I read an interesting article this week, making the case from experimental evidence that delaying the teaching of arithmetic in schools results in much more rapid learning when it is finally introduced (in the experiment, the experimental group started arithmetic lessons in sixth grade), but also confers an intriguing benefit -- when arithmetic instruction in K-5 is replaced with practice telling stories and otherwise communicating out loud to others (not, I should note, specifically about numbers!), those students are far ahead of control-group kids at the beginning of sixth grade in their ability to solve arithmetic story problems, even though they've had no formal arithmetic instruction. The experimental group didn't do as well on traditionally-formatted arithmetic problems as the control group at the beginning of sixth grade, but by the end of sixth grade, they'd caught up. I love this article. Having taught math to middle- and high-schoolers, I know that story problems give many students nightmares. But in the end, story problems -- using math to think about real-world situations-- are exactly what math is FOR. And even though P and I have done very little arithmetic practice together, when she talks about numbers, I see that she has good number sense, and that she's using numbers in very sensible and sometimes creative ways. I am encouraged. And I should listen more intently when P tells me stories, as she does at pretty much every opportunity!
P sang her holiday choir concerts this past week. She and I rode the bus to her Saturday evening concert and back. It took more time overall, but it meant we had a good half hour on each end of the concert during which our attention was undivided. As P put it, "I like taking the bus with you, because we can talk the whole way, and you never have to focus on driving, only getting us off at the right stop." Our schedule in the new year will give more one-on-one time for both kids with me and UnschoolerDad. I'm looking forward to it, and so is P, who is already planning out how she wants to spend some of those "date nights."
This week, P, T, and I mixed up salt dough, rolled it out, cut it into Christmasy shapes, baked them, and painted them to be ornaments for our tree. This was our first time trying acrylic paints, which takes more work from me to prevent gummed-up brushes than when we use watercolors, but the bright colors are very satisfying. And the time on task fit in with something I've been working on, which is being more present for the kids, and more available to stop what I'm doing and play or explore with them when they ask or a good opportunity arises. It's a thousand little decisions, not one big one, but each time I decide in favor of doing something with them, it gets easier. The house isn't as clean as it has sometimes been, but I think we can cope. Sandra Dodd posted a piece of a poem on the AlwaysLearning list that's helpful here:
The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I've learned to my sorrow
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.
- Ruth Hulbert Hamilton
On the housework side of that balance, the other day, when we were all immersed in our own things, T got up and announced he was going to clean up the living room. He put several toys away and then settled back down again. I thanked him. If I'd gotten up and joined him, he might have done more, but I was too tired at that moment. Here's hoping for more opportunities to combine togetherness and cleaning up!
As we've tried to shake this long cold , there have been several pretty sedentary days with lots of media. P has now watched the entire three-season run of Phineas and Ferb on Netflix. As she watched the last few episodes, I joined her while knitting, and I found the show to be rich in cultural references and awesome vocabulary, much of which is probably going over P's head at this point. I shared those observations with P and invited her to ask me about anything she wants as she's watching. For just one example, the mother remarked to Candace once that she'd gone into the backyard to look at the monkeys Candace told her were there, but instead found "a stunning lack of monkeys." We spent a minute taking that apart, since stunning and lack were both new words for P. P's asked several vocabulary questions since then, either while watching or at other times, seemingly out of the blue. She's invited me to watch episodes with her that she thought I would enjoy (and I did!). She also makes some interesting observations about the show. She noticed the Frankenstein monster in the title sequence, linked it to our earlier discussion about the Frankenstein story, and gleefully reported her find. She also observed out loud that little Suzy (who appears totally sweet to most people but makes a few lives pretty hellish) was an even bigger bully than Buford, as we watched an episode in which Suzy bullied Candace, and in which Buford admitted to Suzy being what he was most afraid of in the world.
P has been doing less pleasure reading recently; this is a little surprising to me, given how voracious she was for a while. She still reads all kinds of incidental things throughout the day and shows a good level of understanding of them. And a couple of times, when I've suggested that getting ready early for bed would give her more time to read in bed, she's jumped at the chance. So I'm taking it easy about the change for now: if I push reading when she's not particularly interested in it, it seems sure to make her even less interested. I'm also noticing that her spelling and handwriting are still improving. Perhaps when Phineas and Ferb gets old, the next cool chapter book will seem a little shinier. P also volunteered that she sometimes reads an article in a magazine I've left out in the bathroom -- I think it's time for some good strewing in that room.
P and I did watch a DVD together this week with stories from several great children's books, some of which P's first-grade class read before she left school, and some of which were new to us. The stories were The Man Who Walked Between Buildings (about the tightrope-walker who illicitly strung a cable between the nearly-complete towers of the World Trade Center and then walked it for hours before he submitted to arrest; his punishment was to perform for the city's children, which he loved doing), Miss Rumphius (about making the world more beautiful, with some side-trips for us into how flowers propagate and how seeds spread naturally), Snowflake Bentley (about the man who spent his life capturing photos of snowflakes; we spotted some wonderful ones in the latest snowfall here and enjoyed sharing them with each other in the same spirit, though we need some magnifying glasses!), and The Pot That Juan Built (which goes into many of the processes for making traditional clay pottery in the Southwest and points south). All were based on true stories and processes, some of which we followed up to find out more afterward. We also watched a The Way Things Work DVD on Floating, which covered both buoyancy and the basics of sailing.
A few days later, I was trying to think of something new to add to our day, and I remembered a bag of corn husks, older than my marriage, that I'd evicted from the kitchen while cleaning up a bit. P said she'd be up for making corn-husk dolls with me (she'd expressed an interest in this before), so I looked up a tutorial to get us started, and we were off and running.
We made these (brother and sister, resting together on a big corn-husk pillow) in about 20 minutes, not counting some soaking time for the corn husks. We reinforced our knot lore. And when P had her two dolls and was ready to move on to something else, I used the rest of our soaked corn husks to make a large corn-husk angel to top our Christmas tree, since our previous tree topper broke last year.
We went to two open gyms in different locations this week, one with both kids and one with just P (T was too young for that one, so he got some one-on-one time with UnschoolerDad). I've started to work more during such events at spotting other kids that my kids are enjoying, finding their parents, and extending myself more to make contact with them and check out the possibilities for play dates -- especially for T, who has no ready-made cadre of former school friends and is getting more interested in playing with other kids. I used to resist this kind of connection because my introverted side feared rejection or other sources of social awkwardness. As I learn and live through more things, however, I am developing more courage to act in spite of embarrassment and emotional vulnerability; and I realized it was time to stop letting my own fears be the limiting factor in my kids' social lives. There's no surfeit of play dates to show for these efforts yet, but I'll keep trying, realizing that not every attempt will pan out, and that making new commitments around the holidays is not high on most families' lists of things to do! In the meantime, the kids and I are enjoying each other's company more and more, and that is all to the good.
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