Increasing the Peace

It's been several days since I posted last -- I've been finishing up our taxes, working on our filing system, and trying to keep up with the kids, who want to be outside now that the weather is getting really pleasant.

We haven't had any major adventures in this time span, though UnschoolerDad put up a swing in the backyard tree yesterday. Both kids are thrilled! He made the swing while P and I were at her gymnastics class. T didn't want him to use any power tools because of the noise, so he used a hand saw, a drawknife, and a file to shape it, and then the drill press (his quietest power tool) to make the holes for the ropes. T got to see some good old-fashioned hand tool work, and he was excited to tell me about it when I was helping him get to sleep last night.

There have been some spontaneous explorations. A few days ago, P drew a fish that looked like a flounder to me. I showed her some pictures online of flounder and we talked about their camouflage and how their eyes migrate to one side of their heads as they grow and metamorphose, so they can lie on the ocean floor and escape the notice of predators. Another time, P came up with the rhyme, "Prince Quince," and asked what a quince was. We found photos and talked about similarities and differences with apples. P has also asked the meanings of several words. Hesitate was one of them. I think she heard it in a book on CD; she's been listening to The Mouse and the Motorcycle and some Magic Tree House books.

We went to our unschoolers' park day this week, and there was lots of good play time for both kids. T finally got his hands on a sit-upon sand-excavator tool that he could actually use, and he stayed with it most of the afternoon. Ever notice how they're generally much too large to be usable by the kids who most want to use them? P spent some time climbing around with other kids and some time swinging as high as possible on the swings. We took food along so both kids could eat when they were hungry, and that worked out well. I got to connect more with the other moms there, who seem like a congenial and interesting bunch. Sometimes there are dads as well, but this time it was all moms.

I finished watching Apollo 13, though neither child chose to watch it with me (they watched videos from the library on dinosaurs and weather), except that P watched some of the very end, when the command module was entering the atmosphere, going through radio blackout, and splashing down. P asked why there was a radio blackout during descent, and I had to look it up. It turns out that because the command module is descending much faster than the speed of sound, the air molecules in the atmosphere can't get out of the way, so besides creating a sonic boom, they pile up in front of the module and get superheated and ionized. The sheath of ions around the command module blocks radio transmissions and telemetry in or out, so Mission Control has no information until the parachutes are deployed and the module slows down to non-ionizing speeds. I broke this down for P, and then showed her a tiny sonic boom with a whip made of a rolled-up bandanna -- something I learned in high school, but not in class!

While looking up sonic booms, whips, etc. to make sure what I was demonstrating really was a sonic boom, I encountered my own fun tidbit, which I never learned in school, but which is apparently taught in some high school math classes: if you square an odd number and divide the result into two sequential integers, those two numbers and the original odd number are the legs of a right triangle. This is the sort of thing I can't rest until I've tried to prove, so I did. It was fun dusting off my algebra, which actually wasn't that stale, since I taught various forms of algebra for four years after leaving college. It's amazing what having to think something through from multiple directions, to accommodate different students' ways of learning it, does for one's recall.

What feels really good in this past week or so is that the kids are learning to play together more peacefully. When P was in school, they didn't have a lot of time to play together because so much of P's time was taken up with school, getting ready for school or bed, or doing homework. Now they get lots of time together. And because I'm less occupied with all that school stuff, I have more free attention for helping them get through their moments of friction -- not just telling them what to do (though sometimes that comes first), but helping them learn how to handle similar future situations with less stress and greater consideration for each other. On Thursday we had one of our most peaceful days ever. The kids played on the deck, asked for pans of water and played with those, asked for food and had a picnic, and then just enjoyed the springtime sun on the deck for hours, with scarcely a hint of conflict. Meanwhile, I provided water, food, and towels when they were needed -- and got our taxes done! Since then it hasn't been quite that amazingly harmonious, but it's still less conflict-ridden than just a couple of weeks ago. The kids are expressing more affection and acting more kindly and helpfully toward each other and toward me. It's a marvelous feeling. We still have our moments, but they're fewer and easier to handle.

With these improvements, I feel more willing to take the kids on adventures, knowing they have greater capacity to handle them without melting down. Adventure, here we come!