendly.  The Bourbon Reds and Blue Slates are not very smart.  The Naragansetts (the ones that look like wild turkeys) seem to be far hardier and more intelligent as well. Oddly, of the 8 turkeys that survived out of our original 15, only one is a tom.  He's the big Naragansett with the red neck.  I like the turkeys far better than the meat chickens, who will not only peck but bite you when you try to change their food and water.  (We ordered a straight run of White Rock and Delewares for meat birds, so I'm talking about the young cockerels here... Katydid has actually already decided which one she wants to eat first, which is something.)

In the Garden:

This is why I wanted to call this post "Tomato Madness":

We thought these tomato plants were going to die.  The night after we planted them, we had a light frost here and there.  Some of their leaves curled up and turned yellow and black.  Andy went out and bought more tomatoes to replace most of these, which looked pretty bad. Now they have formed their own tomato jungle.  These are not the only tomato plants I have.  In fact, this is just half of one bed.  I have another bed this size full of more jungley tomato plants.

I am really scratching my head about this.  Usually in a cold, rainy year, the tomatoes do not do well.  The plants don't blossom, the blossoms don't set, and the tomatoes take forever to ripen.  Or, they are ruined by slugs.

Can you see all the tomatoes in there?  They're pulling the branches so close to the ground the branches are developing roots.  (All those little hairs on a tomato plant have the potential to turn into roots, which is why when you plant tomatoes, you're supposed to stick them in the ground right up to the bottom of the first set of true leaves.)  It's been raining so much (or we've been at soccer so much) that we haven't had time to attend to the garden.  So now we have super-sprawly tomatoes and weeds run wild among the eggplants and cabbages.  Anyway, these are Early Girls (I think), a hybrid variety, but even my heirlooms (Brandywine, Striped German... and oh, I can't remember the others) are doing well for the most part.  I had to toss a big half-ripe Striped German to the chickens this morning because of slug-damage and rot (which made me gnash my teeth a bit) but most of the tomatoes don't look that bad, even though they're growing so close to the ground.

I did pick this one before it could get any worse, though:

First tomato.  Not pretty, but my expectations have been low in the garden this year.  Deer ate every.single.pea plant. Rabbits ate all (all) my lettuce and spinach.  Something is decimating the brussel sprouts. The squash and cucumber seeds rotted in the ground it was so cold and wet in June.  And crows stole all our corn twice.

See the corn plants here and there? (If you squint?)  We planted that whole space to corn.  The only corn that actually managed to escape the crows are two rows on the right, which happened to be under netting.

I'm not feeling very charitable toward the crows lately.  They run the hawks off, but I don't think that makes up for stealing the corn.

A few more garden pictures (because I like to look back from year to year to compare):

This is the first year we've grown cabbages, and they're doing well in this wet, cool weather.

My few remaining squash plants are starting to bear.

The peppers are not doing too badly.

The onions are getting rather large.  They like the steady supply of water.

The blackberry bush is still my favorite.  It's loaded with fruit and will need to be wrapped with bird netting before too long.

Harvest this week:

2 yellow squash, one sweet pepper, a handful of purple and yellow beans (not pictured),  1 zucchini, 1 cippolini onion that Chipmunk stepped on and knocked out of the ground, 5 giant Walla Walla onions (not pictured), 10 Yukon Gold potatoes, 5 stalks of rhubarb, roughly a half-pint of raspberries, eaten off the bushes, 1 cherry tomato, and 1 nearly ripe Early Girl tomato.

I made a strawberry-rhubarb crumble that everyone pronounced one of the top 10 best desserts ever... and a 3 bean salad (with squash and zucchini added) that I am going to have to eat all of myself. (Ahem.)

And now I had better go tie up some more out-of-control tomato plants. Before it starts raining again.

Montessori for 12-18 year olds: Curriculum, scheduling (part 2 in a series)

This is the second post in a series about my attempts to formulate an educational vision for my 12 year old son. 

In my last post I shared a summary of Montessori education for adolescents ("Erdkinder" or "Farmschool") as I understood it.  In this post, I'd like to get a little deeper into the nuts and bolts.  I've finished up Farmerboy's first grade IHIP, and now I need to focus on Gareth (7th grade) and Katydid (5th grade).  As I try to translate my thinking into something the school district won't flag as too weird, I try to go from the big picture to the particulars. 

I need to add a little aside here.  If you've been reading here long, you know that my oldest is only 12.  He'll be 13 in October.  Therefore, I'm writing about all this stuff -- educating teens, etc. -- without having ever done it before.  Things may work out the way I think they might... and, ok, global warming may also turn upstate New York into the French Riviera.  In other words -- I doubt it.  But in order to get started, I need to have some sort of framework in mind (if only in my own mind) so I don't feel like I'm floating off in space, grabbing at any tether line I can find.  This is why I've started off by trying to get a big theoretical picture first.  Probably what will happen is that all the theory boils down in practice to a simple set of guidelines that proves (to us) most helpful.  Whatever seems not to work in practice we discard, and don't usually feel that badly about it.

So. What I hear from many people is that they have heard Erdkinder mentioned and know it is supposed to be a "farm school", but they're not really sure how it works... or how it might work when translated into the home environment.  And it is necessarily a translation.  Maria Montessori's whole concept of adolescent education is based on the idea that adolescents need to leave their families and form a community outside the world where they can order their own existence (within limits) and do responsible work.  She did not think this was possible within the family, because she thought that family life was "ordered to the needs of the parents."  I must confess this tripped me up for more than a little while.  Looking at my own household, I cannot see where it is "ordered to the needs of the parents".  But Maria Montessori was writing in another time and another place, and I do see how it is more difficult to give teens the same kind of Erdkinder experience at home.  In fact, I don't really think it's possible.  For one thing, on a Montessori farmschool, you might be able to assign a workcrew of 5 or 6 teens to build chicken coops or muck out a barn.  At home, having 5 or 6 in their teen years all at the same time might be possible, but it won't happen when the first one hits the age of 13!  So at home I think we're mostly looking at individual, family, and community projects that we can press into service to form a practical education.

We may not have a community of 13 and 14 year olds, but allowing our children to make fundamental contributions to our families -- for instance, growing the food that we put on the table -- and giving them the latitude to really do it themselves is no small thing. 

But back to curriculum (again).  After a google of "Montessori Erdkinder" and a little bit of reading, it looks as if Montessori middle and high schools fall into two groups.  There are the more "traditional" Erdkinder schools, which relate most of their academics back to actual farmwork.  And then there are Montessori middle and high schools which use a fairly standard curriculum, but alter it in Montessori-ish ways -- self-paced learning, research projects, practical projects, etc.  The first group -- the farm school group -- is the most interesting to me.  

From "Montessori Erdkinder: the Social Evolution of the 'Little Community'" by David Kahn, on science:

The farm’s “occupations” create smaller, constantly changing groups within the Little Community. Some work is individual, some in pairs, some in groups, but all requires practical knowledge and has a real goal: There is pond study, food preservation, woodlot management, simple machines, bioshelter, nutrition, pigs, sugar bush, human development, astronomy, bees, chickens, organic gardening, bridges, cows, weather, forest study, sheep, organic gardening, and then some…

 

Each small group of students forms an occupation community—they have a job to do with a rhythm of individual and group work. Each occupation group reveals a small whole, the whole of the cow’s world, the whole of the bioshelter, the whole of the organic garden—each is an operating system, each is a community within a community and a stepping stone to the overview of the social structure of the whole farm enterprise. Each occupation also requires research in the sciences—zoology, botany, chemistry, physical science, economics, archaeology—connected to both history and culture. The interface of all occupations compounds the potential for shared community information. 

 

And on history and the social sciences:

 

In teaching history we emphasize the chronology of individual places that are culture-specific yet have unfolding stages that are universal: the early stage, which is agricultural (the connection to the farm); the classical stage, with the emergence of the city; the transitional stage, when regions debate how they are to

form a federal union or constitution; and, finally, the unification or adult stage, which usually results in the explosion of culture.

 

(I'm not sure that the world has ever really seen an "adult" stage of civilization, but you get the picture.)

 

Maria Montessori Farmschool Erdkinder emphasizes the continuity of Montessori work from the elementary years: the organizing principles of the Timelines of Life, Man, Culture, and Civilization, and the Fundamental Needs of Humans. (You can find these somewhat detailed in the Monteaco History 6-9 album.)  Presumably these will now be used to suggest practical projects.  For instance:

 

"The Timeline of Man illustrates the evolution of man from the cave to early settlers, along with the flora and fauna that surrounded him, as well as the tools, structures, and implements he learned to make.  The students follow this process by actually producing these primitive tools and implements, and trying to build primitive shelters, looms, kilns, and musical instruments with these tools."

 

Subjects listed in this book are: Physics, geology, botany, zoology, anthropology and social science, history, geography and economy, language, mathematics, and fine and practical arts.

 

Thrush also includes a schedule or "typical day".  Her farmschool emphasized a different subject for each day of the week:

 

Monday: Mathematics

Tuesday: Language

Wednesday: Geography and Anthropology

Thursday: Field trip and/or Work day

Friday: Natural Science and Music

 

She also included three basic interest areas that students "rotated" through: applied arts, work outdoors with plants and animals, and formal academics.

 

I thought the schedule was particularly interesting, because it seemed so reasonable.  "Feeding of animals" came first, for half an hour, then two and a half hours working on the "subject area of the day" followed (which might include any of those three interest areas mentioned above), then an hour for lunch around noon, thirty minute for "sports", another hour for subject area work, and then thirty minutes to clean up at the end of the day.  So three and a half hours of focused work, which might even be mainly done outside.

 

On the whole, it seems that the Montessori Erdkinder curriculum is heavy on the natural and social sciences, and can be organized by the Fundamental Needs of People material. 

 

Next post: Taking all this information and adapting it at home, or "What It Means to be an Eclectic Homeschooler". ;-) 

 

 

 

 

A vision for the education of teens: Montessori Erdkinder

It's that time of year again when I have to remember what I was doing in the spring, before I had to pack up the old school year and clear out the art cabinet and plant gardens.  I'm not really in the mood to start thinking about the new school year again, even though technically it has begun; in New York, the year officially runs July 1-June 30.  But it's time for me to write our proposed curriculum out for the state, so I better get myself going.

I was organizing some books the other day when I ran across some notes I made back in May, mostly about Gareth's education.  I spent many months reading and thinking about how to approach 7th through 12th grades.  Andy and I discussed at length various programs, approaches, and ideas.  Around the middle of May, I sat down to write up a vision of a teen's education for myself, which is how I eventually get around to synthesizing all the stuff I read.  (Otherwise it just knocks around my head like so many broken pieces in a toy that should work but doesn't.)  I thought I might share it with you -- or at least parts of it -- since I have heard from several people in the same place I'm in.  When a child hits the teen years, there seems to be an inordinate amount of focus on doing the kind of learning that will fit neatly into a transcript.  But, frankly, we didn't start homeschooling just so we could all of a sudden become completely traditional in the teen years.  At first all the requirements suddenly made for teens scared me a little, and then they just annoyed me.  Wait a minute -- we're homeschoolers! Why do we have to fit in all these boxes anyway?

The truth is, I don't believe we have to fit in the boxes.  Not the standard plain brown cardboard variety anyway.  As homeschoolers, we may have to bend a little, especially if our children are interested in attending college, but for the most part, I think designing our own boxes -- baskets, gift bags, whatever -- is perfectly doable.  Others have done it before us.  They have walked the road less traveled, too.

Well. That's a hopelessly vague metaphor.  And I'm not trying to suggest that those families who do decide to sign up with traditional, school-in-a-box curriculum providers are somehow wrong, bad, or less courageous than those of us who go our own way. No, no, no.  All I'm saying is: for those of us whose children do not fit anybody's boxes, including those made by companion homeschoolers, there are other paths to take.  I just thought some of you might be interested in seeing the path we're hacking through the underbrush.  I know I'm always interested in seeing the way others are building their paths, even if I'm going to stick to walking my own! 

In any case, here at the beginning of the teen years the vision I have in my head borrows from most of the same places I've always borrowed from.  There's a little bit of Charlotte Mason in there, some classical ideas, a sprinkling of Waldorf, more than a dash of Reggio/project-based education, and a hefty helping of Montessori. In a recent Reggio post I knocked Montessori a bit, but I don't want to leave the impression that I have found nothing useful there, or even that I have abandoned it completely.  Either of those impressions would be wrong.  I find Montessori for 3-6 year olds difficult to implement in my house as it is implemented in Montessori schools OR in homes with only one or two young children.  But I still incorporate Montessori principles and materials in our eclectic mix of everyday learning.  And after delving into Montessori for ages 12-18 and discussing it with Andy and even trying it out a bit, I think that the Montessori Erdkinder model is going to form the basic structure of our home high school.

What is Montessori Erdkinder?

"Erdkinder" is German for "Children of the Earth."  Something else you will see Montessori junior/high school called is "Farmschool."  There isn't much written about Montessori education at this level, probably because so few schools have done anything with the sketch Maria Montessori provided for the education of teens before she died.  She never had the opportunity to test her theories by founding her own high school, and there are still not many Montessori schools out there for this age group.  I expect that schools find her model of teen education very difficult to implement, but I have to tell you, when I first stumbled upon the idea of Montessori farmschool education, I let out a big whoop of joy.  "Finally!" I told Andy.  "Montessori education that I can do!"

In a nutshell, Montessori believed that teens needed to work -- just like toddlers and preschoolers and elementary aged kids -- and not just academic work.  Here's a quote:

"Education should, therefore, include two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence." (From Childhood to Adolescence, quoted in Maria Montessori Farmschool Erdkinder)

I haven't read From Childhood to Adolescence yet, which is where Maria Montessori lays out her ideas for the education of teens, so most of this summary comes from Maria Montessori Farmschool Erdkinder, a slim volume of proposals and newspaper articles put together by the founder of a Montessori secondary school in Half Moon Bay, CA.  (Nienhuis sells both books -- a much better bet than finding them on Amazon.)

In order to meet the physical and mental needs of adolescents, she suggsted forming schools that were more like working farms, run by the students themselves.  The students would do physical work in the "clean air" and eat "nourishing food from nearby fields".  The problems they encountered in their work and other experiences would form the basis of their academics (or at least multiple jumping off and connecting points).  From what I have read about modern schools experimenting with her theories for 12-18 year olds, the Montessori idea of "freedom within limits" is still in force, but the environment is much less structured.  Chores on the farm are required, not a matter of choice, because animals and gardens must be cared for; academic sessions are required but choice exercised within each session.  Farmwork related to study is "counted" -- for example, doing bookkeeping for a farm store; building an irrigation system as related to history, etc.  The teacher -- I assume, as in younger Montessori classes -- must exercise guidance to see that a teenager does not spend all his time digging ditches, but digging ditches is a part of the curriculum.

Montessori also suggested that a key ingredient in the education of adolescents was the road to economic independence -- work for wages.  To that end, farm schools should sell their products, and profits should provide some renumeration for the students.

You can see why I was excited when I started reading about Montessori farmschools.  But I don't believe that you need a farm to apply many of Montessori's ideas.  In my next post, I'll talk about some ideas I have for how we might go about having a vision for our kids' teen years, and I'll talk about how I think that Montessori's Erdkinder ideas might be adapted for those not blessed with acreage.

For now, though, I'll leave you with a few links:

Montessori Farm School, Hershey, OH

Hershey Montessori Farmschool: the Adolescent Community

Trefoil Montessori Farmschool 

Montessori Middle and High School

Erdkinder - the Montessori Answer to Adolescence  

Working on...

For some reason I feel the need to tell you that even if a week goes by and I don't post anything, I really am working on several posts.  It's just that July is so busy.  I think I feel this need to advertise the fact that I am writing because I just spent a fair amount of my "free" (cough) time today figuring out to make a slideshow in Photoshop and now I can't figure out how to add it to my post.  I also can't seem to get certain of my children to do their chores in under an hour because they cannot stop talking and goofing off.  I may be just a wee bit frustrated.

So, to brighten up the situation just a little, let me tell you what I am trying to work on this month:

• Painting with little ones

• A garden/homestead tour

• Montessori Erdkinder and a teen's education

• A first grade plan

• A day at our house

• The "Honest Scrap" I was tagged for by Sarah

• Our Insect nature table

Will I get them all written in July? Well... probably not.  I have to write out our plans for the school district by the end of the month, and I'm mostly either in the car or doing laundry the rest of the time.  I'm also still trying to kick this cold/stomach virus "thing", which seems to not want to let go.  But I'm trying!

A Busy First Week

According to the state, our new school year starts July 1.  So every year on July 1 I have a tradition of shaking everybody's hand and informing them that they've moved up a grade.  My kids always laugh at this, because I'm sure they know how arbitrary it is. 

Theoretically, we are on summer "break".  All this means is that we're not doing math or diagramming sentences.  At our Little Flowers/Blue Knights picnic Saturday, one of the missionary brothers of LaSalette asked me if we were done with our school and if we would start again on September 8 when our homeschool group has its annual "kick off the new school year" picnic.  I have a stock answer for those sorts of questions, which is that we go year round, taking breaks as we need or want them.  It's hard for me to limit our "school year" only to those times when we do math, and as patient and kind as Brother is, I'm not sure he really wanted to hear the long, complicated explanation.

So even thought it's summer time, I'll be doing week-in-review posts for the new school year as I can.  At the end of the year I print out all the review posts and add them to our documentation.  Even so, they're just snippets of our lives.  If there's anything that seems to be missing or that you'd like me to elaborate on, please feel free to let me know! 

This week was probably one of the busiest of the year (which is why there were no blog posts.)  I still can't seem to adjust to the yearly rhythm of life in upstate New York.  It seems like everyone tries to cram every single activity that could possibly be done into the first two weeks of July.  This year summer soccer season began (three nights a week), Gareth had Boy Scout camp, Katydid went to a day camp at the Farmer's Museum, and our Little Flowers/Blue Knights group had a field day.  That was all we could possibly manage to fit in. What we couldn't do that we had wanted to were botanical drawing lessons and photography at our local arboretum. 

 

Scout camp.  Gareth came within 4 points of earning his archery badge in one week.  He did manage to earn his geology badge and come home with some nifty fossils, and he improved his swimming skills. The camp has a terrific fossil bed with Devonian-age fossils (mainly shells) literally every few inches.  Camp is only about fifty minutes away from our house, so Andy drove down every morning and met Gareth for breakfast, and I brought the little boys and Katydid down for a family outdoor meal, cooked in rock ovens and over the campfire, and for the closing ceremonies' barbecue.  After running around in the woods with the youngest son of Gareth's scoutmaster, hauling firewood, and cooking crescent rolls on sticks over the fire, Pop turned to me with huge eyes and said, "Can we live here???"  Gareth did well being away from home for the first time, but was happy to be back with a hot shower and all his books.

The Farmer's Museum is supposed to replicate a small village around 1845.  Katydid spent her week at daycamp weaving baskets, pounding iron hooks in the blacksmith shop, quilling, making folk art paintings, wandering around the art museum across the street, taking care of farm animals, and playing Native American games.  Since Thursday and Friday were nice days (the other days were cold and rainy), we walked around the museum after we picked her up.  The major exhibit indoors is called "Wild Times" and displays the main animals of the various regions of New York.  They've set up a puppet theater for the little ones -- easily the little boys' favorite place.

 

Although Farmerboy also liked the bear rug. 

Katydid has been very upset with her brothers lately, because they never want to play soccer with her.  Having to play soccer after spending all day at camp made her tired, but happy!

So our daily routine was a little unusual this week, but by the end of the week we had fallen into a predictable pattern.  Andy would get up super early to take care of all the chickens and turkeys and drive down to Scout camp to have breakfast with Gareth.  I would get up and take an incredibly fast shower so I could be in and out by the time that Chipmunk realized I was gone and woke up.  Then I would get everybody breakfast, and we would be out the door by 8 AM-ish.  On the way there and the back, the boys would quiz me on my knowledge of dinosaurs, boa constrictors, insects, and Star Wars.  When we arrived back home, Andy would already be there, getting ready to go to work. We'd chat for a few minutes, then I'd wash dishes and do laundry while the boys watched a little TV or played. After that habits would kick in and the boys would demand to work on some kind of project.  After they were satisfied with their project work, they'd wander off to play before lunch. I'd take a quick break at lunchtime, then more dishes and laundry while the boys played, and it was off a little early to get Katydid so the boys could have a nap in the van. After this week, I have no idea how mothers of large families who have their kids in school manage. We are all very tired and ready to stay home in the mornings.

The one thing I did find very interesting this week was how deeply ingrained our "choice time" routine has become.  I suggested exactly one activity this week, and it was on a morning when some of us were recovering from a little mystery virus that has been going around -- nausea, stomach upset, and cold symptoms, all together.  Everything else was suggested -- "demanded" might be a better word -- by a child.

Here's the breakdown of what the little boys did this week:

Monday: Helped Andy build a chicken tractor. (Andy took Monday off.) Monday was mostly sunny.

Tuesday: Built spaceships out of cardboard boxes. This is the one activity I suggested.  Pip was still recovering from the sudden onset of our virus on the sidelines of a soccer game the night before, Farmerboy wasn't feeling too well, and neither was I, so I let the boys watch an episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars.  It was raining, and after the TV was turned off the boys were a little at loose ends, so I thought spaceships might be welcome.

 

This is Pip's spaceship.  We covered the outside with aluminum foil. The paper plate "steering wheels" were Farmerboy's idea, as are the feather "lasers".

Wedsnesday: Yet another TV inspired activity, I'm embarassed to say, but this one was entirely the twins' idea.  They'd watched an episode of Sid the Science kid about leaves. Pop immediately wanted to draw leaves, and then collect his own leaves. Pip really got into collecting leaves (in between rain showers). He did not want to draw them himself, so I relented and drew for him.  Both twins wanted to tape leaves on their papers. And Pop told me some stories about them to write down.

We put them on the bulletin board.

Thursday: Another cold, rainy morning. After a long discussion about fossils in the van, the boys arrived home ready to work, and my desire to load the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher was nothing but a pesky obstacle.  I decided to get with the program and do my chores later. First the boys got out the fossils, then the shells, and then the playdough to make their own "fossils":

 

 

Pop lined all his shells up below a fossil guide.

Then the boys decided they wanted to paint.

 

Pop and Farmerboy are painting dinosaurs. Pip likes to paint boxes.

 

Farmerboy's dinosaur. 

I have a whole post I want to do about painting with little ones. Hopefully soon.

Friday: Friday morning was sunny -- finally.  The boys found some earthworms and rolie-polies in the flower bed where they can play with their trucks and spent a good long while setting up worm farms and rolie-polie habitats in my good freezer containers. (All in the name of science, right?) Then Pip wanted to build a bug out of clay. They used sculpey, plastalina, and florist's wire.  (And Pip actually made a spider.)

 

Rolie-polie habitat.

 

Studying insect books.

 

Pip's spider close up.

A rolie-polie Pip made, Pip's spider, a bee Pop and I made together, and a plastalina butterfly with proboscis by Farmerboy.

This week was a lot of work, but I was pleased with the results.  I was proud of Gareth for doing so well at camp, happy that Katydid was able to follow her own interests, and very satisfied with how independent and motivated the little boys were in doing their own work.

Emergency preparedness: working on the pantry

Last week, when I wasn't thinking or writing or reading about educational philosophy, I did a fair amount of reading and thinking about groceries.  Actually, since I plan on making emergency preparedness a focus of our year, this does actually relate to homeschooling. :-)  Periodically it hits me that we live in area where winter storms might knock out the power for long periods of time (as happened to many people we knew during last winter's ice storm).  It also hits me that I have a bunch of little kids.  How would we be able to get them out in a fire? (This thought kept me up nights when the twins were infants and Farmerboy was only 2.)  What if something happened to me?  Would my kids know what to do?

So we're going to work on this throughout the year.  (I'm putting it in the curriculum I submit to the school district as health.)  Gareth and Katydid are both working on the Boy Scout First Aid merit badge right now (Gareth will be able to actually earn the badge; Katydid is doing the same work for the Pilgrims of the Holy Family badge) and I am working on rebuilding our pantry.

When we decided to eat mostly local, the number of meals using canned goods we bought from the store went way down and we had very little canned food in our pantry.  The freezer was full of meat, vegetables, and fruit, but the pantry was not.  It's far easier for me to freeze our produce than to can it. There's a problem with having most of your food frozen, though.  What if the power goes out to the freezer?   And sometimes (like last week) we ran into tough weeks where there wasn't a whole lot that was easy to make (or that didn't require defrosting, as in a five pound chicken or a four pound roast), and of course we fell back on what American families often seem to fall back on. McDonald's. 

As it happened, we also loaded Quicken this week and were able to see just how much falling back on McDonald's in a bad month (or two) was costing us. Yikes! And then there was this conversation at 4real on the cost of meals per serving, which has given me a new hobby. ;-) The challenge is, of course, in using high quality local in-season ingredients in an economical way. In thirty minutes or less, since Chipmunk still refuses to sleep anywhere but on me.

Anyway, this week I bought extra emergency rations to start rebuilding our stock of just-in-case canned goods -- primarily so we'd have something to eat if we all got sick or if I got sick or if we'd been running hither and yon all day.  After this, the plan is to keep stocking up a little at a time, taking advantage of sales, etc.

(You know, some people think about how the world will be beautified or inspired by what they blog, but I must confess that I just think things like, "Hey! My cupboard's full of food again! I think I'll take some pictures! LOL)

So here are my "the cupboard's full of food again" pictures, which I hope you'll tolerate... I am working on a couple of homeschooling posts, so if you come here primarily for those, just click away and come back later :-).

This is the cupboard I use for canned goods.  You can see that it's not very big.  Our house was built in the 1950's by a doctor with five children -- girls.  Apparently large families in the 1950's only stored food in their bomb shelters.  Actually, I'm not really joking; the doctor did put a bomb shelter in the basement of this house, along with his practice, and this bomb shelter (totally wasted on a house outside tornado country) is lined with wonderful can-size shelves.  In contrast, the kitchen has a skinny little pantry with an almost uselessly deep cupboard on top.  I don't like storing too much in the basement, because a)I forget about it down there and b) it's damp, and I don't want the cans to rust. I'm sure it was all much nicer when it was first built.

Anyway, I restocked some of our "emergency" food, which in our case means soup, canned fruit, and creamed corn. (And spaghetti sauce, since I usually make and freeze my own.  But I used up the two emergency jars right before I took this picture.)  Everything else I use in regular cooking: canned beans, various tomato products, canned salmon, coconut oil, molasses, and (you can't see it) enchilada and barbecue sauce.  I'll continue restocking a little more every week, since this is obviously not enough to keep a family of 8 going for any length of time. I cleared off a shelf in another cabinet so I can expand.

I would also like to can tomatoes this year... if it ever gets warm enough or dries out enough for them to ripen... and if the groundhogs don't get them first.  My garden this year has been one catastrophe after another.  But that's another story.

This is the cabinet next to the canned goods, which I use for pasta and rice (and dried beans).  We had gotten low on spaghetti, which is also an emergency around here.  The blue bags are tortellini --  convenience food, but a lunch staple. Definitely something to rely on when I can't cook, too.

 

The actual "pantry".  I had it organized not too long ago, but it doesn't take long for it to degenerate.  Top shelf is really supposed to be staples like various vinegars and sugar (I keep my flour in the freezer because of bugs), but you can see that a couple of bags of chips-on-sale have crept in, and that the sugar has moved accordingly to the third shelf.  What you can't see in this picture is the 5lb jar of buckwheat honey that's out on the kitchen counter, or the jars of strawberry jam tucked in behind... something... on the 2nd or 3rd shelves.  The Gatorade is also gone by now, even though it was supposed to be for sick emergencies, not for kids to come out drinking after playing soccer in the yard.  We really try hard to avoid all food dyes, BHT, and TBHQ because they affect the behavior of some of our kids.  I don't think Gatorade is on anybody's diet.  There's more juice in the basement, because Wal-Mart was running a sale.

The freezer forms the bulk of our food storage, but I was more excited about actually having food in our cupboards.  We're in that time of year when the garden hasn't really gotten going yet and the supply of meat is dwindling, too.  I think we're pretty much done with the lamb we bought last year, and we've eaten a good chunk out of the side of beef we bought in October.  We have a few chickens left -- in the freezer, I mean.  The bulk of our chicken supply is pecking each other in the brooder right now.  It's the time for inventory: we need more lamb, I can't buy enough pork, we didn't eat very much of the broccoli I froze, I stumbled upon two more bags of squash, we're out of corn, and we're still eating last year's green beans.

I am beginning to refill the freezer in a small way, though:

 

14 quarts in the freezer.  And like I said, I made jam.

 

It turned out pretty well, if the rate at which it's being eaten is any indication.

So... anyone else want to share a peek in the pantry?  If you do, leave me a link in the comments!

A picnic basket for the little ones

 

I was clearing out some shelves in the laundry room today to make more room for storage.  Some things I cleared off the shelves went straight into the trash, and others went into the garage sale box.  Then I ran into this picnic basket.  My sister -inlaw gave us this basket many years ago.  I have always loved it... but have never used it.  There are only four place settings in the basket, and our family quickly grew beyond the four settings.  But it appeals to the reader in me -- having enjoyed too many scenes in books about picnicing on sandwiches and lemonade beneath shady oaks.

So, as I sat on the floor in the laundry room wondering how I should use it (and feeling guilty that I hadn't used it), the boys came in to see what I was doing.   And I decided that I would take a chance and let them use it, as I had often thought of doing when I saw it sitting up there on the top shelf near the ceiling -- lonely and gathering dust.

I see it as sort of a combination Montessori/Reggio material.  The dishes are real china and must be handled carefully.  The basket has latches that must be twisted to close and open.  The place settings fit into an inner basket that can be lifted out of the larger basket.

One of the features the boys found most appealing is the way the utensils slide into the leather strip on the inside of the lid.  (I removed the forks and knives.  I didn't feel like making any more ER visits this week.)

I folded up a table cloth and laid it in the basket underneath the dish insert.  The boys then filled it with toy food and immediately carted it off to have a picnic in the family room.  I think that it will be a way for them to practice manners and social graces.  It will also be interesting to see what sort of "picnics" they have.  I predict that it will be taken "caving" in the closet at least once.

Fortunately, we have a ready-made place for it, too.  (Which is not always the case when I have a bright idea.) 

 

It fits right here next to the toy kitchen. (And yes, that is a stethoscope from a doctor's kit on the toy stove.  I don't know why.)  The kitchen fits in the space between a sort of free-standing room divider that divides our family room area from our living room area (for lack of a better way to describe it).  On the other side of the toy kitchen is the piano.  (It's not a perfect arrangement, but it's the best we could do.)

The twins have needed some guidance with the dishes, but I remain optimistic.  At the very least it was something interesting to do on a rainy day.