Summer Smorgasbord

It gets harder, after a while, to pick out the learning opportunities from the rest of life. Partly this is because P has become such a strong reader that I am often unaware of what she's taking in, especially when it's in magazines like Highlights that she snaps up and reads voraciously to herself instead of asking me for help. (One example: We were out letterboxing one day, and a clue called for finding the face of Shakespeare. P was the first to recognize it on a sign. It turned out she'd learned it from a Magic Tree House book.) Partly it's because I'm relaxing a bit about the whole keeping-track thing. And partly it's because we've been slacking for the early summer and not getting out on lots of trips with high learning-new-things potential of the easily recognizable kind. The inescapability of learning, however, keeps popping up.

There are the conversations that come seemingly out of nowhere and lead to new understandings. P found an advertisement for her in the mail recently that said she must "Send your card back TODAY to take advantage of this special offer!" She told me about it a day or two later, figuring that she'd missed her chance since she hadn't returned the card, and we had an interesting little talk about how advertisers like to create an artificial sense of urgency, because if you don't do it now, you'll probably either forget about it or realize you don't really want or need what they're pushing, and they won't get any of your money. (She already has a good grip on the fact that the main purpose of advertisement is to get you to want what you don't need, and might not even want if you just saw the thing instead of the flashy advertisement.) I told her a story about when I was about 7 or 8 and my sister, two years younger, saw one of those "Call NOW!" advertisements on TV when we were watching -- so she picked up the phone and started dialing. The fact was, of course, that if she really wanted (and could pay for) the thing being sold, she could call anytime. P and I also talked about how rarely "free," in advertisements, really means free.

Another little economics lesson came after we bought some ice cream at the grocery store to take home, and T wanted to stop at the outdoor restaurant tables between the grocery store and our car (we had parked at the hardware store a block away for another errand) and eat it there. Aside from our having no spoons, the restaurant was open and busy, so we talked about why they wouldn't want us eating our ice cream there. We talked about what kinds of flowers were planted in the shopping center's planters and why those were good choices. Recently T and I have talked about why traffic lights work the way they do and why it's important to obey them (an adult version of taking turns!).

P and T both have a lot of questions about the world. I've noticed that many adults view these incessant questions as an annoyance -- as if the kids were asking them just to see how much we could take before we deflect or explode or run away to get some peace. But it's come home to me more than ever in recent months that these questions are very real for them. The questions are the kids' way of using the nearest available resource (me) to sort out how the world works, and why. If I want them to keep learning and keep showing me their curiosity, I'd better give them answers that make sense to them, and I'd better have a good attitude about it!

Humor helps with getting things across and keeping it light. Today P asked me how long until it was time to leave for her first slumber party, tonight. I figured I'd probably hear this question a lot, so I asked P to bring out her toy clock so we could talk about it. She worked with me for a few minutes, learning the basics of telling time beyond just the hours. When she started getting just a touch impatient, I launched into a totally singsong recitation of the quarter-hours between the current time and the end of the slumber party tomorrow, throwing in some landmarks like dinner, movie, various people's bedtimes, and so on. She was giggling the whole time. We'll see if it sticks -- but at least I think we took some of the "learning is dreary work" edge off that particular bit. She's come to me for help with telling time a couple of times since then, whereas previously she avoided it. I've also noticed an increase in my ability to use humor to defuse an emotionally fraught situation, without making anyone feel bad. I've never felt very good at that kind of gentle humor, so it's good to discover I can still learn, too!

Some good opportunities for P's social learning have come with several play dates with friends. P really likes playing with T, and part of the reason seems to be that T, four years younger, will put up with a certain amount of dictatorial behavior from his sister and idol. P is learning from her friends, though, that most of the people she wants to play with will not put up with the bossiness that her adoring little brother will. P said something peremptory and unkind to a friend who was visiting a few days ago, and he replied, "I don't like it when you say that to me. It hurts my feelings." I was awed by how articulate and composed he was (I made sure to tell his mom when she picked him up), and I'm looking forward to more opportunities to play with that family, so P and T can learn from the kids and I can pick up some tips from their mom on how to encourage such emotionally intelligent behavior. I've been through Nonviolent Communication training, but helping children learn such emotional skills is, so far, a humbling endeavor for me. We are making some progress, however, and when I am patient and can model the appropriate behavior myself, of course that helps.

P has been continuing her gymnastics lessons, and when I can get the kids both to agree, we go on walks, short hikes, or bike rides together. We also visit new and familiar parks most weeks. For this past week P went to a gymnastics day camp every weekday afternoon, and she'll go to a gymnastics-themed birthday party this afternoon. She's been having a lot of fun and making some good progress with her gymnastics skills. She's also champing at the bit to learn to ride a two-wheeled bike with pedals (she is quite adept now on her pedal-less two-wheeler, and most of her friends ride regular bikes now), so there's some cycling in our near future. We've taken a couple of short bike rides with me helping her balance on the two-wheeler, and she's soooo close!

Here's the media roundup, from the library, Netflix, and the Internet:

• Magic School Bus DVD on the mechanics of flight and comets/meteors/asteroids
• Tractor Adventures DVD, with lots of information on different jobs tractors do and also how milking machines work
• Donald in Mathmagic Land: not a lot of depth to this, but it had a nice video intro to conic sections.
• A DVD on Monet (I can't find a link to it, but it's a very kid-friendly, humorous production with lots of good information) and his impressionist contemporaries and how they influenced art in their time
• A Little Princess: a bit of Indian myth, how boarding schools and pauperism worked in early 1900s England (We read a plot summary of the Francis Hodgson Burnett book afterward, and the movie took some huge liberties with the plot.)
• Awesome Animal Builders DVD: How several kinds of animals (spiders, caterpillars, termites) build using their own bodily secretions; naked mole rat burrows and their adaptations for digging; beaver dams and lodges; weaverbird nests and their function in mate selection; migrations of wildebeest, tundra swans, and some others; animals (e.g., rattlesnakes) that move into houses built by others. This one was a lot of fun for both kids. P recognized a trapdoor spider based on previous learning (this time a Magic School Bus book). We also got some books about beavers from the library recently, so we are looking at beavers from several angles.
• We watched several videos online of Atlantis's final liftoff, from cameras attached to the solid rocket boosters. For half an hour of video with no sound, this was riveting. We talked about how the SRBs and the big fuel tank help the shuttle get into orbit. We saw how the color of the sky changed as the rockets left the lower atmosphere, and then as they re-entered after separating from the shuttle. We saw the view tumble between the earth and space (and sometimes the sun) as the SRBs fell to earth. We saw parachutes deploying as the SRBs neared the ocean, and how this slowed and steadied their motion. It was a beautiful way to point out and answer questions about both the physics of the situation and the history of the space program -- previous disasters having motivated the use of those SRB cameras! After the liftoff videos, we watched a short piece about the NASA food lab and how they prepare ordinary and special foods for the astronauts' use in space.
• P's been reading Magic Tree House books, Fairy Realm books, and a book called Ida B, given to us by friends, which is about an unschooled child and how things change in her life when her mother becomes seriously ill. We've discovered that grocery shopping trips are much easier when I get a double cart so the kids can sit next to each other, and P reads a book aloud to T. They read most of Lions at Lunchtime this way during our last major grocery shopping trip.

P told me a week ago that she wants to go back to school, because all her friends say they want her to come back when she sees them on playdates. What I think is important is what she wants, but I'll support her if she wants to go back, and I told her so. We've given ourselves until August 1 to make a decision, since until that point we can still either enroll her or give the district our notice to homeschool. (I started to write, "to make a final decision," but of course either course of action is alterable.) Now she says she doesn't want to go back. We'll see where she comes down in another week. I bring it up occasionally, to get a reading on where she is, and to provide a chance to talk about it if it seems useful. I have mixed feelings myself. Though I still think that unschooling works better for us, on balance, because of the freedom to pursue our own schedule and interests, school does provide the feeling of a safety net. The cost of that net is high, though, if by pushing P through the list of standards, school blunts her interest in learning. She's had enough of a taste of it to know that going through curriculum at the class's pace is sometimes fun but often, really, not something she enjoys.