Travel Pix

Well, its taken a little time to get them all uploaded, but here are a few of the pix from our travels to CT and RI. Aunty and Grandma Jan should both be pleased to learn that I have deleted the candids Mo took of y'all's backsides! The evidence is gone forever. Of course, I didn't even have the camera with me for the Really fun photo-op: Mo "teaching yoga" to Liz and Lynn - what a hoot that was! Thanks for being so accomodating!

Learning to Juggle

Okay, so I'm learning to juggle. Never done it before. I've tried and gotten to the 2ball thing but haven't been able to transition to 3. Mirror, at the Hollow, has taught juggling in the past and agreed to help me out. Okay, fine. I'm learning to juggle. My kid, of course, is going me one better and learning to pass clubs. Yeah. Here is the Mo Method for learing how to juggle:

Step one: locate professional juggler. Between the three faerie comms and visitors, this is the easy part. We are crawling with them.

Step two: when the juggler starts juggling (and they always do), run up with an abundance of excitement and jump up and down to get his/her attention. The juggler will throw something at you - jugglers find excited children totally irresitstable and -unless s/he is juggling something dangerous- will invariably toss an object to the child.

Step two and a half (optional): catch it

Step three: throw it back. Jugglers love this. They even seem to enjoy the fact that young, excited children aren't very acurate (like my spelling). They will play this game over and over and over.

That's it. The basic Mo Method. Its just a matter of her learning to catch, and she'll be passing balls and clubs. She'll probably be passing sickles and torches before she's done. Now we're talking about putting up a slack-line somewhere, so with that, juggling, and the trapeze (did I tell you we've been offered trapeze lessons this fall?) she'll be ready to go to circus camp in a couple years.

Seriously, though, my so-called "shy kid" astonished me at a party this summer by getting a juggler to pass clubs to her. She was out of her regular space and he was a complete stranger (and male, besides) - all things that generally will cause her to refuse to even make eye-contact. But There She Was! Talking happily to a wild hooligan with a bunch of clubs.

Not 5, no way.

We didn't have a birthday party for Morgan. She was adamant that she didn't want a birthday, doesn't want to be 5 at all. She'll just wait another year and then turn 6. George says she's 4 and 2/2. Okay.

We went to a general August bday party up on Short Mountain, and that was fine. One of the guys got a pink unicorn stick-pony that he offered to Mo. She was delighted and has been composing a thank you/ bday card for him. It amazes me how many words she can spell on her own, now.

I've uploaded the pic of the Owl and Pussycat quilt. I'm really happy with it and am working on more in a similar style. I was sooooo reluctant to do the competition thing at all, but doing this quilt has really sparked some ideas for me. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me to use fairy tales, fables and myths as subject matter. Go figure. Anyway, right now I'm working on a piece with a heron and frogs (looking for the fable, its here somewhere), the Crow and Pitcher, and the Tortoise and Hare. Plus the big green thing with the three kids and the bubbles. I've given up any expectation of having finished pieces for sale at the Studio Tour - if I can have a bunch of really exciting things in progress that will be fine. Especially if I can get some decent commissions.

Oh, I also had this wild idea the other day of a use for one of the partially finished quilt tops I have on hand. I thought, well, I can quilt it really simply - just a grid or something - and then slash through the middle, tack the cut ends back and have Another quilt underneath. Maybe even "wrapping" onto the backs of the folded-back bits - as if one quilt were sort of exploding out of another. I'll have to think hard about this one. It sounds like a lot of fun or a royal pain in the ass. Maybe both. Hmmmmm.

We're starting to get ready to go out of town again - this time East! I'm looking forward to seeing Jane and Jan, in particular. Morgan got so excited about the idea the other night she packed her suitcase. I'm still at the doing laudry and making lists stage.

The heat is really doing a number on me this year. I sort of fell apart at one point. Stressing out over money doesn't help either. The new AC is helping alot. Interestingly, the other thing that is helping is for me to take a vitamin before going to bed. I usually take them in the morning, but I've been so lethargic this summer! The worst has been falling into bed early and then sleeping late - I kept missing the cool parts of the day. But if I take a vitamin at night I wake up by 6 and can get stuff done in the cool. Its just the opposite of what I'd always been told about vitamins - which is that they don't do any good at all if taken at night. So much for expert advice.

Speaking of.... I've been hanging out alot on some of the unschooling message boards, and thinking about archiving some of my better posts here. I've been a little nervous about that - y'all are getting used to the idea of us homeschooling (I think) but some of the unschooling stuff is pretty radical. OTOH, most of my "better posts" include anecdotes about Morgan. We'll see. I'm going to go through my files and see what I have saved, anyway.

My goodness, I've fallen behind, haven't I? We've been such social butterflies, lately, I hardly recognize us. Parties and gatherings and get-togethers.... Well, really the big thing is Mo and I have been spending more time than ever up at the Pumpkin Hollow community. Its been sooooooo hot, and they have the pool - so we have gone up every day and some days twice! to play in the water and cool off. They have more shade over their house, too, which means even hanging out on the porch is better than being in our own house. Phew!

We've all (Mo, George and I) gotten a lot closer to two of the residents there: Shiloh and Mirror. George has been enjoying playing music with them (mostly Shiloh, pictured above - dangitall I forgot to rotate it, but you get the idea) and we've been cooking dinner for each other. Its nice to have regular company at our house - I actually have some motivation to clean, and even managed to get rid of the huge pile of junk that had taken over our dining table. "So this must be the dining room...."

The pix above are both inside the new shop extension - its really coming along nicely. Now we're fantasizing about a house extension. Morgan has started sleeping downstairs by herself off and on. She really wants to keep one of the kittens, and I think George is sweet on the idea, too. He's pretty cuddley - the kitten, I mean, although George is pretty dang cuddley himself. That means only the two black kittens to get rid of - Morgan has finally agreed that that's a good idea. We'd better get on the ball while they're still little and cute. I should also get on the ball about cleaning out Morgan's room upstairs. It kind of got to the "disaster" point in terms of cleanliness (or rather, lack thereof) and I just haven't had the Oomph to deal with it. It has a lot of wasps and spiders - those fat juicy spiders that the wasps just love. Yes, its that time of year, again, when you don't want to startle the wasps - not for fear of a sting, but b/c they drop the icky anaesthetized spider on the floor, bed, pizza, whatever they happen to be flying over. Yummy.

Morgan's galpal, Savannah, turned six a couple weeks ago so her mom and I have been chatting alot about legal stuff in regards to homeschooling. Six is when you have to start reporting to the state, in TN. There's a law that kids attending public school can't go straight into first grade - kindergarden is now mandetory. Considering that only K teachers need any more than a bare-bones teaching certificate, that's probably the best year of education a lot of kids will get in this state. Anyway, we have both been wondering if that meant we had to sign up our six year olds (I'm not reporting until next year) as gradeK the first year. Lots of homeschoolers do this anyway as a way of dealing with the mandatory testing issue - kids basically get an extra year to get ready. Then, if you really want to buck the system, you can also have your kids "skip" a grade - say, 5th grade, when the testing is done. Very popular. Don't know if we'll go there or not. Mo's reading at approximately a first grade level already, so I'm not exacty worried. If I get so PO'd at the state of TN that I don't want Mo tested at all (at this point I'm not sure what the harm would be, at least she'd get experience with standardized testing) I'll do what Luann is doing and use an "Umbrella School". No testing at all if you go that route. Just fill out their attendence forms instead of the state's. Incidentally, we discovered the law only applies to public school, not private or home. Its only an issue if you try to enroll a kid in public school for first grade - if you try to enroll directly into second they'll test the kid, but not for first. Dontcha love bureaucracy?

Mo Artwork

I couldn't resist putting up some of Mo's latest - she seems to be having an explosion of artistry. This house is one of my favorites - she's drawn an entire "village" worth - all very colorful and fun. I'm tempted to use them as patterns for quilt blocks. We'll see how that goes. The other is a Shopping list, carefully detailing the colors of gumballs she would like to buy. You can see where she has written the words: red, purple, blue, pink, orange. She needed help spelling purple and orange, but the rest was all on her own.

art with animals

Morgan has been enjoying reading to the kittens and also photographing them - both areas where kitten cooperation is not always guaranteed! So far no kittens have been (seriously) harmed in the process. Here's one of her pix, and also one of her reading - the amorphous black mass on the chair is a pile of kittens.





Today Mo made play-dough, basically by herself, although I prompted her a little with reading the recipe. This evening, there not being enough to make a giraffe (she got the head, neck and body, but only three legs) she decided to sculpt a kitten. They are much smaller, she explained to me, so there would be enough "clay". Its so humid that even though we had a decent consistency dough this am by evening it was nearly the consistency of pudding. Not the best material for sculpture, but she did manage to create a reasonable kitten before it melted. We'll try again tomorrow.




Our other animal art adventure this evening involved salamanders. I'm not sure what promted this - oh, I am informed that one of Mo's coloring books has a salamander and she wanted to know what color they are. George offered to look the subject up on the computer, and found a site with lots of pix of different kinds of salamanders, Mo selected one to use as a template. Once she had the critter colored in - George was still browsing the site, it was nearly dinner time, after all - she wanted to look at more, and found this guy with the black polka-dots on a red suit.





Cute, eh? Definately an outfit I would wear. So she snatched up pencil and paper and proceeded to draw - I just had to share.

She needed help coloring in some of the leaves - there are so many! - but otherwise its a Mo original. I love both the mid-ribs on the leaves and the smile on the salamander.

Beautiful day in the holler

Summer solstice was this week so our merry neighbors, the Pumpkin Hollow Community, had their annual celebration starting mid week and lasting through the weekend. Lots of fun fun fun! Actually, this was also my work-week at the Morningside food buying club, so I wasn't able to really "attend" in the sense of hanging out there all the darn time. That worked well for me, none-the-less. I burn out on parties pretty quickly. So I alternated working and fest-ting.

Highlights of the fun included a swimming trip to a local state rec area, where Mo had an absolutely wonderful time swimming and playing in the lake with a bunch of people she didn't know or barely knew. That was exciting for me to see. One of the neighborly Pumpkins, Shiloh, has been building a nice little friendship with Mo. About a month ago we were up there helping clear out their spring and the two hit it off big time. Shiloh is fairly quiet, not in-yer-face at all, which is just right for Morgan, and they were soon neck deep in the (empty) old catch-basin, scrubbing slime off the walls together - a perfect job for a little kid - and having a blast. Since then they have captured fireflies together, played "monster" and generally hung out. So, once I pooped out at the lake Shiloh was into paddling around after Mo and they ended up across the water from me with a group of festies, two of them kids but mostly adults, singing and playing together. Very nice to see.

Other fun stuff: the ubiquitous mud bath, for which one of our local potters donated some old clay, so my skin and hair are feeling really soft today, much singing of Shiloh's new songs, drinking various home-brews ala Mirror, Viva's Indian dinner, and various adults-only activities in the barn....

Today I'm home doing catch-up housekeeping and Laundry! Phew. It hasn't rained for awhile so we had started to conserve water by not doing laundry at home, but it poured something fierce the other day (boy am I glad I wasn't camping) and our tank is overflowing, so awashing we will go! I'm caught up on necessaries and onto odds and ends - like winter stuff that can get packed away as soon as its washed.

And of course, drinking white wine - this summer's favorite is Pinot Grigiot. The wine class I took voted it "easy to drink too much of". Goes great with housework, blogging and fried summer squash. Yummm.

Trip to WI

Wouldn't ya know, I go away for a week and it takes me a week to recover. Well, I did have some catching up to do, I suppose. Some of the Pumkin Hollow Comm neighbors came down and kept my garden tidy for me, which was a good thing. The weeds outside the garden are pretty fierce already. Onions and garlic were ready to harvest, though, and lots of peas. Just starting to have basil and summer squash. No tomatoes yet. I've got my eye on those. First fried green tomatoes of the season should be coming soon! Yummmmmm.

Y'all can see a bit of what Morgan was up to on this trip. Lora and Mike have a great big yard that was perfect for kid-play. No sandbox, but some nice dirt and freshly mown grass to play in. Fun, fun, fun. Mo took a liking to Mike right away - pretty unusual for her - and they got to play together a couple times, although he had to work for the most part. Lora's unemployed right now, which meant we got to hang out all week long. Woooo Hooooo! I just love hanging out with Lora. Morgan enjoyed playing with her, too, mostly with the help of feathered cat toys. I hope the cats had a good time.

We kept things pretty low-key, for the most part. Did some shopping - Lora took me to a place called "Dig-n-save". Ooooooh. Aaaaaaahh. It was wonderful. Among other things I found an old-fashioned scooter for Mo - the wheels on the new ones are so tiny I've been afraid they'd just stick on our half-step-up-from-gravel road. This one has larger, bike-style wheels. Needs new tires, but hopefully that won't be a problem. Mike and Lora picked up a bike for Mo at a yardsale before we got there, so she was able to learn to pedal it around on their patio (she's really struggled doing it on our yicky little road) which was a big thrill. That came home, too. I'm so glad we took the truck! Boy, was it packed coming home. We made a dressform, too, Lora and I. Which is to say, she made the dress form. I stood still while she wrapped me in duct-tape. It seems to have survived the trip home okay.

Starting to think about the trip East, now. I'm still kicking around different ideas - like maybe coming after Labor day instead of in August. I'm also considering making some stops on the way to visit friends I've made online. We'll see about that. Anyone have a preference for beginning of Aug vs September? I'm really leaning toward September, the more I think about it. Kids will be back in school by then, but the weather will still be good enough for some fun trips - Mo has a request for a beach, and maybe a zoo and it would be nice to not have to fight the summer crowds. Lemme know what you think, Grandma Jan and Aunty Jane!

Glad to be home for now.

on the road

We drove from Dismal to Michigan City, IN yesterday. Not too bad a trip - it took us about 9 hours all told. Mo's a fabulous road-tripper. We bought a bunch of new coloring books, mazes, and dot-to-dots for the trip, and I packed a whole bunch of her books - pretty much anything I've seen her reading on her own, so she could read in the truck. She was cool with that, and driving the truck (a late decision, the fuel injector on the car is being weird) let her sit next to me and be able to reach all her books and snacks by herself. Made for a fairly smooth trip.

We had one little rough spot where I hit some traffic and she wanted me to look at something. I snarled and snapped and Mo proceeded (once she'd cooled off a little) to draw a picture of herself with a big frown on her face and a giant red X. Pretty clear message, there. Lately Mo and George have been talking about anger-management, which is very interesting. He had kind of a blow-up with his saw mill several weeks ago and did a lot of yelling before he cooled off, and apparantly it caught Mo's attention in a big way, so that she actually asked him about it. So they've been chatting on the subject of how they can deal with anger and frustration. There was a small incident last week where Mo was frustrated with a computer game and went and pet the kittens for awhile to calm herself down before going and turning the computer off. Its just fascinating to watch her working on this.

We're taking a day to chill out at my dad's house before heading up to WI and my friend Lora's house. It's been nice and mellow for the most part. There are two other kids here, Jake and Aaron - I'm not sure their exact ages, but Jake's a couple years older and Aaron a couple years younger than Mo, I believe. The kids have gotten along really well (for the most part). They've all been pretty wired to have a new kid to play with - in Mo's case two!

My fabulous dad (hi!) got a portable dvd player for us! Wooo Hooo! I'm very excited. If necessary I can tuck Mo out of the way at Lora's house with a movie while we all hang out being weird grown-ups, plus it will be handy in the car, plus other travel adventures... And! it will be handy for visiting up at the Pumpkin Hollow community. We've started going up there for dinner on a more regular basis, but I've been reluctant to bring Mo too terribly often as adult dinners can be long, dull affairs from her perspective. Now I have more options. Thanks, Dad.

cat pix

Here are some pix. My phone-hook-up is not cooperating well enough for more:
So, for starters we have the pix of "Mama Lumpy-Shiver," as she is now called, having her kittens with Mo and George in attendence. Mama was a stray kitten Mo and I brought home about a year ago who just loves Morgan to bits, despite Mo's attempts to love her to bits (ahem!). Anyway, Mama was just thrilled to have her humans on hand - even came running to check on Mo when she tripped on the way to the bathroom and cried a little. It was cute. The cat let Mo and George handle the babies as soon as they had dried off. Mo was thrilled. I think George was, too.

Ever since, Mo has been vigilant about making sure Mama Lumpy is spending plenty of "quality time" with her babies. She likes to hunt out the poor cat whenever she sneaks away to have a little down-time and plunk her right back in the cardboard box with the kittens. It was driving me nuts at first, but I have since seen George do the exact same thing, so I'm letting it go.

Thanks to all this feeding, the kittens are growing and George and I have been trading some rough humor about how big they need to be to feed to Killian (our charming corn snake) and whether it might not be the most cost-effective way to keep him fed. He's in his somewhat frantic spring mode, right at the moment, so I'm not sure he'll eat anything at all.
Naturally, Morgan has drawn endless pictures of cat with kittens ever since the big event. Somewhere I have one that says "one cat and four kittens makes five". Great. Now they are math-manipulatives. I hope this doesn't mean we need 100 of them! Counting to 100 is her latest passion - with occasional forays into the thousands just for fun, it seems.

new links

Lots of new posts this weekend!

I'm learning more about this blog-thingy every day, it seems. One thing I have just learned is that if I post something I've been working on as a draft for awhile it posts based on the date I started it - hasn't really been an issue, yet, but I'll have to keep an eye out for that in the future - I have a few things floating around as drafts right now. If something ends up posting "out of order" as it were, I'll try to let y'all know. I'm definately going to have to try it once a couple months go by and there are "archives" just to see how that works.Hmmmmm.

Anyway, I've also figured out how to add links. For starters I put up some basic homeschool stuff in case anyone is interested. I should probably put my website there, but it hasn't been updated in over a year, and I don't really know what to do about that. Hmmm. If y'all want me to link to any of y'all's personal blogs or websites, let me know.

running in circles, as usual

Morgan's cat had kittens a week ago (sunday)! Four little cuties. I've been trying to get pix up all week to no avail. *&^%@! computers!
As soon as I get the darn things to load, I will tell more cute kid and kitten stories.

I've been running in circles all week, it seems. Nothing has gone 100% right unless it has been something completely spontaneous. All planned activities have gone awry. Just one of those weeks.

I'm starting to get ready to go up to WI with Mo next week, stopping to visit my dad on the way up. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm nervous, too. We didn't go anywhere last year so I feel like I'm out of practice travelling and visiting and all. I ordered a bunch of books for Mo for the trip - mazes and hidden pictures and several coloring books. I've been fantasizing about getting a portable DVD player, but I don't think the budget will support that even with my tax return. I still want to go out east later in the summer - probably the beginning of August. I've been trying to get my gf, Luann, to schedule her trip to Maine at the same time so I can ride with her and share the driving, but she's not sure she'll have the money to go anywhere - her house and camper got totally smashed by baseball-size hail a month ago and the insurance isn't wanting to pay as much as she would like. We'll see. Maybe I can find a nice Faerie with a driver's liscence who doesn't feel like hitchhiking.....

Okay, I'm rambling. Its past my bedtime.

five love langs links

Just for fun, I'm posting a link to a short test for these.
http://www.fpgwebs.com/fivelovelang_profile.asp
It doesn't give an overview of the languages, though.

This one gives a brief overview as pertains to children (same one I posted elsewhere):
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d46/psy/dev/Spring99/schoolage/love.html

Here's one pertaining to adult relationships/marriage:
http://www.herald-of-hope.org/fivelove.html

Just thought I'd put it all in one place.----Meredith

montessori stuff: socialization w/o punishment

Dealing with Mo in social situations has really forced me to think about rewards and punishments from a different angle. Generally, when adults speak to Mo she looks away, hides her face and refuses to answer. The usual responses to this kind of behavior have always seemed very punitive to me - I was "the shy kid", and I definately felt punished, shamed, by the condescending "oh, she's just shy" comments. Even worse were the attempts to "draw me out" - those were like some kind of torture. On top of it all, the constant reinforcement of my in-ability prevented me from actually learning social skills. It was only living in community that I discovered that I was not "socially backward" and started to grow. So when Mo started showing signs of the same sorts of tendency, I struggled to find a different way of reacting.
The first time I read The Montessori Method I knew I had found what I was looking for. Scanning my marginal notes in chapter 5 I find a big YES! scrawled next to this passage:
The child, because of the peculiar characteristics of helplessness with which he is born, and because of his qualities as a social individual is circumscribed by bonds which limit his activity.
An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of these various obstacles. In other words, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish, in a rational manner, the social bonds which limit his activity.
Little by little, as the child grows in such an atmosphere, his spontaneous manifestations will become more clear, with the clearness of truth, revealing his nature. For all these reasons, the first form of educational intervention must tend to lead the child toward independence.
From: The Montessori Method (1912) by Maria Montessori, translated by Anne Everett George. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1912. pp.95.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/montessori/method/method-V.html
This describes so well my experience. With Mo I have been working to do as Dr Montessori suggests - to lead her toward independence, rather than demanding performance and shackling her with "social bonds". Below are a couple of anecdotes that I hope will demonstrate how this looks in real life.
The other day our new neighbor came by to introduce himself and while chatting he asked Morgan a question. I don't recall the precise question, only that it was atypically respectful for an adult speaking to a young child - for example, "how do you like living here?" as opposed to "how old are you?". Morgan looked away and didn't answer. Generally in this sort of situation I would wait a moment -long enough for her to answer if she chose, but not too long - and then return to the conversation or change the subject. No explanation to the other adult - because I remember what those explanations "felt like" hearing them as a child. What impressed me about this gentleman was his reaction: he imediately appologized to Mo in the most natural way possible, saying: "I didn't mean to put you on the spot there, you don't have to answer me." It was exactly the kind of thing one would say to another adult if one suddenly realized one had asked a rather inappropriate question. We (adults) returned to our conversation. Less than five minutes later Morgan had become a part of the conversation, too, in such a seamless and natural way that I can't even remember the details. She joined the conversation the way anyone would - a word here, a comment there, until we were all chatting away merrily. Given the liberty to behave normally, rather than being shamed for how "abnormal" her reaction was, she was able to express a "spontaneous manifestation" of the propper social forms.
A few days later an incident occured in the library that sharply contrasted, for me, the difference between the Montessori ideal and "traditional" education.
Morgan was sitting in the young-childrens' section of the library looking at books when another child approached. This girl was perhaps a year or two older, and clearly a school-child. What struck me most was her furtiveness. She practically snuck up to Mo, glanced at her out of the corner of her eyes but sat down within touching distance. Mo imediately looked up and said "Hi, my name is Morgan. Would you like to look at some books with me?" Picture-perfect friendly social behavior (and in the appropriate low tones for a library, this mom was very impressed!). The other girl responded tentatively and with a minute the two were chatting quietly about books and characters, reading passages to each other - you couldn't have imagined a better example of how we would all like children to behave with regard to reading.
Suddenly the girl's mother swooped down: "What are you doing here? These books are for babies! Stop talking and go pick out a book from the big-kid section!" The child slunk away, head down, her joy in the library diminished. It was shocking. I'm sure the other mom had the best intentions in the world, but she had not observed the girls' interaction and saw only misbehavior, which she corrected sharply.
It got me thinking about the word homeschoolers usually flinch at: socialization. The girl was being "socialized" by certain standards. She had been told to pick out a book, so spontaneous social activity was inadmissible. It didn't matter that she was socializing about literature - probably the other parent would not have believed such a thing possible. Children socialize about games and toys, not books and reading - they have to be "taught" to discuss literature, they certainly don't do it spontaneously (the common wisdom). Since Morgan is not being socialized in this manner she is Free to develop genuine relationships on a wide variety of topics. Because she was surrounded by books, it was natural for her to engage in a discussion of childrens' literature with another person. It would not have occurred to her to discuss her favorite toy in such an environment - to her it would have seemed inappropriate.
Morgan has the libery to behave spontaneously in social situations, and as Montessori describes above, I am slowly seeing her social behavior become "clear, with the clearness of truth." She is increasingly aware of social forms and conventions, as I hope these examples also show, but she is unhampered by restrictions or punishments. Its inspiring just watching her sometimes!
---Meredith (Morgan 4.5)

Kittens!

This past Sunday, Morgan's cat "Lumpy-Shiver" had four kittens. It was a day of high excitement for Mo, as you can imagine! The day began with the cat trailing around after Morgan, meowing for no apparent reason. She would let Mo pick her up and cuddle her for a minute, then want to get down and wander around the house for awhile, then she'd be back meowing... George and I finally decided she was in labor and he bustled around in proper daddy-fashion finding a cardboard box while Mo went and pillaged the rag collection for bedding. The cat got the idea immediately - apparently cats are genetically wired to have their babies in cardboard boxes, because she climbed right in and got down to business. Morgan and George spent the day with Lumpy, watching the kitties being born. They were both delighted.

Anyone need a cat?

Today (Monday) Morgan has been ever-so-solicitous of "Mamma Lumpy" and her babies, reading them stories, writing and singing little songs to them and scolding Lumpy whenever the babies cry and she doesn't immediately come running. This has all been going on in the "guest room" (actually, I think it would be better termed a "guest closet", but I don't want to scare y'all away). The weather has been icky (still), so I'm glad Mo has something to occupy her, but she has been getting a bit antsy. George had a few errands to run today and took her along, but I can tell she needs to do some running and climbing. Hopefully the rain will abate for a day or two and she can work off some energy.

What that kid is up to

Here are some of Morgan's recent projects. This is "A happy mommy turtle full of eggs," according to Mo. She has been very interested in eggs and things that lay them. A couple weeks ago the creek was full of frogs, first singing (Loudly! spring is NOT quiet in the country, let me tell ya!) and then stacked one on top of the other -which makes them much easier for a curious little person to catch! So naturally we have been observing the frog life-cycle. Right now we have a fish-tank full of tadpoles that she checks several times a day to see if they have grown legs yet. Today our turtle (Rex, alive and well after three winters!) is swimming in their tank and we are wondering if he eats tadpoles. There are certainly plenty, if he does.



The map is another of Mo's creations - she periodically draws maps of things, usually when we are getting ready to go somewere. She drew a long map of "the way to the pet store" on a roll of clear contact paper - unfortunately she used a "dry erase" pen, and it.... well, erased when she rolled it up! But this map is in magic marker on a very large sheet of paper - its Pumpkin Hollow Road, of course! Mo and I are standing next to our house (I don't know where George was, that day). At one end of the road is the all-important Trampoline. Almost at the other end is something right in the middle of the road itself - that's a trailer that got stuck one day, blocking the entire road and part of the creek for hours. I guess it made an impression on her.



She's a big fan of goats in general and this story in particular and decided to write the title on her chalkboard. She's terribly self-motivated. I use a Montessori technique when she wants to know how to write a word - writing it out on a slip of paper for her. She's pretty "aware" of phonics - for a long time she loved to write "nonsense" words and ask us to pronounce them for her (still does, but now she corrects our pronounciation!), which I think was her private method for learning about letters and sounds. I haven't pushed it, don't ask her to "sound things out" or anything, although I will pronounce words very clearly when writing them for her and comment on irregularities. This week she started writing short phrases with a mix of words she asked me to write and words she remembered - oh! I finally get to be "Mom" if only on paper! "Meredith", I have been told, has too many letters. Fine by me. The dot-things in between the letters are deliberate - a pretty common technique some young kids use to indicate spaces. Mostly she seems to use them if the words are very close together.



I got this dress form when the fabric store I was working at closed (the Big cutting counter in the background, too) - its more for display than actual sewing, but it has a nice cloth cover that Mo likes to sew things onto. Another of my little Montessori-isms is to give her "real tools" - for sewing projects I let her use my scissors and real needles. She's very careful and serious when she sews - measuring things before cutting them and holding both the needle and scissors correctly. Occasionally we sew together on the machine, too, with her pushing the pedal and me doing the "feeding". She's good at anticipating when to slow down and stop, but doesn't feel up to handling the fabric as well as the pedal, yet. She has a hammer and saw, too, but also has George's tendency to just leave things wherever (I, of course, would never do such a thing!)*g*.

I've been studying a lot of Montessori theory, lately, some of which is pretty radical. I had assumed Monessori was just for pre-school, but it goes right on up through high-school. Not very many of those around - you're lucky to find an elemetary school. Its pretty impressive, all based around the idea of kids as autonomous learners, working in collaboration with others (kids and adults). Fun stuff. I'm taking a course on-line at the moment and have been amazed at how much of her research (from over 100 yrs ago!) into learning is being validated by modern brain research. Of course, unlike Piaget (don't get me started!) she had a decent sample space - hundreds of kids from a wide variety of backgrounds.

I've also been happy to discover that a lot of the "materials" associated with Montessori learning are designed to allow a classroom to mimic an enriched home environment - not a problem for me. The science stuff, especially, is something we do almost entirely hands-on - like our froggy friends, but also periodic "experiments". I found a site called "How to Teach Science" which has a lot of interesting ideas for implementing math and science learning into the early years. Mostly stuff I have been doing already, but I did put up a Periodic Table (next to our 100s chart) for reference. We've even used it a few times already.

We don't register for homeschool until next year, but I definately feel like we're "doing it" already. Mo's reading more and more on her own, writing, counting to 1000, basic operations (add, subtract, fractions) up to about 12, general science, practical life, grace and courtesy (more Montessori stuff). Homeschool group meets fridays at the park, play-date with her buddy Savannah (another hs'er, and one that's definately Morgan's speed) on saturdays, regular visits to the guys at Morningwood Farm, which wants her to design some letterhead for them.... we keep busy, that's for sure.

I know eveyone worries about the "socialization" thing, but I've been researching this subject for almost six years now, and even the NEA is starting to admit that homeschooled kids are Not behind socially and actually seem to have comparable to better self-esteem. Frankly, having met more hs'ers and watching the differences between hs and ps kids (that's homeschool and public school) I have been noticing that hs kids are more willing to accept new kids into a group and are also better at introducing themselves to new people, tend to be more polite, and seem better at sharing and group problem solving- skills I'm definately interested in promoting in Morgan. She's really very good with other kids - very socially ept, that is, and also with adults who treat her like a person. Adults who speak in that silly "poodle voice" or start off by demanding personal information (how old are you!) she doesn't speak to, and that's fine with me.

Woops, got off on a rant, there. With big age 5 coming up we're starting to get that question, and of course everyone has to say something about socialization until I just want to scream. If any of Y'all actually want to do some research of your own, fine by me. Here's a place to start:

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/

Great big site with a zillion links and resources.

A note about "comments" before I go, since there has been some confusion (by me as well): to post a comment, click the word "comments" at the end of this post. I believe it is in green and has a number next to it. Apparently the "invitation" I sent out was to be able to post on the blog, so those of you who have figured that out will be deleted (well, really, all of you will be deleted, but only 2 of you are likely to notice anything). When you post a "comment" I get an email telling me what you said, and it gets recorded here on the blog. If you want to read others' comments, click that little green word. Tha's all fer now!

Sneaking into the new millenium

I keep meaning to send mail, send pictures, send artwork, send cards - you wouldn't believe the number of cards Mo and I have bought, written in and never sent! Yikes. So I'm going to try this blog thing. Can't be too hard, right? We'll see.

Well, I see several problems, right away. Sigh. I'll get it right eventually.

I've set this up so all y'all can see what we're up to and chat about it without all the hassle of trying to figure out who's awake when and what phone to use, so please let me know (via comments) that you've stopped by. I'll get an email telling me someone commented. If this thing won't let you make a comment, let me know so I can add you to the list - I'm not interested in the free world commenting on my life, but supposedly I get to have some control over this, so only "invitees" get to make comments.

Looks like this is going to be a little rough at first, especially figuring out how to do the pix the way I want. Somehow I'm going to set this up so George can post, too - we'll see how that goes - you can see what he's been doing up at the top there (the middle pic). He's doing it right now, in fact: sawmilling. This pic is from the logyard where he buys logs and sometimes sets up and saws - its a sweet deal. He gets space to work without having to bring logs home - sometimes they even load them on the mill for him. He also gets free advertising of the very best kind around here - "hey, look, there's a guy with a sawmill!" And - "oh, yeah, I know a guy with a sawmill." Very good. He also added a "saw port" to one of our outbuildings so he can saw here (its not as loud as the table-saw, good for me), which has its up-side, too, although I had to put a fence around the garden to keep the lumber out.

Mo and I have been visiting the Pumpkin Hollow Community trampoline when the weather permits. I sit and knit or read - its been a great place to work on "assignments" for the online Montessori course I'm taking. I get on and jump for a little while, but I don't have the energy of a 4.5 year old, so I wear out pretty quickly! I was hoping to be able to scan some of her stories and artwork into the computer and upload them, but the computer and scanner aren't speaking at the moment, and I haven't figured that out, yet. Isn't technology wonderful? I just love the way it makes our lives easier! Another time, then.

Well, that's all for today. The rain has cleared up, the sun is out - time to get out of the darn house! I'm looking forward to hearing from all y'all!