All of It Has Always Been Big Stuff

Another monthly sampler of what we've been up to! For the past week, I've been trying to get a new housecleaning regimen in place, so I haven't been taking notes. Here is what made it through that process in my memory or previous notes:

Reading

• On a recent library trip, we picked up a book about Leonardo da Vinci. It's a picture book, but with lots of words on every page, so it took a good half hour or more to read aloud. It's written from the point of view of an apprentice in Leonardo's studio in Naples. We learned how apprenticeship worked, got a glimpse of the artist-patron relationship, saw things that connected to our visit to the Da Vinci Machines exhibit a couple of months ago, learned about the city-states that once comprised present-day Italy, and enjoyed a good story.

• We've been reading Little Women out loud as a bedtime book, interspersed with more from the Little House books. P is enjoying Little Women a lot. It connects with fantasy play she's been doing for years about living in long-ago times, being poor, having sisters, and more.
• We just read the part in On the Banks of Plum Creek in which the grasshoppers come and eat every green thing for a hundred miles around. Coincidentally, we also have a book out from the library about the Passover story, which mentions the plague of locusts among the others. UnschoolerDad was around while I was reading the grasshopper chapters, and we took a break to hear about grasshoppers and locusts (different phases of the same thing). We're hoping to talk to my mom, next time we have a chance, about her experiences with locusts in the Middle East when she was a child.
• P has been reading more in the American Girl books about Molly, set during World War II. She's finished two books and launched into the third in the series.
• Anatomy books continue capturing both kids' interest. T asks a lot about the diagrams in one that show the effects of asthma. Fetal development and birth pictures are a perennial favorite. Sometimes we look at photos of P and T shortly after birth and talk about why they looked the way they did, compared to the photos in the books. One of them was frank breech and stayed folded in two for many days after arriving by C-section, whereas I was able to convince the other to go head-down and arrive in the more traditional way, so they looked pretty different as newborns!
• We recently started subscribing to National Geographic and National Geographic Kids. P enjoys the world records page in the latter, and it provided a chance to learn how to parse some large numbers (5 and 6 digits) as she told me about some of the records that caught her eye.
• We've been reading a Sherlock Holmes book written for young readers. We're learning about accents as I try to get some of them right (I watched a few voice-coaching videos to get a start, and my Cockney accent as I read is beginning to sound like something other than a U.S.er imitating an Aussie), and bits about Victorian England via the setting and circumstances of the story (it includes a scrivener's apprentice and several orphaned street children as major characters, the "Baker Street Irregulars" who help Holmes in gathering information and sometimes reach valuable deductions of their own). I like it when the kids get exposed to different accents (via videos mostly, though I play with them sometimes) and learn to understand them. I've run into people who have a really hard time with that, I would imagine from lack of exposure to varying accents. I also think accents become an interesting part of the study of language, when you look at the features of Languages A and B that will cause native A speakers to have a certain accent when speaking B.

Doing

• The day after P and I built a snow fort, T wanted to try his hand. The snow had gotten wetter and stickier, and together we built quite a wall. I piled snow on with a small shovel, and T patted it into place to make it stronger. It melted just in time for the next snowstorm. Both kids and I had conversations about why the snow was sticking better or worse, in terms of the ambient temperature and how it, as well as our actions, affected melting and refreezing.
• P and T have greatly increased their attention span for playing with each other. Sometimes they can play peacefully for hours on end. They've both noticed their relationship is going better than it used to, and it spills over into treating each other better in other ways, though they still have their moments, especially when hungry or tired. P is also noticing my work for the house and family and my feelings more than she used to, so she's more liable to volunteer to help by making some food, getting T dressed, or in other ways. 
• P has done work recently to earn several badges in her Girl Scout troop. Most recently, she learned to make change (for cookie purchases); role-played customer interactions (and had a number of real ones); and researched the needs of cats and fish for food, human contact, and healthy living spaces, including making a budget for their care. We've been considering starting a fish tank, so that was useful information to find generally. (We found that starting up with fish would cost about $200-250 for the 20-gallon tank recommended for beginners, and monthly costs would be about $20-25 per month. That's a lot, but it's cheaper than $40 or more per month for one healthy cat -- or much more for our two ailing ones!)

Making

• We bought a kit for making recycled paper at our local botanic garden's shop. We're looking forward to some playful and/or beautiful crafting with that.
• Yarn is getting used in fun ways here. The kids tie it to stuffed animals or baskets and lower them over the balcony into the living room, transporting things back and forth and playing games and tricks thus. They make harnesses so their tiny dolls and stuffies can ride larger stuffies.
• We bought a bunch of same-sized plastic boxes to organize small toys (Polly Pockets, cars, Lego, etc.) in the kids' rooms. Several of them have been pressed into service as habitats for small dolls and stuffies, elaborately furnished to scale with available objects from dollhouse furniture to Lego-built furniture and fabric scraps, as well as bits and pieces of nature from outside. These are transient playthings, but the care and thought that goes into them is apparent.

Writing

• P has been making notes about things she wants to remember (like the name of a movie we saw most of, so she can finish it another time) in a notebook she carries with her. She's also working on her cursive writing; she likes the aesthetic. I honestly think I don't see most of her writing when it happens. Whenever I help her clean up her room, there are papers with writing that we recycle or save -- house plans with labeled rooms, board games with instructions, and so on. Her writing is resourceful and useful. I can deal with that!

Watching

• P has started enjoying Cosmic Journeys, an astronomy show we discovered accidentally on YouTube. We watched a show about plasma (including auroras and plasma cannons) and one about the origins of black holes. I think we got there from a question about what a supernova is (UnschoolerDad remembered learning different things about this, and it turns out we were both right, as there are two different kinds of supernovas), which came from discussion about what the Star of Bethlehem could have been.
• On The Kid Should See This, we came across a video of a musician wiring up fruits and veggies to his synthesizer and then using that setup to loop the instrumental parts of "Teardrop," a song by Massive Attack. After watching that with P and T, I played them the official video for the song so they could hear the original instrumentals. The video is made to look like the song is being sung by a fetus in utero. Armed with our knowledge of fetal development from all the anatomy books, we were able to talk about things about the video that were realistic (fetus opening and closing mouth, moving about, sucking on fingers, etc.) versus those that were preposterous (a fetus with features and body proportions almost like a newborn having lots of room to move inside the uterus, having an adult-sounding voice, etc.). We also talked about what might be going on at the end of the video, when the lighting gets bright and erratic and the fetus looks startled. Here are those two videos:

• We watched the first 10 minutes or so of Microcosmos, the movie that gets super-close-up on insects and other wonderful tiny things. We watched a ladybug climb up a plant stem and start munching aphids; farther along the stem it encountered ants protecting groups of aphids, and the ants successfully fought off the ladybug. Afterward the ants milked the aphids and drank the honeydew they made. I did a mock voice over for the ant/ladybug fight: "Hey, you! Get away from my cows! That's right! And stay out!" P commented gleefully that to the ants, the ladybugs were like wolves eating their livestock. I love seeing connections like that getting made. She said the ants and the aphids were in a symbiotic relationship. We also talked about how, since the aphids can hurt the plants they feed on, ladybugs are considered beneficial insects by people growing those plants.
• We watched a series of videos from a company that makes processing machinery for obtaining juice and essential oils from citrus fruits (Fratelli Indelicato, if you'd like to look for them). No one video had enough images or explanation to get the whole process clear, but by watching several, we were able to piece it together. In the process, we talked about the qualities of different parts of a citrus fruit (zest, pith, juicy insides), what kinds of parameters the machine designers must have had to experiment with to get it right (time on the rasp, spacing of rollers and blades, etc.), separation of oil and water through gravity and through centrifuging, and more. Then we found a video of a set of machines for harvesting and processing mushrooms. Wow! That one was much more fully explained. Here it is:

Listening

• I was listening to T and P playing one day, and thinking about what they might be learning with their many sessions of free play. (They call them that: sometimes if I ask them to go somewhere, they'll say something like, "but we haven't had our morning play session yet!") They do spend some of their play time acting out and thinking through ideas related to things they've learned -- natural disasters they've been asking about, historical scenarios, and so on. But I think they're also learning a lot about talking and listening. Especially now, as T gets a little older and sticks up for himself more in the face of P's attempts to control the play situation, they're both needing to listen to each other more, so they can find the middle ground where each gets at least some of what s/he wants out of the game, so that both are willing to keep playing. They're also exploring a little bit of rougher play, and finding their comfort zones for play fighting and other roughhousing. There was a time when I would have been firmly against any kind of play fighting, but now I think they can both enjoy it and learn from it if they're allowed to try it out with adults nearby, ready to intervene if one of them is pushing too far. If nothing else, they're learning to communicate quickly and clearly about what they do and do not want in a play fighting situation. For example, they've made their own rule that no one should get hit in the face or head, even a little.

Talking

• T is getting interested in road signs. He tells me things like, "I saw a speed limit sign with two fives." He's learning to read two-digit numbers by keeping my informed of the speed limit when we're driving.  One day we saw a 70 mph speed limit, and he was stumped, since most of the speed limits end in 5. P said, "It's seven-oh. Do you know what that is?" T said he didn't. I said, "Well, if it were seven-five, it would be seventy-five, but since it's seven-zero, it's just seventy." T turned to P and said, "It's not an oh, it's a zero!" as if that explained everything. P claimed they were the same, so in the ensuing discussion, she learned something, too. P sometimes tries to actively teach T about numbers or other things. I've tried to be clear with her that he'll learn when he's ready, and that we can help him more by offering bits of interesting or useful information and by answering his questions than we can by drilling him on a skill when he's not asking for that kind of practice.
• We had a family meeting, just me and the kids. On our agenda were chores, concerns, activities, and gratitudes. We brainstormed a list of jobs that someone does fairly regularly around the house, listed the jobs the kids already do, and then they had a chance to say which others they might like to take on as a regular job, or occasionally for money. I don't think the discussion changed things much from the status quo, as far as what jobs I expect them to do; but perhaps having seen the whole list will change their perspective a bit and encourage more willingness to help. I don't plan to push much. I'd rather have their willingness to help spring from within, as empathy for me and UnschoolerDad or a desire to do something positive in the family. We'll see how it goes. Under Concerns, each person said something about how things were going (interpersonally, as it turned out) that they thought could use some change. We talked about possible solutions to each concern. Again, no definite solutions, but perhaps some things that will help, including more shared vocabulary for talking about certain issues. The kids had pretty much run out of gas by the time we got to Activities (what we'd like to do soon) and Gratitudes, but we did agree on one place to go soon (a museum, new to us, with a cool new exhibit on), and I did express my appreciation to P for suggesting we have a tea party to talk things over. Because of her suggestion, we had tea, cookies, and trail mix along with lunch for our meeting.

Visiting

• We visited the new temporary exhibition on Mammoths and Mastodons at our local science and nature museum. We learned how tusks form in conical layers. We saw the sizes of various types of large and pygmy mammoths, and we watched a great video (repeatedly) about how isolation on islands tends to cause species to decrease in size. Another video and model showed Lyuba, a month-old baby mammoth found preserved in permafrost in Siberia. We saw a man working on cleaning and preserving a mammoth or mastodon specimen found here in Colorado. Then we enjoyed the permanent gems-and-minerals exhibit, which the kids haven't wanted to visit before. They enjoyed hands-on displays about density and hardness, and they marveled at the beautiful crystals. It was a good day.
• We went to our local Botanic Gardens for a homeschool day with a "plant detectives" theme. We looked at how plants are used in fabric, construction, school/office supplies, foods, and more. The kids planted four varieties of lettuce seeds to try growing. They dug in a compost pile that had been seeded two weeks before with various kinds of disposable products (chip wrappers, paper cups and plates, compostable and non-compostable plastics, etc.) and got a look at what was starting to break down and what was still like new. They looked at paper products made with hardwoods vs. softwoods, and tried pounding nails into each. They played at length in the three-acre children's garden, digging in the dirt, running, climbing, playing in makeshift shelters, meeting new friends and playing with old ones. We ran into several homeschoolers we know from other activities. It was good to feel connected.

Thinking, Asking Questions, Planning...

• P doesn't like to take baths. I do insist on her bathing at certain intervals so that she looks and smells like a healthy, reasonably cared-for kid. She was asking lots of questions about this the other day, wanting to find more pleasant ways to get the job done than a tub bath or a shower. We talked about sponge baths. She also wanted to know why her hair gets to looking or smelling dirty when it does. We talked about oil-producing glands on the skin and scalp, why they're there, and the effect that shampoo and soap have on them -- they strip the natural oils away, so the skin produces more oil than if you hadn't shampooed. I told her that some people wash their hair with baking soda instead of shampoo, because it can do a good job of cleaning without stripping oils, so over time the scalp produces less oil. She immediately wanted to try it. We did, and so far the results look and smell good. For that bath, she also chose to sponge-bathe and then rinse off with the hand-held nozzle in the bathtub (I washed her hair with baking soda first, as she hung her head into the tub), and she liked it, at least for a change. I am encouraged that she keeps asking questions and pushing the boundaries when she thinks there's room for a change that would make things better for her, and that we usually have the time for me to talk things through with her, rather than pushing to do it the usual way. She's assertive enough, and I'm relaxed enough, that we can find better ways to make things work. And as a bonus, she's probably found the least water-intensive method for getting clean, which appeals to her developing environmental sensibilities.
• On several mornings recently, I've been downstairs, P has still been asleep, and T has come down and started talking to me. A lot. If I listen actively and participate appropriately, he'll carry on for a while, and then eventually get interested in something and do that instead of talking. I see so much more of his thought process when I do this than when I stay engaged in whatever I was doing (cleaning, cooking, etc.) and half-listen. It seems obvious, but it's good for me to notice: I can understand a lot more about where he is, his interests and his cognitive abilities, when I really tune in. He sometimes does something similar at night, after lights are out, if there's an adult in the room to listen. He'll talk and talk and talk, sometimes asking questions, and then suddenly he'll be asleep. I've put a quote up on my wall that helps me remember what to do about this phenomenon:

Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.
~Catherine M. Wallace~