Tuesday,
October 6, 1987
I
am not sitting around unschooling with Camille, Mindy, and Lindsey
today. Oh, no!
Well,
that's what they call themselves. Actually, come to think of it, they
do look a lot like Camille, Mindy, and Lindsey!
The
girls are looking really gaudy because, first thing this morning,
they got out the play dough, and Mindy had an idea to create fake
fingernails with her play dough. So the other two girls followed
suit, and now they all have long, bright-colored nails!
Whoops—hold
the presses—they are no longer princesses! Now, they inform me,
they are witches.
Well,
duh. Halloween decorations fill the house, so the girls naturally
want to dress up in Halloween costumes. And now they are pretending
to be witches...
We
are interrupted: Delia and Kiki arrive and whisk Lindsey off to Mommy
and Me class. We promise Lindsey that we will come and visit later.
I
am solemnly given the witch hat Lindsey had been wearing, and I am
informed that I am the witch teacher, and Mindy and Camille are witch
students. And school has just begun!
First,
they want me to read The Witch's Hat, by Tony Johnston.
Next,
the girls decide that “W” would be a perfect Letter of the Day,
being a wonderfully witchy letter. So we do the guessing game in
which I draw “W” words, and they see how quickly they can call
out the word I'm trying for.
witch ........ window ........ whole ......... web ......... whale .......... world .......... wand ........ word
As
they often do, the girls want to copy the words onto their papers and
work to “sound them out” as they write them.
Then
the girls ask me to draw witch pictures for them to color.
I
can do that.
Mindy
colors hers in but then starts drawing stuff around the picture. Then
she starts telling a story about her witch picture. I quickly
scramble to write the story down as she spins it; Mindy sees what I'm
doing and is excited to keep going.
At
one point, Mindy asks Camille if she wants to add to the story.
Camille refuses the invitation. Mindy continues on.
When
Mindy is entirely done dictating her story, Camille informs me, “I
don't want to write a story about a witch, because that's too scary.”
(Mind you, Camille IS a witch, hat and all!) I keep my surprise to
myself as Camille informs me that her story
will be about ballerinas. And she dictates her story to me.
A
few lines into the story, Camille interrupts herself to tell me, “I
like short stories, so
this one will be short.”
And,
as promised, her ballerina story is nice and short.
The
ballerina story seems to have ended the witch period of the morning.
Now the kids ask for some dinosaur stickers, and they apply the
stickers on blank papers and draw scenery around them. As the girls
work with stickers and markers, they reminisce about our museum trip.
At some point, still talking about our museum fun, they start working
on the dinosaur skeleton model.
And
then Camille gets out another blank piece of paper, and she draws a
whale.
The
girls inform me that it is snack time. They all of a sudden remember
that this is witch school, so Mindy says that the orange juice is
Halloween punch and asks for spider web sticky-goo. Hmmm...what could
that be? I hazard a guess that it is peanut butter and am rewarded
with an enthusiastic nod. I realize that we also have orange colored
crackers, and both girls are excited that they fit into the color
scheme.
Camille's
dad surprises us with a phone call. He is home because of a power
outage at his company, and he asks if Camille wants to come home. She
says, “No!” I wonder if her dad realizes that she's a
whale-drawing scared-of-witches witch today...
As
promised, we bundle into the car and drive to Mommy and Me class to
visit. This makes a nice, active break from the rest of the morning,
since the class is outside when we arrive. Lindsey is playing in the
sand, and both girls run toward her with glad cries. Mindy gives her
a HUGE hug—how nice, huh?—and then both Mindy and Camille start
playing on the monkey bars. After that, it's the rings, the swings,
and just plain old running on the grass. Lindsey jumps up to join in
their zig-zagging run.
Time
to come inside. The dear Mommy and Me teacher, Mrs. Popkins, starts
sharing time. Lindsey “shares” her big sister! Mindy asks if she
could share, too, and Mrs. Popkins nods with a big smile. I wonder
what Mindy has to share, but she proudly shows off Lindsey's craft
project, which she had just been shown minutes before. Then it is
Kiki's turn to share; he shares his cousin Camille.
Time
for more outdoor play. I'm excited that the girls are enjoying the
playground so much and tell myself firmly that I've got to get them
to the park more often. Somehow the large size of the playground
invites much bigger, faster movements than our patio and small yards.
When
it's time to go home, Lindsey surprises me by wanting to go home with
Kiki. But...okay, sure.
Home
again, Camille and Mindy both draw whales—which is pretty funny;
it's as if they are picking up where they were before the snack and
“recess” had interrupted their play.
Then
the kids ask for read-alouds. I read The Count of
Halloween, and Mindy counts all
the witchy objects “to make sure the numbers are right.” The kids
even ask me to read entries in the Halloween Dictionary. As I read,
they color in pictures from The Count of Halloween.
I
finally feel done with witch school, and I sneak off to do some
dishes and start a load of laundry. The kids abandon their coloring
project somewhere along the line and get out the two large Rainbow
Brite dolls and some of the accessories. Camille has Rainbow Brite,
and Mindy has Shy Violet. The girls dress them in sleepwear and
arrange pillows and blankets. Then Mindy asks if she can have a turn
with Rainbow Brite, and Camille switches dolls amicably. Soon they
are restoring the doll's usual clothes and troop into the kitchen,
where they grab two lunch boxes and the small ice chest. I almost
want to ask them if they want to pack some food, but then I see that
they are already packing food—invisible food—with intricate
movements as they pour invisible juice into the thermos, spread
invisible peanut butter on invisible bread, and pack invisible
sandwiches in invisible sandwich bags. It's so cute, I dare not
interrupt.
When
the girls leave, their invisible lunch nicely made and packed, I go
to the doorway to see what they're up to. They have pushed the love
seat up next to the sofa, apparently creating a van. They carefully
pack the lunch boxes and ice chest into the back of the sofa-van,
balance the dolls in sitting positions in the middle portion of the
sofa-van, and they themselves sit with crossed legs in the front.
Soon
the van is abandoned (invisible lunch still apparently uneaten,
although it's hard to tell!), and the girls are reading Halloween
books to the two dolls. I am getting a lot of stuff done while
keeping an eye on how wonderful it is to see non-readers “read” –
they have such good memories of the stories I've read to them!
But
all of a sudden I hear, “Thwack!” And a sudden onset of loud
crying.
“What
happened?” I ask the two girls, who have abandoned books and dolls
to come find me.
Still
sobbing, the girls tell me that they hit their heads together. I hug
them and suggest lunch (I'm thinking of real food here, but I wonder
if they're going to go get the invisible lunch in the perfectly
visible lunch boxes and cooler, still perched at the back of the
sofa-van.) “We're not hungry,” Mindy says—Camille seems fine
with her friend speaking for her—and I offer to read to them again,
but they spy their Count of Halloween
coloring books and want to color more of those pages. The tears
evaporate.
It's
getting late for lunch (2:30), and I'm starving. As the girls turn
away from the coloring books to the dinosaur flannelboard, I decide
to make a really special Halloween feast so (hopefully) we can all
eat. When I see that the kids have wound down on the flannelboard
project, I tell them to clean up the area so we can eat:
(actually regular apples and peanut butter)
- Crabapples and Gooey Glop
(frozen peas)
- Gophers' Eyes
(milk)
- and Ghost Water
The
kids fall upon the meal enthusiastically. After I'm done eating,
while they are still having fun munching on a frozen pea here,
thawing and squishing a pea in their fingers there, I tell them that
we can play the Continental Travel game—a brand new
countries-of-the-world Colorform set.
“For
each continent, you can choose one country, and we'll visit that
country. In the van.” (I nod my head toward the living room, where
the sofas are still pushed together.)
The
girls fall in with the plan, and we study the Colorform world map.
“What's this continent called?” I ask as I point to each of the
six inhabited continents. The girls remember every name. Then I ask,
“What country should we visit in North America?” I ask the same
question for each continent. The girls either name a nation, and I
point to it, or they point, and I identify their choice. We end up
with a great itinerary:
Continent - Country
-----------------------------------
Australia - Australia
Asia - Japan and Korea
Europe - France
Africa - Kenya
South America - Colombia
North America - Canada
Then
I get in the “driver's seat” of the sofa-van, and they pile into
the back, and we drive to Australia. (I know that we should be going
by boat or air—but I don't trouble the kids with trivialities!) A
friendly-yet-invisible Aussie sits next to me and greets the kids
with a lamentably bad Australian accent: “G'day, Mates!”
We
sing “Waltzing Matilda” as we go, then “Tie Me Kangaroo Down.”
I encourage the kids to come up with an Australian animal and a
color, and then I delight them with a new verse:
If my koala's red, Fred,
If my koala's red...
I'll bonk her on the head, Fred,
And send her straight to ___
“Bed!”
the kids shout to fill in my expectant silence, and we sing the
red-koala verse again.
Of
course the kids want to do another verse. This time they suggest a
kiwi turning “rainbow.” Yikes!
If my kiwis turn rainbow, Joe,
If my kiwis turn rainbow...
I would make them glow, Joe,
I would make them glow. – Altogether now!
We
share our invisible “beano” (feast) with our new invisible
Australian friend. And we pass around a real “billy” (can) with
invisible water and pretend to drink. Then we drive through the
“never-never” and take tours of Sydney and Melbourne (looking at
pictures in the encyclopedia). We look at all the pictures of
Australian animals in the big animal books. I remember another Aussie
song, and we sing “Kookaburra.”
My
newly bunny-eared, whiskered girls help me put the living room to
rights, put away the Colorforms, and place Australia on the world
map. Then the kids ask for an end-of-the-day snack. Camille points to
the package of English muffins. She pretends to be an Australian girl
ordering the bread, and I pretend to be an Australian waitress
filling her order, and one for the other Aussie, as well (Mindy). The
girls ask what kind of money Australians use, and we check the
encyclopedia: the Australian dollar. “Then,” says Mindy, “the
muffins cost one dollar.”
After a few more G'days, we seem to finally drop the Aussie theme. The girls play piano until Lindsey returns to us and Camille's mom arrives. Whew! Our color-princess-witch-whale-Australia day is over!
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