Homeschool Scrapbook

Journal Entry 10 - Earthquake!

2011-10-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

Thursday,October 1, 1987

EARTHQUAKE!

Iwon't have time to write much today...

Okay,I have a few minutes to say that, this morning, while I was in theshower with shampoo well lathered in my hair, there was a pretty powerful earthquake. The kids are totally freaked, because thingsfell off shelves and, worst of all, the pipe from the hot waterheater broke and shot water all over the garage.

I went outside, wet and shampoo-slick, in a robe, and I tried to shut offmy water—and I couldn't get the darned valve to turn. A man fromdown the street saw me and ran over to help. He was able to shut offthe water.

Thankyou, neighbor-I've-never-noticed-before!

(Bythe way, I'm probably stuck with dryingshampoo in my hair all day. Oh, well...)

Thegirls and I have talked about what causes an earthquake, whathappens during an earthquake, and about earthquake safety.They've been able to practice getting under a sturdy table far fromwindows, glassware, and other breakable items, over and over, everytime there is an aftershock.

I'mreally worried. The shake seemed so big-time—where was the epicenter?If it felt that big here, what was it like wherever the epicenter was?

Iwill not be confiding my worries to Camille, Mindy and Lindsey! Theyare already so worried, they cannot play two feet away from me. Weare acting like a little mob of people attached at the hip. Wepractically have to scuttle sideways, it's so important to them to beright at my side at all times.

Evenwhen I need to go to the bathroom

Thereshall be no privacy today. Sigh.

Wecolor in dinosaur coloring books, we sew dinosaur puppets (from akit), we read books, we watch Dumbo. Finally, when the aftershocksget very few-and-far-between, the kids can stand to be a little bitfarther from me. (I'm talking maybe four or five feet away, NOT inthe next room!) So now they can run around and be active. They dogymnastics.

Andafter doing not a whole heck of a lot, the day is over.

P.S.Just wanted to say that it turns out that the epicenter was prettyclose, in Rosemead. They're calling this the Whittier Narrowsearthquake, and they've assigned it a magnitude of 5.9.

Journal Entry 9

2011-10-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

Wednesday,September 30, 1987

Justa quick note to say that the girls loved our trip to the Los AngelesNatural History Museum.

Thedinosaur-ish stuff they enjoyed seeing includes two completeskeletons fighting, a pliosaur, a stegosaur, duckbilled dinosaurs,the head of a triceratops, the foot and head of a tyrannosaur, and adimetrodon.

Thegirls also enjoyed stamping their coloring books at various exhibits,for plant eater or meat eater, feeling the cast of dinosaur bones inthe Discovery Center, and doing crayon rubbings of fossil shells,leaves, and so forth.

Ofcourse we branched off from dinosaurs to enjoy the seashells,luminescent rocks, pelts, modern bones, X-rays, microscopes, and thedress up station.

Thisis what the girls dictated to me when we got home:

We like the DiscoveryCenter. Our favorite parts were the Dress-Up Corner, the CrayonRubbing Tables, and the rocks that glowed. We also liked thecheck-out box about sharks.

Journal Entry 8

2011-10-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

Tuesday,September 29, 1987

Firstthing in the morning, today: Play Dough.

Allthree girls are making Play Dough dinosaurs, trees, and volcanoes.Camille is also making dinosaur bones, and then she branches out tomake some items that seem to have no relation to dinosaurs or theirworld. Mindy makes yet another dinosaur and then a tree. Aftergetting them just how she wants them, she surprises me by flatteningthem down. “These are cookies,” Mindy says.

SoI guess she's kind of branching out, too.

Afterwhat seems like a long time (but isn't) the girls help me put awaythe Play Dough, get dressed, and stand still long enough for me tobrush their hair. They eat their breakfast. And then they begin toplay again. This time, with stuffed animals and dolls.

Thefirst time I walk by the girls, they have out a bear family. Soon Ihear Mindy say, “I got a new Lady Lovelylocks nightie. See,Camille?” Mindy starts to take out the Lady Lovelylocks dolls, butCamille grabs one of the baby dolls instead. Right away Lindsey andMindy fall in with baby-doll play, and each is soon washing,dressing, and feeding a baby doll. We have quite a few dolls, sothey each can make a choice between several dolls, but I hear them squabbling a bit about whogets which doll, anyway. I am on alert, ready to go over to them ifthey need me, but they come to a solution on their own.

Igo out to the garage to put in a load of laundry, and when I comeback I am surprised to hear the girls talking about space. I rememberthat Mindy has been angling to “study” space after we're “done”with dinosaurs, and I sit down to watch with some amusement to see ifthey have really integrated space exploration, or something like,into their baby-doll play.

Mindyhas the book Cosmos out again, in her lap, and she is talkingabout Saturn. I soon realize that they are pretending to be travelingto Saturn, but I don't think they are daring astronauts. I watch awhile longer. Sure enough, it turns out that they are just ordinarymoms with their babies, just traveling to Saturn as per usual. Hohum.

Suddenlythey troop off to the kitchen/family room. I get up and start to moveto the bathroom that most needs cleaning, but they are soon back, soI turn to see what is afoot now. The kids have the bag of play money,and Mindy says, “Who wants to make a restaurant in space?”Lindsey and Camille both say, “I do! I do!” (It sounds trite and unnatural--but thoseare their actual words.)

Weare interrupted by the doorbell. It's Delia and Kiki, ready to whiskLindsey off to Mommy and Me. Lindsey had been excited to go, earliertoday, but now she says that she doesn't want to go, after all.

Shemakes an excuse: “I don't like that game, Delia,” she says. “I'll get tired...”

Istudy Lindsey carefully. She seems a bit congested, and she iseven a little clingy, which is unusual for her. I decide not to sendher. Delia tells me that she would like to borrow an old toy organfor some project her older son, Eric, is doing, so we go off to findthat. Then Delia and Kiki leave, and (the restaurant inspace apparently forgotten) Mindy asks if we can getout the Halloween decorations. “Please?”

Sowe do.

Oncethe boxes are brought in from the garage, and the basics are put outon display (I'll do some more decorating later), Camille and Mindyremind me that it is time for “school.” Mindy finds the bell, andthis time Camille rings it.

Sincenobody has announced a letter for the day or any other content, I askthe three girls if they want to read the dinosaur books we'd checkedout of the library. There is eager assent, and we read aboutpterosaurs, we look at a great pop-up dinosaur book, and we readabout dinos in Spanish. At the end of the last book, LosDinosaurios Gigantes, there is a map of where the dinosaurslived. The older girls pore over this, and we discuss all thecontinents where dinosaurs once roamed: North America, South America,Europe and Asia (identified on the map as Eurasia), Africa, andAustralia. In other words, pretty much everywhere! The girlsask if dinosaurs lived right where we live now, and so we identifyour continent, country, state, and general area on the map and decidethat they had lived here, once.

Planningfor the Dinosaur Day party, the kids decide to make “exhibits”(their word) out of Legos. Camille takes a break to undress andre-dress her doll, then does some more Lego-building, then undressesand re-dresses the doll again.

Forsnack today, we cut apple slices into rough pterosaur shapes and alsohave toast, cream cheese, and hard boiled eggs. We clean up oursnack, and Mindy asks to get out the Play Dough again. Camille asksto watch the Mr. Rogers dinosaur show. Lindsey asks if we can do both!

Sowe set up a little table near the TV, turn on Mr. Rogers, and the kids start sorta-kinda watchingwhile sculpting. Camille rolls the dough into what she says are dinosaur eggs, Mindy cuts andpats the dough without labeling her products, and Lindsey makes whatshe identifies as cookies. Soon Mindy decides that Camille's eggs arecool, so she reforms her Play Dough into dinosaur eggs, too. OnceCamille has amassed a whole lot of eggs, she tells me that some arechicken eggs, and some are dinosaur eggs. She counts (accurately) andinforms me that there are 27 eggs. Mindy reminds me that ALL her eggsare dinosaur eggs.

Mr.Rogers is talking about being scared, which is something that Camilleexperiences a lot when she watches videos. Mr. Rogers puts a coatover his head and pretends to be a monster. Camille shakes a fewtimes (this shaking-with-fright thing is something I've seen before)but doesn't show any other signs of being scared. There is a mysteryhaving to do on the show, and when it is about to besolved, Camille tells us, “I'm getting scared.” Then she gets up,runs over to me, and clings to my leg. “I'm getting scared,” shesays again. Of course, I comfort her, but also (of course) the mystery is resolved in a comforting way.

Thevideo over and the TV off, the kids put away the Play Dough, and Iput away the table and chairs. The girls notice that there is a newsong on the piano, and they ask me to play it. Then Mindy and Camilleeach try to play the song, using the number-scale on the pianokeyboard to help them remember which keys to play. (By the way, for the rest ofthe day, I notice them singing snatches of the song.)

Aftermy short performance on the piano, I go back to the long-agointerrupted bathroom cleaning and am happy to have the girls' pianoplaying as an accompaniment to my task. However, after a short while Inotice that the piano has fallen silent and the girls are prettydarned quiet, too. Then there's a scream!

Iemerge from the bathroom to see that Mindy and Lindsey have gone intotheir father's closet and put some of his shirts over their heads andare now making growly-snarly sounds. “Are you monsters?” I ask,nervous about possible damage to the shirts--but especially worriedthat Camille will get frightened again.

“Yes!”roars Lindsey through her shirt. I then see Camille emerging aroundthe corner, also with a shirt over her head, and also making fiercenoises.

“Justa moment,” I say. I quickly explain that these are Daddy's niceshirts, and I put the three shirts away. “Mr. Rogers used a coatlike this one,” I say as I get a trench-type rain coat out of thehall closet. Camille eagerly adopts that coat and puts it over herhead. As she roars and growls and snarls, I find two more similarcoats for Mindy and Lindsey. Just a few minutes later, as I'm back on bathroom-clean-up duty, I realize that nobody is making monsternoises, anymore. I poke my head into a bedroom to see why and realizethat the three girls are wearing the coats the regular way, cinched around their waists with the belt ties.

“Where'dthe monsters go?” I ask, surprised that the play has turned soquickly to another scenario.

“We'redetectives!” the girls inform me. They are looking for purses inthe closet. I go back to my bathroom tasks. I notice, as they troopthrough the hallway, that they have the play money out again and arestuffing it into pockets and purses. They are talking about moneygoing missing.

Soonthe kids check in with me. I am almost done with the bathroom, andthey ask if I have any mystery that needs solving. “Um...” Iremember their talk about lost money, and I quickly say, “Yes, mydog is missing. Could you find my lost dog?”

Nota brilliant and exciting (or even realistic) problem for detectivesto solve, but the girls seem happy enough as they dash off to solveThe Problem of the Lost Dog.

Nextthing I know, as I go into the kitchen/family room, Lindsey issitting at the little table, using letter stamps and a stamp pad. Shedoesn't seem to be a detective anymore.

Camilleannounces she is going to make a “detective sign.” She sits downat the table, too, and reaches for some letter stamps and a piece ofpaper. Mindy sits on a third chair and says, “Me, too.” Mindy'ssign is hand-lettered. Next to a picture of a man, she writes:

CM L L C [star shape] T T A

IK O K E B U

FB W [star shape] V X Y

SA M

Camillehas stamped letters on her sign and now writes the same lettersunderneath.

CG Z T Y X X V

TT J A A K N F

BU F W X X Y Y

CA M I L L E M M Q Q F

AA K U V

MZ Y X Y X U A

OP W L Z T Q

Lindseyis no longer using the letter stamps. Instead she is drawing, and she explains her pictures. “This is Mommy very happy,” she says. “Mommygetting married.” And, “This is the whole family.”

Istart to prepare some food for lunch: cutting up cantaloupe intocubes, cutting cucumbers into circles, and so forth. I get out thestill-frozen peas, which are fun to eat like the sweet, frozen treatsthat they are.

Afterlunch, the restaurant idea from this morning finally resurrectsitself, but it is no longer a “space restaurant.” Each girl takesturns taking orders from the other girls, writing down the orders ona notepad (not really, of course, but scribbling as if they arewriting). They always ask a question or two such as, “And whatwould you like to drink?”

Therestaurant game eventually segues into a re-enactment of the “makebelieve” section of the Mr. Rogers dinosaur show. Mindy is LadyAbilene, and Camille decides that she is also Lady Abilene.The girls get out some tapioca pudding to “feed” to somedinosaurs.

Inthe meantime, Lindsey is not interested in feeding dinosaurs tapiocapudding—and she doesn't even want to be a third Lady Abilene.Instead, she has plopped herself onto the floor with the magneticletters and board, and she is using the magnetic letters to make“words.” She keeps asking me to read the words, and I do my best,usually inserting vowels to make the “words” pronounceable. “GNF”becomes “GANEF,” for example.

Aftera long time of this word-creation play, I suggest that Lindsey putall the letters into the holding tray in alphabetical order. (Thereis a letter-shaped hole for each letter, so it's a bit like doing awooden shape-puzzle.) Lindsey likes the idea and works hard to do thetask. Actually, it is more challenging than I thought it would be.

WhenLindsey is done with the magnetic letters and joins the big girls intheir game, the scenario changes again. I listen long enough torealize that all three girls have special powers when they presstheir fingers together in certain ways. I know they must've gottenthe idea from that brand new TV show, Out of This World—theysaw the last few minutes as we waited for The Bill CosbyShow to start. In Outof This World, the maincharacter is a teenage girl who can freeze time by pressing her twoindex fingers together.

Aftera good, long play session, the girls seem a bit tired and crabby. Igive them some water and juice, and then they spot the materials I'dput out on the table: paper, crayons, a bowl of water, watercolorpaints, and paint brushes.

Theyimmediately want to use the art materials. I show them a quick demoof “crayon resist” art, telling them that we can do crayondrawings first and then add watercolor paint—and that the paintwill not cover the crayon drawing. The girls want to try the idea.

Mindyslowly and carefully begins to draw a dinosaur for our Dinosaur Dayparty with a crayon. Lindsey and Camille quickly cover their paperswith large, swoopy crayon lines. Once most of their papers arecovered with “scribbles,” Camille and Lindsey seem bummed.Camille asks me for another piece of paper and a stencil. Lindseyasks me for help to make a “good” dinosaur drawing.

Ifind the dinosaur stencils and let Camille choose one. Lindsey andMindy both decide that they want to use stencils, too.

Thegirls enjoy the satisfying moments of swooshing bright blue paint overtheir drawings and watching the crayon lines and figures pop out,waxy and colorful, from the watery background.

Fromone art project to the next: the girls decide to color in Color Medinosaur pictures. Camille wants to color in a mermaid but getsfrustrated and announces, “I'm going to go with the dinosaurpicture.” The art session ends when Maria arrives to pick upCamille. Maria looks over all the stuff the kids are getting readyfor Dinosaur Day, we discuss the details of the museum trip we aretaking together tomorrow, and then they leave.

Moving to Learn

2011-10-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

Oneof my kids was great at sitting at a table and working at a computer,or building with Legos, or making a drawing, or filling in a homemadeworksheet she'd requested, or doing a jigsaw puzzles. She was greatat curling up next to me on a sofa or bed and listening while I reador, later, reading while I listened.

Buttwo of my kids weren't quite as good at sitting still.

Theyliked to be more active!

AsI look back on these journal entries, I remember that Lindsey movedmore than Mindy and Camille, as she went about her day, playingand learning. However, I can now see that my youngest (who wasn't even a glimmer in a gleam when I journaled our first days of homeschooling) needed to be inmotion even more than Lindsey!

Shedid better at decoding words, when she'd asked for help learning toread, while standing on a ball and fighting to keep herbalance, than she did when she was trying to sit still. Whilewatching TV, she would pile up sofa cushions and try to jump overthem rather than plopping down on the rocker. (This was verydistracting for the rest of us!) She would rather dance around theroom while listening to a great story than curl up next to me in bed.She sometimes drove me a little bit crazy!

Butsome kids just think better while on the move! They learn by doing,often. People say they're “good with their hands.” They are goodat sports or dance or acting or drawing or mechanics—or all of theabove!

Ifwe adults can help these movement-oriented kids learn what they wantand need to learn in the way that best suits them—in an active,hands-on way—they may well grow up to be accomplished movers andshakers in the world!

Pretty Food

2011-10-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

Huh!Looking back at the last two journal entries (here and here), I amsurprised by the snacks we ate. Peanut-butter/apple spiders? Veggieflowers? What gives with the “pretty” food? Trust me, that is notthe direction my creativity usually takes me!

Atthe time of this journal, 1987, I was receiving FamilyFun magazine, and it was probably Mindy or Lindsey who'd spottedthe snack suggestions and were inspired to try them. I was, no doubt,just following their lead.

Whichis great. Naturally, I'm all for making healthy food fun!

Havingseen all sorts of parents raise all sorts of kids, I still am notsure what makes some people have a “sweet tooth” while otherpeople crave salty snacks, or what makes some people truly excitedabout healthy food—the healthier, the better—and otherssuper-picky veggie-haters. I suspect there is a lot of genetic inputto these and other food-related-tendencies, but also inputs such asearly feeding practices, exposure to foods in the home, adultmodeling, and much more. (That's always the way of it, isn't it? It'salways nature and nurture!)

Onefamily I've known had five (count 'em, FIVE) kids, and all the kidsate nutritious foods of every variety without complaint. There werenever any gooey, salty, sugary snacks or desserts hanging around thehouse, but instead high-quality snack foods like dry-roasted nuts andfresh fruits. Every meal had a variety of real foods—notpre-packaged, processed foods—and the expectation was that everykid would eat every food. And so they did!

Now,I know that parental expectations can only get us so far, so I wouldassume that none of these kids had a genetic disposition toward“pickiness,” but I also have to make it clear that this was ablended family. The kids didn't share the same two parents—and onekid was a relative who didn't have even one parent in common with theothers. It's possible that good modeling, early exposure to a varietyof quality foods, and high expectations would be a successful recipefor healthy eaters for most of us.

Whatdo you think?

Play Is Serious

2011-10-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

As Ityped up the latest journal entry, I was struck by how serious the kids were when they were playing.Looking back on memories of my kids playing, I picture themall-smiles, laughing and chatting. Of course, they did all of thosethings at times. But at other times, their faces were solemn, theirattention was focused, their movements were deliberate.

Whyshould I be surprised? Look at adult gamers racking up points atTetris or leveling up in World of Warcraft. They have that sameintent, focused, serious look. Look at adults playing tennis or pokeror bridge—of course they laugh and smile at times, but their facesare usually serious as they concentrate, develop strategy, and try towin.

Yeah, OFCOURSE playing is serious stuff.

Not a smile in evidence on these guitar heroes!

Mindy,Lindsey and Camille were serious as they danced in the living room,and they were serious as they played school. They “knew” a bookabout modern animals that they'd snagged off our bookshelves wasn't“really” a school book about dinosaurs, but they were serious asthey played/pretended that it was. Often their play on the computerwas solemn stuff, a time for focus and attention and even (once in awhile) competition.

Onegreat thing about homeschooling is that I could take play asseriously as my kids did—as seriously as play should betaken!

A bookthat had a lot of impact on my when I was a young adult was TheThree Boxes of Life, by Richard N. Bolles, the What Color IsYour Parachute? guy. Bolles points out that a lot of people seemto find it reasonable to devote the first couple of decades of lifeto learning—kept strictly separate from “working,” andhopefully not too distracted by “playing.” The next four or sodecades of life, these people seem to maintain, are of coursededicated to working. After a long, productive life, if we've made itthat far, we are allowed to retire and devote whatever years ordecades remaining to us to leisure. In other words, to playing.

But,Bolles argues, in reality we should be learning, working, and playingat all stages of our lives. We shouldn't even try to keep thesethings separate! Watch a toddler do all three things at once, as heor she plays with all sorts of objects, toys and non-toys alike, andlearns through the play. This toddler is apt to have a serious,intent expression during a lot of this play/learning, and we caneasily see that, for the toddler, playing around with stuff andlearning from it is serious “work.” I can say the samething about the play/learning/work as Camille danced at age five, andas Lindsey made mountains of drawings at age ten, and as Mindycreated computer programs at age fourteen.

What agift it is to get paid to learn/play/work, as many people who lovetheir jobs or professions are! We could say that one major goal ofhomeschooling is the maintenance of learning, playing and working asone integrated whole.

Journal Entry 7

2011-09-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 24, 1987

Wehaven't gotten dressed yet. We haven't eaten breakfast, even. ButCamille is here, and the three girls are already playing.

Thisis what play looks like this morning: Leotards. Ballet shoes. TheNut-cracker Suite on the record player. Girls dancing with lovelycurving arms, graceful-awkward leaps and turns, gently solemn faces.

Theydance like this, with quiet, serious intensity, for a good longwhile, but eventually the girls submit to hair brushing and gobble uptheir breakfasts. Lindsey changes her clothes, because Delia and Kikiare coming to take her to Mommy and Me again.

SinceDelia is running late, I read a book called The Get-Along Gangto the three girls. Then we get out some felt-tipped markers andpaper and start to draw. When Delia arrives, Lindsey happily saysgood-bye and runs out the door, eager to see Kiki again.

Mindyand Camille say, “We're ready for school!” They inform me thatthe day's letter is “L,” and they busy themselves with theircubbies and pencils and paper. “Use the chalkboard,” Mindydirects me.

Iwrite a large “L” on the board, and the girls copy it. So easy!They look as solemn as they play school as they did dancing ballet,so I decide to try for some smiles as I begin a guessing game. “Canyou figure out what L-word I am drawing?” I begin to draw a lion –and before I even get to the mane (the most lion-y thing about alion), Camille has guessed it. I write “lion” on the board as Icongratulate her.

Thegirls are smiling now—but they put their serious scholastic faceson as they copy the word “lion” from the board. I'm thinking I'mgoing to do Round 2 of the guessing game, but they are now drawing ontheir papers. Mindy copies my lion face and then, she tells me,writes “lion” in “handwriting.” She means cursive writing,but she doesn't know how to do it, so she just makes some enormous loopy squiggles that she says means “lion.”

Camilledraws a human figure and then does “cursive” in small, roundedscript. She reads her message to me (which is lucky since it, too, ismade up of squiggles). It's a pretty long sentence, and I don't catchit entirely—something about a woman from Mars doing strange things.(No connection to a lion, as far as I can tell.) I offer to print hersentence below her handwriting, but she says, “No. I'll read it topeople.”

I'mfiguring we are done with the letter “L,” but the kids ask foranother guessing game L-word. I draw a lemon, and Mindy guesses.Again, both girls copy the word “lemon.” Actually, Mindy drawsthe lemon first, and then starts in on the word. She soon runs out ofroom and complains to me. I tell her about hyphens, and she ends upwith:

Le-

mo-

Drawingsand labels done, the girls ask me for “one more.” I draw lips,thinking maybe the kids will say “mouth,” but they chime in with“lips” right away. This time they don't bother to write and printand draw. I can see that they're done as they start fussing withtheir cubbies again, putting away their pencils and erasers.

I'mthinking the girls are going to run off and play, but Mindy remembersthe wooden dinosaur skeleton model I'd said we could put togethertoday. We open the package. All the “bones” are made of flatpieces of wood. The girls are excited and start sorting the bones.They make a pile of rib bones—I tell them the label “rib bones,”and they eagerly use the term—and then they figure out which bonesbelong in the neck and which in the tail.

Mindysniffs one of the bones. “It doesn't smell like other dinosaurbones,” she tells me, “because they smell bloody.”

“Theseare just wooden pretend bones,” I say. “And they're a lot smallerthan the real bones.”

Mindynods.

Themodel bones are hard to put together, and I can see that I am goingto have to sand some of the “bones” for the thing to work. I gooff to the garage for some sandpaper, and I am soon busy sandingrough connections.

Mindyand Camille troop off and come back with two rather large books fromour bookshelves. They are regular adult books, but the girls tell methat they are their “school books,” and they pretend that theyare getting them out of their cubbies (even though the cubbies are alot smaller than the books). They settle down in their chairs again,and each starts to turn the pages of her book.

“Theseschool books are about dinosaurs,” Camille says. As she turns thepages, she starts to talk a little about dinosaurs, as if she werereading interesting bits to me. But soon she is distracted by thepictures of foxes, crows, and other modern animals, and she loses thedinosaur stuff in favor of narrating the mammals and birds in frontof her.

WhenCamille is done “reading” to me, I ask Mindy about her book. “Isit about dinosaurs?” I ask.

Mindyhas the book Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, so she answers, “This ismy space book.” Then, as she turns the pages, she says, “Here isJupiter...The moon...This is the sun...Wow! Space is beautiful!”

Camilleagrees. We chat a bit about space, and Mindy says something she'dalready mentioned—that she thinks our next subject, afterdinosaurs, should be space. I ask Camille what she thinks of theidea, and she agrees again.

Thekids are being awfully agreeable today!

Thegirls ask for time on the computer. They decide to play “ReaderRabbit” with the sorter game, choosing the letter “L.” (Yep,they are still holding onto their chosen letter-of-the-day!) Theirgame play is really improving, and after each girl has done threegames, they seem ready to move on. Before I can suggest a change,Mindy says that she wants to play one more game and then switch toanother computer game. She plays, does well, and turns the mouse overto Camille. Camille plays her last game—and has a perfect round!Reader Rabbit appears on the screen and dances in reward.

“Iwant to make it dance, too,” Mindy decides. So she plays “onemore” and ALSO gets a perfect score, and a dance. Big, happysmiles!

Thenext game they choose is a picture match-up. I assume they will playseparately, as they had the sorter game, but although they take turnswith the keyboard and mouse, they work together the entire game, andthey robustly cheer for themselves, too.

Halfwaythrough the last game, Mindy mentions that she is hungry for snack. Iask if they want to take a break from the game, but she says she willwait for “snack time.”

Snacktime, she had previously informed me, is 10:30.

At10:30, the girls abandon the computer and move back to thewooden-bone-strewn table for their snack. I help them get out bagels,cream cheese, “Quacker Crackers,” and apple juice. They need alittle help with the bagels, but they do the spreading and thepouring, and the eating and then the cleaning.

Isand wooden dinosaur bones!

Next,the girls inform me, it's time for recess. They start in with somedance moves again, with a few gymnastics stunts thrown in for goodmeasure. After practicing more leaps, they ask for music. I putGrieg's “Peer Gynt: Morning” on the turntable and begin to dancewith them.

“Let'sline up,” Camille says, arranging us in the hallway. Then she leadsus out of the hallway in a line. I continue to happily dance withthem until Mindy says, “Mom, when can you leave? We need privatetime.”

Oh,well!

Igo back to the mess of bones and sand paper and wood dust and beginto clean up. (Obviously, we aren't going to complete the modeltoday!) I can see that the girls are now doing partner dances, eachwith a large stuffed animal as her partner. Eventually, I spot somewonderful action: as they dance, they throw their partners into theair and then catch them again!

Thegirls invite me back to recess to read a book to them.(Hmmm...read-aloud time during recess? It's pretty obvious thesegirls have never been to “real” school.) They choose a bookcalled Messy, by Barbara Bottner, and the story includes aballet class and dance recital. Camille assigns herself to be variouscharacters in the book, as I read, and Mindy wants to be the maincharacter, the star dancer who is (you guessed it!) messy.

Lindseyusually leaps and cavorts and capers and dances as I read aloud, butwith her gone, I'm thinking we are going to have a more relaxingreading session, because Camille and Mindy are usuallycurl-up-with-the-adult cuddlers. But not today—during this specialrecess read-aloud, they are in constant motion.

Whenthe book is finished, Mindy gets out the bell and rings it. “Recessis over,” she announces.

Ioffer to read a dinosaur book in Spanish to them. With the picturesas context, the kids do a great job of translating a lot of theSpanish. But they can't seem to hear what I can see: the similaritiesof scientific words such as “herbivore” and “herbivoro.”

Whilewe are still enjoying studying the pictures and translating theSpanish words, Delia, Kiki, and Lindsey arrive back home. Camille andMindy are ready to share some of their dancing with the younger kids.They beg me to put on the dance recital videotape, so I do. Delia andI watch as all the kids dance along. Soon the kids segue intoanother, related activity: they remove all the sofa cushions andpillows and arrange them on the floor. It's a lumpy, piecemealgymnastics “mat,” and they do somersaults and gymnastics poses.“Remember to point your toes,” Camille reminds her cousin.

Deliaeventually breaks up the dance/gymnastics party, saying that she andKiki have to leave. And I say, “Let's make lunch.”

We'dalready decided to make some special “pretty” food for lunchtoday, and Mindy had chosen a cucumber/carrot snack she'd seen in amagazine. Which is very surprising, since she hates cucumbers! Butthe veggies look like flowers, which Mindy loves, and she'd figuredout a substitute.... I cut the carrots into “stems” and curling“leaves,” and each girl arranges one on her plate. Round slicesof cucumber make Camille's and Lindsey's flower heads, and Camilleremoves the seeds from her flower center. Mindy gets a round of appleinstead of cucumber—and of course I cut the core and seeds out.Although Camille likes her hole-flower-center, with the plate showingthrough, Mindy doesn't. I suggest a dollop of peanut butter as thecenter, and she enthusiastically endorses the idea.

Togo with the food flowers, there's yogurt, cream cheese on bagels(again), tuna, apple juice, and a pear to share.

Afterlunch, energized by the addition of Lindsey to the group, the girlswant to do more dancing, more gymnastics, more dance recital video,and (Mindy only) more Reader Rabbit on the computer. After seeing herbig sister take a break from dancing to play on the computer, Lindseydecides she wants to play on the computer, too, so she does a quickiecolor-in activity. (I have to help her control the mouse.)

Soonall three girls are on the dance “stage” again. When I check inon their activity, I realize that this time, it's not just dancing.The girls are doing full-on pretend play, with characters and storylines.

Iget a lot done in the afternoon!

Finallythe girls are tired of playing. Camille asks me to read Messy,again, and the others choose two more books. After a very pleasantreading session, I ask the girls to help me clean up before Roz andGinnie come for piano play. All the cushions and pillows, the stuffedanimals and books, some other assorted toys and markers are restoredto their rightful places. I glance at the clock. Hmm, we have sometime to kill—but that means time to make another mess. “Let's dochalk on the driveway!” I suggest.

Todaythe girls draw pictures (rather than write words). Camille drawsseveral vehicles and some stick figures. Mindy draws houses andpeople. Lindsey draws faces—lots and lots of smiling and grinningfaces.

Afterthat, it's Roz-and-Ginnie time, and piano time, andMaria-picking-up-Camille time. Over and out.

Mixing It Up

2011-09-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Oneof the big benefits of homeschooling is that the kids are inmixed-age groups. Within our household, everyone was a different age.Even adding a few kids of the same age (Camille being a mere dayyounger than Mindy, for example) didn't dilute the fact that the kidslearned a bit more about patience and kindness from being in a mix ofages. And when it comes to kids “showing” what they can do, ortrying new stuff, or learning-through-watching—having multiple agesas well as multiple interests and strengths is a big benefit.

Mindywas almost always one of the oldest kids in the group, even in ourlarge homeschool group, because we started the group with ourfive-year-olds and their younger siblings. But even Mindy was oftenexposed to older learners, because we adults tend to learn a lotwhile homeschooling (especially unschooling). Whether we weretouring a newspaper publishing plant, doing combustion experiments,or reading a historical novel set in Ancient Egypt, we parentslearned along with the kids!

Being Left Out

2011-09-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

Threecan be a tricky number, when it comes to play groups, because twokids can “leave out” the third. In our teeny unschool group ofMindy, Lindsey, and Camille, the most likely kid to be left out wasLindsey, because she was younger.

Itried to keep an eye out for any mean behavior, including exile fromthe group, and of course I talked to the girls if I thought they werebeing mean. However, there are good reasons for kids to sometimeswant to be by themselves or to play or talk with just one friend.There are times when kids want to be away from their siblings, aswell.

Lookingback, I'm glad that the teeny group wasn't just these threekids, all the time. I'm glad that Lindsey got a chance to go off withDelia and Kiki, in the most recent journal post,and that friends would come over and play sometimes. There can be allsorts of groupings in the ebb and flow of people coming and going.

Anotherthing I notice as I look back at the journal entry is that Camillefelt hurt by being excluded but didn't especially notice that she wasbeing excluded on ridiculous grounds (“no five year olds” whenMindy herself was five!). Also, she apparently wasn't thathurt—she just dove into doing her favorite activity with me. Later,Lindsey and Kiki were being left out in the most pointed way, with asign specifying that people of their particular age weren't allowed,but they didn't even notice or, at least, mind. After all, they hadeach other. Finally, I noticed that the mean-seeming exclusionarysign was really (though we didn't know it) in preparation of a funsurprise; Mindy and Camille were excluding the younger kids so thatthey could set up a pretend store that the kids could play with them.

Unschoolers “Playing School”

2010-09-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have already shown that our family's homeschool didn't try to replicate what happens at school. I didn't set out to have a curriculum with learning divided into discrete steps—lesson-sized chunks that would be introduced, practiced, tested, and periodically reviewed. I didn't intend to carve up the world into separate subjects like Science and History and Art, and I didn't want to spend much time on evaluating (testing) or labeling (grading) my kids.

Instead, I hoped to concentrate on true learning.

I hoped to promote education by listening to my kids' expressed interests, helping them learn about those things, and exposing them to other cool stuff.

So it was pretty funny to have the kids ask for formal lessons—exactly what I didn't want to institute.

However, there is a very, very different feel in playing at school, on the one hand, and really “doing” school (whether at public or private school or in a school-like homeschool), on the other hand. Playing at school when the kids want to do that is child-led learning, is tapping into their interests, and (by the way) is lots of fun. If I would have chosen a Letter of the Day, myself, and if I were serious about introducing and practicing and testing for mastery of that letter...it would soon have become drudgery for them and for me.

Fun for all—and all for fun?

Naturally, not all learning has to emphasize fun. My kids often chose to do things that involved a lot of work and even drudgery. Learning gymnastics and ice skating and dance, for example, involves sit-ups and sprints as well as glittery costumes and performances. But self-imposed drudgery to reach a goal that the child has freely chosen is, again, very different from days and weeks and months and years of slogging through boring or mystifyingly irrelevant lessons “just cuz.”

Typically, adults say that knowing all that school stuff will be important someday. But that is not a very convincing reason to study hard—because no matter how smart or not-so-smart kids seem to be in school, they're all smart enough to realize that parents and other non-teacher adults, by and large, don't remember all that supposedly crucial stuff. All the kids have to do to find this out is to ask for help with their homework!

What every fourth grader should know...

I know that we can have a panicked response when our children or, say, people on the street don't know something that we consider absolutely minimal for being considered “educated.” But we probably all have different lists of what that baseline-supposedly-necessary knowledge is. I would say that everyone should know the planets of the solar system and the definitions of the words proton, neutron, and electron. Someone else might say that it's crucial for an educated person to be familiar with the names of Shakespeare's major works and to have read at least one. Most of us would agree that familiarity with the structures of the government and the particulars of our nation's written constitution are important for being good citizens, but some people would stress learning about past presidents, and some would stress learning about Congressional and lobbying procedures.

However, maybe the concept of having a list of facts that EVERYONE needs to know is, at heart, erroneous. As education scientist Sugata Mitra says, when you can look stuff up on the internet in just a few seconds, why should you try to stuff that stuff into your head?

Proof positive that it's not THAT important that your kid know what every fourth grader should know:

Before I had kids, I was managing editor in a company that, among other things, produced textbooks. I headed up the project of writing the fourth grade state history book, and for a while, I not only knew tons and tons of California history, I even knew exactly what page and paragraph particular facts of that history could be found in our textbook. The book was adopted by the state of California, and for a number of years I often saw fourth graders with my book under their arms!

(If you know anything about textbook writing, you know it's a huge committee effort, but as MANAGING editor, all changes and additions and deletions—and all photos, diagrams, illustrations, and charts—went through me. So it really seemed like my baby...until I had a real baby, at least.)

One task that fell to me as managing editor was choosing the VERY MOST IMPORTANT stuff that we really wanted kids to remember, and writing review and test items about those particular concepts, terms, and facts. I thought I chose really well. I stayed away from dates, because few of us remember them. Instead, I went for the really meaty concepts and facts that I thought every Californian really ought to know.

Flash forward four years. I was over at Camille's house, and her cousin, who went to school, was trying to rush through his homework so he could join us in celebrating Las Posadas. He had history homework that involved my book, and he was having problems with one of the review questions I myself had written.

Camille's mom grinned and said, “You have the book editor right here—go ask Auntie Cathy for help!”

As I confidently reached for the book, I asked which question he was stuck on.

“Number 3.”

I read the question...and realized that I had NO IDEA of what the answer was. Of course, it didn't take me all that long to scan through the chapter and find the answer—and then to help the student find it as well—but I was shocked! Shocked, I tell you! If that test question really dealt with something that EVERY Californian should know, right off the top of their heads, as I had been confident when I wrote the question, then how could I—the book's editor—have no idea what the answer was a mere four years later?

The actual crucial thing in education isn't knowing the right answers. It is the confidence that we can find the answers.

Journal Entry 6

2010-09-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, September 22, 1985

Today Lindsey is going to “Mommy and me” class with Camille's cousin Enrique (“Kiki”) and Aunt Delia. So for a while, it will just be Camille, Mindy, and me.

The girls begin the day by “playing school.” While I'm urging them to eat breakfast, get dressed, and succumb to hairbrushing, they're busy getting out books, arranging their “cubbies” (boxes of “school supplies”), and talking about lessons. Probably inspired by Sesame Street, they announce that the day's letter is C.

I play along. I write capital and lower case Cs on a miniature blackboard and urge them to do the same on theirs. They eagerly comply and identify the sound that C makes (the hard-K sound, that is). It's easy for them to think of names and words that start with C, since Camille and Cathy are perfect examples!

Then I challenge them to say the C word that I draw on my board. Again, no problem! They immediately identify pictures of a coat, caterpillar, and cap. I write the first two words on the board, and we discuss the facts that OA together say O and that the word cat can be found inside the word caterpillar. I challenge them to write cap on their boards by sounding the word out, and they are able to do that without breaking a sweat, too.

I ask if the kids want to draw a C word for me. Camille promptly agrees and draws an oval. I say, “Cabbage?” while I search my mind for more likely oval objects that start with C.

She shakes her head no and informs me, “It's an O word.”

Oh, yikes—apparently not cake or candy or cookie.

I suggest, “Oval? Olive? Orange?”

Camille kindly gives me a few hints (it's a food, it's green), and I finally hit the mark with avocado. She is pleased that I “got” it and isn't a bit fazed when I show her that that word starts with A and ends with O.

Next, it's Mindy's turn. She draws what clearly looks like money, and I ask if it's an M word.

“No, a C word, like you said,” Mindy answers.

“Cash?” I ask, and Mindy nods with satisfaction.

The girls use the Sesame Street coloring computer program. On the C page, Camille discovers C words cookie and cupcake as she electronically colors. Mindy chooses the H page and colors house, hat, horn, and Herry Monster.

Then the girls run out to excavate dinosaur bones, as they did last week.

As they play, I do some housework and lay out some nice watercolor supplies. Of course, the minute the girls come inside, they want to use the paints—they're especially cool because they come in tubes!

We all mix colors. Then the girls use a stencil to trace a dinosaur outline while I sketch a dinosaur freehand. Next, the best part: lavishing on the paint.

Camille stops painting first and goes back to the Sesame Street program, choosing the letters A (apple, airplane) and B (Bert, Big Bird, ball). Then she moves on to another computer program, the Sorter game of “Reader Rabbit.” She has to sort words that start with W or C into two piles, and she informs me that she “can't do it—it's too fast.” I'm interested to note that, after such a dire pronouncement, she does the task perfectly!

Mindy asks for a turn at the computer and plays a “concentration”-type game matching words and pictures. She is competent but not perfect in remembering where the matches are.

I glance at the clock and decide the girls will probably ask for food soon. I remember a snack Mindy wants to try and make peanut butter-apple spiders with celery-curl antennae and raisin eyes.

The kids are thrilled with the snack, and Camille knowingly says that they are spiders, because spiders have eight legs.

Camille is being unusually affectionate, kissing me on the neck and whispering secrets in my ear. I can't make out what the secrets are, mind you, but she seems thrilled to be imparting them!

Perhaps because of this secret-telling, Mindy has gone off away from us (which is unusual for her), into her room, even closing the door. (That's really unusual for her!) Eventually Camille wanders down the hall to see what she's doing, and she comes back with a hurt expression. “I can't go in Mindy's room,” she tells me. “There's a sign on the door.”

I go to check it out for myself. I kind of expect to see a badly-spelled sign that says something like “Do not enter.” Instead, I see a sign that has a number 5 on it. I call through the door, “What does the sign say, Mindy?”

“No five-year-olds allowed,” Mindy answers.

Huh! Mindy herself is five!

I turn to Camille and say, “You can have Lindsey's room and make a sign for the door.”

Camille doesn't want her own exclusionary room, though, so she and I go back to the family room. I am wondering what's up with Mindy but am also pretty sure that she should be allowed to seek privacy if she needs it.

Camille asks me to read the Sesame Street magazine. There are poems, stories, and games, and we even learn some Spanish words.

Soon enough, Mindy rejoins us.

When Lindsey comes home with Kiki and Delia, she seems much closer to Kiki than ever before. All four kids play together while us moms talk and make egg-salad lunch. We all eat together. When Mindy and Camille are done eating, they get some cellophane tape and march off to Mindy's bedroom. When I hear their door close, I suspect that there is more sign action, so I go down the hall to check it out.

Sure enough, there is a new sign on Mindy's door: “No 3 year olds allowed.”

I look in on Lindsey and Kiki, both in Lindsey's room. They are playing side-by-side, Lindsey with the Fisher Price zoo set and Kiki with the airport. They seem quietly happy, so (naturally!) I don't draw their attention to the closed door or sign. But as I leave, Lindsey asks me to close her door, so I guess she noticed.

“Are you guys okay?” I ask. She nods in response, and Lindsey's no stranger to expressing herself, so I figure she's not feeling the least bit hurt by a closed door. Maybe she figures it's just the thing to do today. So I close Lindsey's door, as requested, and go back to chat with Delia.

The next time Mindy's door opens, she wants us all to hear an Important Announcement: “We have a store. And it's now OPEN!” So Delia and Kiki and Lindsey and I all go shopping and “buy” plenty of items from Mindy and Camille's store.

Some friends, Candace and her mom Cindy, stop by. The five kids seem like a mob, somehow, and I'm pretty glad that they want to play outside in the playhouse. Eventually Candace and Cindy leave, but a glance at the clock shows me that it will soon be time for Roz and Ginnie, who live down the street, to come over to join in our piano fun.

I feel a bit tired from all the coming-and-going, and I'm not sure what we should do while waiting for piano class. Luckily, Mindy is ready with a suggestion: sidewalk chalk. We all go out to the driveway, where we write names. I write, “Welcome to De Colores, Roz and Ginnie.” Mindy writes Camille's name, then Mindy, then Camille again. Camille makes a long wiggly drawing (a snake? a really large worm?) and then writes her name. What blows me away is that Lindsey has started writing her name. (At age 3, I didn't think she knew how to spell it yet.) She writes L I N, then asks me what the next letter is. (Oh. She doesn't know how to spell it yet. That's okay, she's only 3.) I tell her D, and use my finger to trace a D shape on the driveway, and Lindsey writes the letter. We follow this procedure for the rest of her name: S E Y. And there on the driveway is Lindsey's almost perfectly written name.

Yeah! I'm very impressed.

Lindsey decides to write her name again. She copies without any help from me, and the result is only slightly incorrect:

Soon we see Roz and Ginnie and their mom Cindy ambling down the street. There are whoops of glee as the girls run to greet their friends, and we are soon arrayed around the piano for keyboard-and-movement fun and games.

So concludes another day.

Tyrannosaurs Can Be Female, Too

2010-06-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

Despite the movements of women's suffrage and feminism, modern society still features gender-based stereotyping, and some stereotypes have at least some basis in biology. Genes aside, our kids learn gender roles as eagerly as they learn everything else in their environment. It's hard to completely eliminate gender bias—I know I tried, but I'm sure I didn't succeed.

It is interesting but not shocking that my young girls tended to talk about their cuddly stuffed animals as female, using “she” and “her” and female names, but that only a few of the plastic dinosaurs were identified as female—and that the Tyrannosaurs always seemed to be male. T-rex is often portrayed as a “vicious” and necessarily “violent” predator—and my kids had somehow picked up on the idea that males tend to be more aggressive than females (which is true of some species but not others, and nothing to do with predation!).

Naturally, when we read books about T-rex, and when we saw dinosaur exhibits at museums, I had the opportunity to point out that around half of the Tyrannosaurs were, in fact, female.

Apparently, however, from what I read in my journal entries, I did not point out every stereotype my kids referenced in play. I remember that there were times in which we discussed sexism head-on, but that was probably when the kids were a bit older. And as they matured, I imagine that the kids may have policed their own sexist assumptions in play.

(They sometimes policed others' sexism, too! I vividly remember some boys telling Lindsey that only boys could climb trees. She informed them that they were being sexist, and the boys were horrified. They ran to me to tell on her—saying, “Lindsey said a bad word!” I had to teach them what sexism means and that, although being sexist is bad, saying the word sexist isn't bad!)

Building Blocks and Toy Guns

Over the years, we had a lot of little boys over to play. Often these boys were about the same age as either Mindy or Lindsey, and usually they played well together. Here are a few of the very general tendencies I noticed (again, these tendencies could be biological or societal in origin—or, more likely, both):

The younger girls tended to use blocks to build enclosures for dolls and stuffed animals. That meant low walls—usually only one block high—and doorways and gates and pathways. These block creations tended to spread out and out, taking up entire floors of rooms at times. And the block play tended to be just a set-up for the longer pretend play with the dolls and toy animals.

In contrast, the younger boys tended to build towers. Only one block wide, these creations went up and up until they toppled down with a tremendous crash. Sometimes the towers went up and up and then there would be pretend play—about 15 seconds' worth, ending with a gorilla attack, lightning, or bombs—anything that would bring down the towers with a crash.

When the kids were older, both sexes tended to use and enjoy Legos more than wooden blocks. Both boys and girls tended to create enclosures that had both height and length/width—realistic buildings that could hold Lego people. Some of the boys tended to elaborate on the building part of the play and never really got around to playing with the Lego figures inside their creations, and some of the girls tended to rush through the model building but lavished a lot of time to the conversations and actions of the Lego people. Most boys and girls, however, struck a pretty good balance between model building and pretend play with figures.

I knew mothers of boys who didn't want to buy toy guns for their sons. They often complained to me that everything became a gun—not just their sons' fingers, sticks, and blocks, but even vegetables, action figures, and dolls. I didn't have that worry. When my daughters asked for weapons—say, when they were very “into” the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and wanted a rifle for protection and hunting, or when they were enraptured by a book about Native Americans and wanted a bow, some arrows, and a knife—I gladly bought toys to fill these “needs.”

In their pretend games, my girls almost always used weapons as protection against wild beasts or as tools to hunt for food. Some boys who came and visited played along with these scenarios, but others seemed to gravitate toward the weapons as fun in and of themselves, and they would usually destroy play scenarios by randomly “shooting” everyone else. Of course, this caused bitter complaints: “You're ruining our game!”

(One little boy actually used our rather heavy wooden “rifle” as a weapon, on several occasions, and conked others in the head. After two such incidents, I decided to put the rifle away before he came over.)

I doubt if the boys who loved*loved*loved guns at age 5 and 8 are now, as young adults, any more violent or any more apt to use an actual weapon than the boys who used the guns only for hunting and protection.

From age 3 to 6, my girls tended to choose frilly dresses over more practical shorts and jeans. For weeks at a time, my girls chose their father and papa over their mother and grandma (at least for fun—boo-boos tended to be another matter altogether). Through all their preschool years, when toy boats and cars were available, my girls preferred dolls (although those dolls sometimes loved a nice boat or car ride). My daughters learned and participated in gender roles all too well—but they also participated as I discussed bending gender lines and expectations, too.

And I think it all turned out pretty well.

Baby Talk and 50-cent Words:

2010-04-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

How We Talk to Kids

One thing I notice as I retype my old journals from more than 20 years ago is that I often used pretty big words when talking to the kids. In my fifth journal entry—and remember, at the time Camille and Mindy were just five years old, and Lindsey was only three—I answered the kids' questions with words like camouflaged and pigments and chlorophyll. Later in the day, I used the word estimation and told them that the papers they held were not called tickets, but instead were receipts.

What gives with all the 50-cent words?

Well, to be honest, I talk a fair bit, so I imagine that I used a whole lot of smaller words, too. I used some of those smaller words to explain words, when I thought the kids needed an explanation—apparently I identified guess as a pretty good synonym for estimation, for example—and sometimes a picture we were looking at or an activity we were doing explained my vocabulary choices.

Fundamentally, I thought that I should at least try to use the “right” word for an object or phenomenon, no matter how little my kids were. Here are two anecdotes that illustrate how I reacted when somebody suggested taking a different tack...something that some might call talking at the kids' “level” but that I would call “talking down.”

The large gray animal that shall remain unnamed...

Before I even had kids to not talk down to, I was an editor at an educational publishing company. The editing staff worked very hard to get interesting, factual, clearly written prose in our textbooks, but there was a last step we had to take: we had to put the text through a “readability formula” to determine its “grade level.”

This was before computers had revolutionized the world—there were a few huge computers down in accounting, but we did our tasks with electric typewriters and calculators—so figuring out readability involved grunt work: we had to count up the number of words, the number of sentences, and the number of words that were not on a special list. A few calculations later, we came up with a number that was supposedly the grade level of the reading matter.

If the grade level was too high (and it always was), we had to play around with sentence length and so forth to bring the reading matter to the level it “had” to be.

The thing that got to me was that some lazy editors suggested using “easier” words to replace the words that weren't on that special list. That, they said, would make the text easier to read.

But it almost never did! On a page about elephants, with a wonderful picture of an elephant front-and-center, it does NOT make the text in any way better or easier to read to substitute “large gray animal” for “elephant.”

(As you can guess, the word animal was on that special list of "easy" words, but elephant was not.)

I fought against such insane changes. Making text awkward and unnatural, just to get it to come out "right" in a readability formula, is bad for publishers and for kids, I maintained.

Things should be called by their proper names.

The large black-and-white animal that shall remain unnamed...

Around the time that I was writing this journal (when the kids were about 3 and 5), we went to visit Sea World with another family. The dad of the other family was a marine biology teacher, so I was excited to pick up some of his expertise on the sea animals we would view that day. Imagine my shock when, at the beginning of the day, he totally misidentified “Shamu,” the killer whale.

We'd barely sat down to watch the Shamu show when the huge orca jumped out of the water and then crashed down again with one of those audience-soaking splashes. Like everyone else, all our kids were electrified by the sight of all that power. And into the silence that followed their gasps, my teacher friend asked the kids, “Did you see the big fish?”

More gasps from my husband and me.

“John!” I protested. “You know Shamu isn't a fish!”

He just shrugged, keeping his eyes on Shamu's next trick. “They're three!” he said, referring to his small son on his lap, and my daughter on mine. “What do you want me to say, 'Look at the big mammal?'”

Like little kids would have soooooooo much difficulty with a two-syllable word! On the other hand, I could think of a perfectly good one-syllable word he could have (and should have) used:

“How about, 'Look at the whale?'” I asked.

Like I said, things should be called by their right names. There may be many different correct names in any one situation—in this case, it could have been Shamu, orca, killer whale, whale, or even mammal...

But it most definitely should not have been fish!

Not that I was some sort of perfect paragon of a parent...

I notice that I also blew it a bit. I see from my journal that, when interacting with the kids' dress-up play, I used country names like Thailand and India with the older girls but a continent's name (South America) with my youngest.

I don't think it was a terrible misstep, since there were times when we talked about the various countries of South America and Africa (aside from anything else, we had these cool continent-map placemats that we often talked about while we ate). But I do think it's a problem when adults constantly conflate countries and continents. After years of hearing things like, “What do you want to write your report on? England, France, Africa, India, or maybe Australia?” it is understandable that kids would think of Africa as an undifferentiated blob on the globe.

How it all turned out

The upshot of my choice not to “talk down” to the kids was that my kids had large speaking vocabularies.

I often noticed that other people were always making snap-judgments, quickly coming to the conclusion that my kids were very intelligent. (As homeschoolers, the kids had no grades or test scores to brag about, so I'm certainly glad that people didn't immediately assume that they were unintelligent!) As the girls got older, it became apparent that the main reason people assumed they were smart was because of those large speaking vocabularies.

Little kids are brilliant at learning language, so using big “50-cent” words around them tends to work out just fine.

On the other hand...

It may seem completely contrary to the point I've made here to say that I eagerly engaged in “baby talk” when my kids were, you know, babies. I used super short sentences, lots of inflection and repetition, a higher tone than normal, a more sing-songy delivery—the whole nine yards. It came naturally to me to talk to my infants this way.

It goes without saying that I wasn't running around mis-identifying things for my babies. I wasn't calling airplanes birds, for example, because I imagined that two-syllable words were “too hard.”

If I can recall correctly, though, I did a whole lot of point-and-label. “Look, Mindy! [pointing] A plane! See the plane?”

Some people think that baby talk is disrespectful to babies, a form of “talking down.” It never occurred to me to think about it, to be honest—like I said, I just did what seemed natural—but in recent years I have read that baby talk (AKA caretaker speech, infant-directed talk, and motherese) actually helps babies learn language and, perhaps, helps both mental development and emotional attachment.

Respect your kids. Trust your gut.

Obviously, there is no one “right” way to talk to kids. Ultimately, we have to trust our parental instincts and our children's responses to guide us. I believe that, if we truly respect the fact that our kids are their own unique and valuable selves, we will tend to be respectful as we speak to them, however we do so, at any age.

Testing...Testing...

2010-04-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

In my last journal entry, I see that I was disquieted by Mindy's questions about what number comes after 10, after 20, after 30, and so forth.

I wondered, way back then, why she didn't already know that stuff, or why she couldn't figure out some of it on her own.

Looking back on that journal entry from the space of more than twenty years, I can confidently state that Mindy had figured out most or all of that stuff. She surely knew the words eleven, twelve, and so forth, and their order, but she probably had not seen or written these words very often. With the need to match up words like eleven with their numeric form, she probably created a mental model of how the numbers past 10 worked (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, and so on) and was testing her mental model against reality in the quickest-and-easiest way open to her—by checking with Mom.

Why am I so confident about that, now? Because over the years, Mindy showed herself to be quite good at mathematical thinking—she demonstrated an almost instinctive grasp of many concepts I had to grapple with to learn—and because she also showed herself to be quite a careful, cautious learner. She often sat back and watched others do things and only began to do them herself when she could do them right. She wasn't particularly the type to rummage around a topic, making messes and learning from mistakes—instead, she was the type to absorb-absorb-absorb, and then plunge in with competence.

A wise, grandmotherly type of woman I knew when Mindy was young said she called that sort of learner a "watcher."

Strangely, the pattern isn't true of some of Mindy's pursuits in her teen and adult years. She mucks about with computers, trying things out without the fear that tends to paralyze people of older generations. She rarely looks at manuals or instructions. Instead, she just experiments—with everything from physical set-up, to program features, to programming itself. I think that, in the case of computers, Mindy can quickly get the feedback she craves from the machines themselves—what she tries either works or doesn't, and she quickly reacts to the latter situation with a variety of new ideas about what might end up working.

If we can trust my journal entry, I reacted calmly and even patiently to her requests for information. She had confidence in my answers, and confidence in our small group—it was “safe” to ask her questions and test her theories.

If I didn't already know this about Mindy, I soon learned that she really gets pleasure out of organized concepts and checking things off in her well-ordered mind. I think that on that day so long ago, doing a dot-to-dot puzzle, she got a little click of satisfaction each time her guess turned out to be correct.

She was a watcher...a builder of mental models...a tester. She figured out an answer, then tested it against reality. Always testing, testing.

Journal Entry 5

2010-04-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

Thursday,
September 17

Camille arrives this morning seeming very droopy. I realize that she (1) has to get up earlier than my girls, and (2) has to get dressed / brushed / ready / and out of the house early, too.

Luckily, she soon cheers up when I offer to read to all three girls. We sit down and read Who Sank the Boat? and The Puppet Theater Fairy Tales.

The girls begin to play, as they often do, with dolls. This time it's Cabbage Patch dolls, because Camille has brought hers over to play with the others' dolls. The three girls carefully dress Caroline, Carrie, and Baby Lynette.

Suddenly the fully clothed dolls are left on the floor, unplayed with—and the girls are busy dressing themselves. Actually, they aren't “dressing” so much as “dressing-up”: wrapping themselves with long swaths of cloth of all colors and patterns.

“We are children from other lands,” Camille tells me, arranging her drapery artistically.

“Oh! Cool! What other lands?” I ask.

She looks blank and turns to the others, who just keep on winding more cloth around and around.

“Mmm...” I say. “Camille, you look like you're Thai. From Thailand?” I suggest.

She turns back to me with a serious face. “Yes, that's what I am,” she solemnly agrees.

“Where do you think I'm from?” Mindy asks.

“Gee...you look Indian, from India.”

“Yes, that's what I am,” she says with a huge smile. I realize that she has reused Camille's exact words. We are beginning to sound like one of those kids' books that uses repetition like verse.

I turn to Lindsey, who is wearing bright woven fabrics: “Gee...you look South American,” I tell her. (I don't know why I went all continental on that one. Just because she's young and wouldn't know Peru?)

“Yes, that's what I am,” she says, instinctively playing along with the repetition motif.

The girls move away from me and interact with each other, three strangers from three different lands. I start unloading dishes, then move to sort some laundry. The latter task puts me near their play, and I realize that the girls have created some elaborate plot in which somebodies' fathers are dying.

I don't know what that's all about.

That reminds me that Mindy has suddenly been “into” males. She told me last night, “When men are in the house, I like to follow them around and be with them, more than I like women.”

This was startling to me, and I asked the natural question: “Men? What men?”

Mindy looked up at me. “Daddy and Grandpa, of course!”

Yeah. Of course. What other men could there be?

Remembering that conversation with a smile, I take a load of laundry out to the garage. When I get back into the house, Mindy asks me to comb her hair in a “fancy Indian style.”

G-ulp. I'm not that good with hair. And I have no idea what a fancy Indian hairstyle would look like!

Still, I try my best, and Mindy seems completely satisfied with the half-up style with pinned-up-swirls. Naturally, I instantly get two more hairstyling “clients.” Funnily enough, Camille and Lindsey don't ask for “fancy Thai” and “fancy South American” styles (which, honestly, is a very good thing for my lack of hair knowledge)—they want just what Mindy has. I battle with a knot in Lindsey's hair, with bobby pins and hair clips, and with covered elastic bands—but eventually I triumph over hair and hair apparatus and am looking at three “fancy” coiffures.

Mindy reminds me of a cartoon she doesn't watch but that she catches glimpses of as we tune in the next show, Muppet Babies. Mindy says, “Remember that show, Mom? The horse in that show is MAGNIFICENT!” I can hear the capital letters in her voice. Mindy goes on: “I'm going to dress this horse just like him!”

She gets out one of her toy horses with long lavender hair. I notice that, although her play with hairstyling and lavender horses usually assumes that the horses are female, this time she's using “he” and “him.” Very interesting.

The other girls get out horses, too, and all three begin to comb and adorn horse tails and manes. Mindy holds up her finished product, saying, “Oh, do you look MAGNIFICENT!” Then she turns to another horse who is still languishing in the toy box.

Camille suggests, “Let's sing that Mr. Rogers' song 'I Like to Tame My Time,' okay?”

Another TV show we don't watch. Mindy doesn't know the song but agrees to sing it and struggles to follow along.

—Oops! I guess she does know the song a little (from somewhere), because she is now leading!

After the song is over, Camille proclaims, “I want my horse to look magnificent... beautiful... cute... magnificent!”

All I can think of is how magnificently beautiful (and cute) these girls are.

***

When a substantial number of their toy horses are styled, the kids lose interest. I help them pose their Cabbage Patch dolls and fancy-haired horses and then clean up the combs and clips mess. As soon as we're done with all that, Mindy makes a break for the dinosaur “activity books” I had laid out on a table, ready for the moment when the kids wonder “what now?”

Soon all three are coloring dinosaurs. Camille chooses a crayon carefully—lemon yellow—but then takes the time to ask if that particular dinosaur was, in fact, yellow.

So we have a rather long conversation about dinosaur colors. I get out some of the books we've been reading, and the kids talk about the colors that the illustrators used. We talk about the fossilized remains of dinosaurs that scientists use to learn about them. “Even the few times we have a print made from where the skin pressed into mud,” I say, “that doesn't tell us the color of the skin, does it? Like a footprint in sand is the color of the sand, not the foot.” The girls “get” that, and conclude that we have no way of knowing what color the various dinosaurs were.

We discuss how illustrators and toy makers decide on dinosaur colors, and I say something about some modern reptiles having coloration that helps them blend in with their surroundings, so they can hide. “Like green lizards and snakes that are camouflaged among plants,” I explain.

Camille, looking at an illustration of bold purple-and-orange dinosaurs, innocently asks, “Were plants purple and orange back in dinosaur times?”

So then I talk a bit about plant pigments that absorb the sunlight that plants need to make food, and how some of these pigments are red or purple, but most are green. I casually use the word chlorophyll when talking about the green pigments, and it doesn't faze the kids a bit, but who knows how much of all of this they will actually absorb?

In the meantime, the girls have some pretty brightly colored dinos emerging from their pages—including Camille's lemon-yellow dinosaur!

Mindy has moved on to doing a dot-to-dot picture. She asks me what comes after 9 (surely she knows already!?), and I calmly say ten while pointing to the number 10. “And after that comes eleven,” I say, pointing to the number 11. “What do you think comes after 11?” Mindy easily draws to the 12-dot and is merrily on her way—but then pauses again to ask me what comes after 19. “Two-O, which is the number twenty. Then 21.” She easily deals with 21 through 29 and then pauses to ask— —you guessed it!— “What comes after 29?” I explain, still patient, but I'd love it if she figured it out on her own!

As they color and dot-to-dot and help dinosaurs find their way through mazes, the girls sing songs from “Free to Be You and Me.”

“Let's play Dino Lotto,” Mindy suggests. All three girls find it easy to find matching dinosaurs (and other prehistoric creatures), but Lindsey starts to get a little upset when Camille and Mindy fill up their lotto cards before she can hers. I distract her with a toy she really likes right now, a pegboard.

“Now some books,” Camille suggests. We read two books about dinosaurs and then a library book called Tell Me a Trudy. Lindsey plays with the pegboard while we read, but when I finish the Trudy book, she announces that she is hungry.

I make a quick, nutritious snack for my two girls and finally coax Camille into eating breakfast. While they eat, I put away the library books, dino lotto game, and dinosaur activity books. What dinosaur-related item should I put out next? I consult a list I had brainstormed into existence a while ago, see a measuring activity, and think, “Good plan.”

I go out to the garage and find the metal measuring tape. I put it, a ball of yarn, and the sidewalk chalk onto a table, and Mindy's interest is instantly roused. “What's that?”

“A measuring tape and some yarn and the chalk,” I answer.

“Yeah, but what's it for?”

“Well, after you guys finish eating, and we clean up, you'll see.”

Lickety split, I soon had 3 filled bellies, a cleaned-up table, and the girls' attention.

“What's that stuff for?” Camille repeated.

“Well, remember we keep talking about how huge and long the dinosaurs were?” I ask the girls.

“Yeah!”

“Well, we keep reading that scientists think supersaurus was about 100 feet long, but I was wondering if we know how long that really is? So I thought we'd find out. And that means going outside, out front.”

Enthusiasm greets this suggestion, and we go out to the sidewalk. I make a mark near the corner and stand right on that mark, and I direct the kids to each take a piece of chalk and walk away from me in a straight line. When they think they've gone 100 feet, they should make a mark on the sidewalk and then write their name by their estimation. (I explain that estimation means guess.)

The girls walk and walk and keep turning back to look at me. Finally each of them stops and makes her mark.

“Are you going to guess, Mommy?” Lindsey asks.

So I walk to a spot—carefully NOT counting out paces, because I just want to see what my intuition tells me is the right length—and I mark a line and my name on the sidewalk.

“Now let's check our estimates,” I say.

We use the measuring tape to mark the yarn every ten feet (I have to run into the house to get masking tape and a Sharpie pen), and then we carefully use our jumbo yarn-tape-measure to mark 100 feet.

It turns out, we were all pretty far off—our guesses were all way too long!

Once we marked the 100-foot length, I consulted some notes I'd made and did some more quickie measurements and marks on the sidewalk. Then I take the kids on a “Dinosaur Walk.” As we walk along the sidewalk together, I say, “This is the supersaur's head. Here is its neck...keep walking...keep walking! Okay, now we're to the body...still the body. And here is the tail...more tail...and still more tail!”

The kids love it! They run inside to get some dolls, then they take turns leading their dolls on the same dino tour, sticking pretty close to the words I'd used even though their proportions are a little bit different. They clearly get the main idea that sauropods had loooooooong necks and loooooooong tails.

As we walk back to the house, the girls see a telephone pole and pretend it is a looong sauropod neck. They crane their necks to look up at the “dinosaur's head.”

Suddenly this changes into a game of “I Spy,” which we play for several turns. Mindy and Lindsey seem most intent on noticing little natural items that will stump the rest of us, and Camille seems intent on making it a word game. The game starts off with a rhyme, “I spy with my little eye...” before getting into the guessing-game part: “something green!” But she keeps up the rhyming, the sillier the better. “A green machine? A green...a green thing? A green bean? Oh! A green queen!”

* * *

Home again, the older two girls decide to sew. They get out some fabric and their school scissors. I decide I had better supervise and bring some laundry over to fold while I keep my eye on things.

Mindy says that she is going to sew “a dress for Caroline and overalls for my little bear.” Camille states that she will make a costume for Baby Lynette. (Carrie, Camille's Cabbage Patch doll, is languishing nearby, no doubt waiting for someone to offer to sew something for her!)

Lindsey shows no interest in cutting fabric and sewing. Instead, she has grabbed the plastic fold-up ruler that came with a toy tool bench and is “measuring” everything.

The girls talk about measuring, and Camille asks to borrow the ruler. She then measures Caroline and Carrie. She passes the ruler over to Mindy, who also measures and compares the two dolls.

“They are the same!” Camille states correctly. “That means they are born on the same day,” she concludes...not so correctly.

I open my mouth to challenge her logic, but Mindy is answering, so I shut my mouth again and wait to see what she says.

“I guess so....:” Mindy starts. “When was Carrie's birthday, Camille?”

Camille says that her doll's birthday was in May.

“Well, mine's is in June,” Mindy starts to reply. “Wait!—Mom, when is Caroline's birthday?”

Cabbage Patch dolls arrive with a name and a birthday already printed on the adoption papers, so there is one “right” answer, and I provide it: “November 1.”

Camille says, “Oh, Carrie's is December 1.”

I'm confused as to Carrie's birthday being in May AND December. But I shrug off all concerns about logic because I'm so pleased that Lindsey has started to help me match socks and fold laundry. With her help, I quickly finish the load.

Lindsey gets some dolls to play with. I take the laundry into the bedrooms and put it away, then hurry back to supervise the sewing project.

I chuckle when I hear Camille lecture her doll, “Carrie, you're only five—you don't know much—I haven't taught you. Wait until you're six!”

Even funnier, a few minutes later, is Camille spouting off about her doll's desire to have more than one costume for Halloween. “It's frustrating!” Camille complains to us. She turns back to her doll, saying, “Carrie, please, would you stop all this nonsense?”

* * *

I have to run a few errands, so we all get ready to go out. We go to the copy shop and then stop by the grocery store to buy a few needed items. I tell each girl that she can choose one piece of fruit to buy and eat.

Camille asks, “Can I choose fruit juice?” She holds up one of those special individual-serving all-natural fruit juices, and I say sure. Possibly a mistake, because Mindy and Lindsey immediately decide they want juice, too.

Sigh. Less fiber, more sugar (fructose), and probably fewer vitamins. Oh, well.

I give each girl money so she can buy her own juice, and then I pay for my larger order. As we go out to the car, Mindy asks if she can keep the ticket.

“Ticket?” I ask.

“This ticket,” she says.

“Oh, the receipt,” I answer.

“What's a receipt?” Lindsey asks.

“Those little bits of paper are called receipts,” I explain. “And they show that we paid for the things we bought. They're sort of like proof.” I turn to Mindy. “Yes, you can keep your receipt if you want.”

When we get home, the girls drink their juice and rinse the bottles. Then the two older girls resume their “sewing projects,” which now involve draping and knotting, plus some large-scale stitching with needle and thread.

Lindsey has found the T-rex model and is trying to talk to Camille through it. Camille doesn't answer. After several attempts, Camille finally responds: “I won't talk to you, because you're bad.”

We discuss the word bad in relation to behavior, and I ask if meat eaters doing what they have to do, to stay alive, are really being bad. Lindsey defends T-rex, saying that he can't help what he is. (I notice that, in this world of mostly-females, T-rex is a “he.”)

In the meantime, Lindsey is looking around for something non-upsetting to feed T-rex. “What can we feed him, Mom?” she asks.

Picture: A tyrannosaur considering behaving badly?

“Steak?” I suggest.

“Yeah!” Mindy and Lindsey both say.

Camille seems okay with a meat-eater eating steak, too. (Maybe I should've challenged the logic on this one, saying something like “Steak from a cute little cow,” but I go the easy route and let them distance meat words from animal words. I'm really being practical here—I don't want to risk Camille upsetting her parents by becoming a vegetarian at age 5, plus I don't want Camille to upset Lindsey, who is getting a bit tired at this time of the day, by continuing to call her chosen plaything “bad.”)

Picture of T-Rex, by Mindy 9-1987. The T-Rex seems to be ignoring the child and going for the tree!

Now all three girls seem to think the tyrannosaur is a good guy. The older girls are using scraps of fabric to clothe him, which involves getting out the ruler again and measuring him. Soon Lindsey informs us that he is ill. They make a call to the dino doctor to find out what to do.

Camille has rummaged through the dinosaur model box and discovered the two-headed dragon (we just don't have enough dragon models for their own box!). She has the dragon tell Mindy to go get more meat. “We're running out of meat!” she says.

It turns out that Camille's dragon is sick, too. More phone calls.

Lindsey feels that a green pillow would comfort T-rex, and we all help her use scrap fabric to make one. As he lays down on the finished product, Lindsey says, “He has mucus. He's going to die!”

The other two girls make sympathetic comments...

What with the scissors and the needles, I had to be right in the thick of the threesome a lot today, and it has given me a chance to notice how much Lindsey adds to the richness of play. When I am not so near their play, it sometimes seems that she is mostly a disruption to the older girls' pretend scenarios, because I hear more from the girls when there are problems than when there is collaboration.

The girls make a move to go outside to play. I insist on them helping to clean up the scraps of fabric, and then they race outdoors. I finish up putting away scissors, needle and thread and then sit down with my notebook to write all of this stuff down.

I don't know what they're playing outside, but I hear through the screen door the word “protoceratops.” A few minutes later, the girls go through the house and into the garage, calling back to me, “We need hammers.”

“What? Why?”

I am picturing actual tools and a whole new level of supervision, but Mindy emerges from the garage with three croquet mallets. She begins to answer my question. “We need them to dig out the fossils we found.”

Camille explains, “You and Jim are paleontologists, and we are your children.”

Mindy goes on, “And we found a bed of fossils.”

The kids have scrounged a plastic container from somewhere and return to the back yard. I see that they are hammering at the dirt with their croquet mallets, and then collecting pieces of rock in the container.

“Look at all these fossils, Mom!” Lindsey says through the screen door.

Mindy is so excited by two of her finds, she comes in to show me. “Look, Mom, dinosaur teeth!”

I ask, “Is the dinosaur a meat eater or a plant eater?”

Mindy holds up one of the rocks, which is rather round, and says, “Plant eater.” Then she holds up the other rock, which is sharp, and adds, “And a meat eater.”

A few minutes later, Maria arrives, and the girls get to tell her about the sewing projects and the sick dinosaur and dragon and the bed of fossils. Another day summarized in a few excited bursts...

But it's hard to truly explain all the rich complexity that is a day!

“Mommy Lure”

2010-03-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

In my fourth journal entry from my early days of homeschooling, I recount a small incident: I tried to keep my youngest, Lindsey, out of the two older girls' hair by sitting down and reading to her while they played happily. But soon the older girls came running to join Lindsey and me.

I remember this happening many times—when I felt that the kids needed separation for some reason—and especially when one kid wasn't engaged in anything and was sort of cruising around “looking for trouble”—I would often interest that kid in doing something with me.

It would seem to be a perfect solution: one kid is happily doing something on her own (or with Camille), the other is happily engaged with me, they have the psychological separation from each other that they need, and a fight isn't brewing. Yeah!

Except, more often than not, it didn't turn out like that. Whatever I chose to do with one child suddenly seemed to be the most interesting thing in the world, and the other(s) would join us almost immediately. In effect, I was ending whatever activity that the independently-playing child(ren) had begun.

Hmmm...that doesn't seem perfect, after all!

I know that it's a good thing to have truly one-on-one time with each child, and parents can make that happen with planning and with other adult help. For example, Mom can be with one child on an outing, and Dad can stay home with the other child and do cool stuff. A few days later, the pairings can be reversed. Even if there are three or more children in a family, planned activities such as “Date with Dad” and “Movie with Mom” can make sure that each child has some quality alone-time with each parent, once in a while.

Here I am not talking about such planned one-on-one events. I am talking about the everyday ebb and flow of a household when there is only one parent but more than one child. In this daily situation, the parent has to be at least a little bit careful about using his or her “lure.”

We want to make sure that kids have plenty of time to choose their own activities, organize their own time, play their own way.

It's nice that a child's natural desire to be with and emulate Mom and Dad can lead to, say, kids helping out with household tasks, but we also want to encourage independence and focus on self-chosen projects.

Mommy Lure--not just for little kids!

I remember visits with Camille and her mom, years after their family had moved about an hour and a half away from ours; because we had such a long history of doing projects together, Maria and I would naturally gather some stuff so that all of us could cook together and do art projects together and so forth.

Shortly after we arrived at Camille's house, after we had exchanged squealing hugs and commented how tall all the kids were and how long or short and cute everyone's hair was now, there would be a momentary awkward pause. Into that pause, Maria would say something like, “So, I bought some oranges and cloves so we could make pomanders,” and I would say something like, “And I brought all the ingredients for the lemon pecan loaves we talked about making.”

The girls would look at us, look at each other, and say, “We just want to talk!” Mindy, Lindsey and Camille, all teens by this time, would go running off upstairs.

That was fine. Maria and I would smile and remember how they used to want to do stuff with us, but then we would eagerly jump into baking and craftmaking and catching up.

And every time, after 30 or 50 minutes, the girls would come down again and say something like, “Is there enough for us, too? We want to make them now!” And we would realize that we still had just a bit of Mommy lure, after all...

Bloodshed in the Sand Lot

2010-02-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

(or the difference between girls and boys)

I only had daughters, so I'm no expert on this topic. Of course, I have a lot of friends and relatives who have raised sons, and I've read some stuff, and I know one thing for sure:

We all want to raise our sons and daughters so that they don't feel pressured to fulfill sexist expectations...
so that they don't feel shame if a particular ability, interest, or personality trait does not seem to mesh with others of their sex...
so that they feel no limits on who or what they can be.

Still, I've heard that there are some differences between the sexes that, while only valid as generalities and not necessarily true of particular children, do ring true to our experiences.

Here are some indications of what would seem to be differences between boys and girls:

As I read my fourth journal entry, I was struck by the dinosaur play between Mindy, Camille, and Lindsey. Their dinosaurs were pretty darned civilized! Nobody ate anybody else. Nobody even fought! There was precious little roaring. Mostly the dinosaurs talked to each other. A lot of the play was about relationships.

I have been around a lot of little boys with plastic dinosaurs, and my memories of these play sessions go something like this:

Bloodshed! Mayhem! Fighting!
Crunching and munching!
Roaring, killing and eating!

The boys themselves did not fight as they played—but those plastic dinosaur mouths grappled each other, those sturdy plastic tails thwacked each other, and lots of real-true roaring filled the air. There wasn't actual violence, but there was play-violence in abundance, resulting in armies of plastic dinosaurs laying prostrate in the sand.

It wasn't all about relationships, unless you count the predator-prey relationship.

And the dinosaurs didn't talk a whole heck of a lot.

At right is a Lego creation by Mindy, Lindsey and Camille. Their dinosaur is in a museum exhibit, complete with flowers. It's all very "nice."

I had friends who had hoped to have a no-toy-gun rule in their home. They carefully informed family and friends that no toy guns were to be given as gifts, but then their sons made almost everything in the playroom into a gun. Legos, blocks, even dolls were pointed and given appropriate powing, banging, and kwow-kwow-ow-ow-ow-ow sound effects.

I didn't form a plan or philosophy about toy guns (I did scheme about what to do about the Barbie “problem,” but that's another story), but my husband and I, and my super-generous parents, found ourselves every once in a while adding some sort of toy weapon to our home—a sword for a pirate costume, a dagger for some sort of ninja dress up set, and so forth. The girls had prairie bonnets and long dresses and aprons, and they loved to play Little House on the Prairie; at some point we got them a beautiful wooden (toy) rifle. All of a sudden, I realized that my girls had what so many of their male friends didn't—a toy gun!

When Mindy, Lindsey and Camille played with that toy rifle, its role was very much defense. It served as protection from invisible bears and non-existent mountain lions. There wasn't a whole lot of shooting at the pretend creatures, but as the girls left the safe confines of their make-believe log house, they would arm themselves with that rifle, just in case.

Some of our boy visitors loved to race to the play room to find that rifle, and not only would they shoot it, they would point it at people as they pulled the trigger! On two different occasions I had to take away the rifle because one little boy conked another over the head with the rifle—and this sucker was pretty heavy!—remember, it's made of wood!—and the next time this child came over I did a preemptive strike and put the rifle away before he even arrived.

Camille and my two girls loved to play with blocks. They would make low-walled enclosures for dolls and figures and stuffed animals, furnished inside with clunky block tables and cylinder chairs and ramp-like beds.

And of course, playing with these cool set-ups involved a lot of talking among the the plastic figures and fabric creatures who carefully moved among the blocks.

Several boy visitors routinely gravitated to the block set, for a few years, and instead of building low and large, they would always build up. Tottering towers of multicolored blocks would rise up, get kicked or knocked over with a whoop and a grin, and then be rebuilt again.

Of course I “get” that lots of girls play shoot-em-up games with guns and build and demolish towers of blocks. Lots of boys, I'm sure, have stuffed animals that talk to each other and plastic dinosaurs that outdo each other with spinning-turning-flipping dives into the sand, rather than attack each other. My sample size is WAY too low to say anything valid about the differences between boys and girls.

Not to mention the fact that I quite possibly socialized my daughters to follow the norms set out for their sex—although I fully intended to buck any such stereotyping.

Still, I can't help thinking that these observations, and others like them, hint that there is some difference that is often found between girls and boys.

What do you think?

----------
The illustrations at the top of this post are from Valentines published around 1930. Notice that the girl is at home and is shown in, not only a relatively still pose, but a coy / flirtatious pose. The boy is outdoors and active.

Nature Calls

2010-01-30T07:34:00.000-08:00

We live in a suburb. A “greater metropolitan area.” Lots of pavement, buildings, cars. Lots of people all around us.

Still, there is also a lot of nature to be found, even in the suburbs. For our little ones, even the front yard, side yards, hill-down-to-the-street, and plantings around our swimming pool—small though these natural oases were—seemed filled with all kinds of interesting, constantly changing natural organisms.

The kids had favorite spots and secret places. Underneath some huge elephant-ear leaves was a hide-away, and behind some nandina bushes was a little fort, and there was a “trail” blazed through the ivy on the escarpment, and a little “room” in the middle of the dreadful yuccas some previous homeowner had planted. There were beetles and spiders and ants and birds and snails to watch. Pill bugs under the rocks, earthworms in the soil as we dug holes in order to plant seeds, a paper wasp nest left empty, a caterpillar on a leaf, a ring of mushrooms growing unexpectedly in the grass. All of it was fascinating to little ones.

We walked to the park on nice days, when we didn't have TOO much to do, and when we weren't sick. That little neighborhood park was almost always empty during school hours, so it served as a sort of large backyard for us, just a couple of blocks further away than our actual backyard (which was basically a pool). Further away were actual wilderness areas; about an hour away were some mountains, an hour and a half in another direction were stretches of desert, and to the southwest, again about an hour away, were seashores and the Pacific Ocean. We were able to get to non-suburban nature a couple of times a month. And of course much further away were huge swaths of wilderness that we were able to experience a few times a year. Getting out into nature was a pretty big priority for us during vacations.

Some families don't prioritize nature quite so much, I have noticed, and other families are driven to live closer to nature than we do, moving out of the cities and the suburbs, into rural areas or forests, along the coast or in the mountains and deserts that we only visit. Surely there is a wide range of healthy choices about exposing kids to the natural world, not one “correct” way. Still, I'd like to explore a few thoughts on the topic.

1. My husband and I quite naturally talked to the kids about the aspects of nature that we treasure, and it definitely rubbed off. After years of us all gabbing about the sky and stars and planets and weather and clouds and storms and landscapes and rock formations and wildlife..(and so on and so forth, pant, pant!), especially as we went on outings or took road trips, we noticed that our kids are much more tuned in to natural stuff than some people are.

Parents would tell us that they would have their kids watch every video they owned on a road trip in their special back-seat VCR system or RV—and we would wonder why they wouldn't prefer their kids to look around at the land they're traveling through. Books on tape or music can keep kids entertained on road trips—but they will be able to engage with the landscape at the same time... On one camp trip we were all in ecstasies over all the live sand dollars and Pismo clams revealed by a retreating tide, and we were mesmerized by the sight of otters and dolphins in the surf, and later we were electrified by the beauty of an amazing gold-and-crimson sunset, and still later we were thrilled by a meteor shower (still, to this date, the most “falling stars” I've ever seen!). But as we abandoned our picnic table, our fire ring, or our tent to point and call out, to take photos and whoop for joy, there were moments when I would glance sidelong at the campers and RVs that lined the beach on either side of us, and I would realize that none of the other people camping at Pismo were noticing (or caring about?) any of the above.

Luckily, we seemed to have infected our kids with the noticing-and-caring attitude.

2. Whatever is learned in nature is so rich in context it seems to “stick” better than much of what is viewed on TV or read about it in a book. The kids learned more about geology walking around Yellowstone Park and Lewis and Clarke Caverns than they did from any other method. Our zoo passes were a passport to learning about animals even more than our library cards were. Tropical rainforests in Hawaii and temperate rainforests in Washington taught lessons of biodiversity, ecological niches, and interdependence. Of course, we should all enjoy a combination of experience, reading, and quality shows, but I can't help thinking that being in nature is the greatest teacher of all.

Even if it's just a backyard garden in suburbia.

3. Our kids became the teachers. On some aspects of nature that my husband and I weren't quite so knowledgeable about, nor so interested in, my kids turned the tables on us. They began to inform us about issues and update us on the the latest science. For example, sustainable agriculture, high-fructose corn syrup and margarine, grass-fed cows—I didn't tell them about this stuff, they told me. Which is cool.

In other words, our kids have the ability to infect us right back.

4. Alone-time in nature can be hard to come by for kids, but it is possible to arrange. Back in the “good old days,” when things were either safer or at least seemed safer, many kids were allowed access to the big outdoors all by themselves. But these days many of us do not feel comfortable allowing our kids to walk alone to the neighborhood park, say, or hike alone in the regional park. (It's always been good practice, even for adults, to use the buddy system in the wilderness, at a lake, or in urban spaces where mountain lions have been sighted.)

Even with the worries of our times, there are ways for kids to be safe and at least somewhat solitary out-of-doors. Obviously many fenced-yard situations would fit both bills, but even in parks and the wilderness, our kids can be away from others but within eyesight and hearing range. For example, as a teen Lindsey arranged to hike partway up a Colorado mountain trail, alone with her sketchpad and poetry notebook, while I stayed in sight at the chair lift station at the base of the mountain. She could easily see me (if she stood up), and we could have called to each other if we had needed to. It wasn't totally 100% safe (nothing is), but she and I both felt that it was pretty darned near perfect.

So mostly alone out in nature is doable, even for kids. And valuable.

5. Being in nature presents opportunities for confidence building. Conquering the challenges presented by the outdoors, it seems to me, gives a boost of self-confidence much more potent than that gained from conquering an opponent in a game or sport. For example, there was something very primal about the feeling my youngest experienced when she walked, hiked, and climbed almost all day and finally reached the top of a mountain at age 8. She had that same exalted, I-did-it feeling when she kept up with “the guys” and scrambled, swam, and climbed all the way up a cascading river at age 18.

In nature, our kids can meet real challenges. Build real confidence.

So I'm a big fan of nature. Big swaths of it, or even the kind we find in bits and pieces in the cities and suburbs.

Peaceful, Pleasant, Positive

2010-01-24T19:17:00.001-08:00

One of my goals as a parent is probably shared by every other parent: I wanted a peaceful, pleasant family life and positive family relationships.

Rumor has it that the social atmosphere of public schools is rife with problems. Bullies, cliques, peer pressure, gossip, racial self-segregation, playground roughness—and these are just the problems between kids! Add to the list the mutual disrespect, mistrust, and us-against-them mentality that can poison the relationships between students and teachers, and the whole idea of “socialization” at school begins to sound like an oxymoron.

Well, let's not get carried away. There are lots of great social interactions to be found at schools, too!

Basically, avoiding the social problems found at schools was never a primary reason for my choice to homeschool my kids (although it was a fringe benefit). Also, in acknowledgment of all the good stuff to be found in schools, I tried pretty hard to make sure my kids got lots of positive interactions like those that they would have had at school—with other adults and with lots of different groups of kids as well.

Still, the bad rep of social life at schools gave me some pause as I chose homeschool. For one thing, I wanted to make sure that adding “schooling” to our home life wouldn't cause tensions and problems between mother/”teacher” and kids/”students.” For another, I hoped that my daughters, being together so much more than ordinary siblings are, wouldn't have a proportional rise in sibling rivalry as well.

In other words, as I said before, I wanted our home to be mostly peaceful, pleasant, and positive. Looking back, I think I achieved that general goal—but of course with a lot of little blips-and-bleeps of non-peace, negativity, and unpleasant times.

The really bad stuff tends to stand out in my memories. Like the shameful time that I finally got Mindy and Lindsey to stop hitting each other by hitting them myself—and, get this, I was saying, as I slapped their legs, “We [hit]—do not hit [hit]—in this house [hit]”!

Still, my memories have a general “good-stuff” glow, and I'm pretty sure it's not just rose-colored glasses when I say that the peaceful moments outnumbered the pitched battles. Also, my daughters are and almost always have been pretty close friends. They share a lot of childhood memories and even friends, and that provides a shared context like no other relationship either of them has...

Looking back at this homeschooling journal confirms that, although we suffered many blips of non-peace, the general tone of our days was pretty darned peaceful, pleasant, and positive.

“Classics”

2010-01-20T21:32:00.001-08:00

As I read my homeschool journal, written more than 20 years ago, I began to think about toys and books that have become classics. They never go out of style (although they sometimes get reinvented and reinterpreted), and they are played with at least several generations.

I think that Colorforms—those thin vinyl pieces that would cling to shiny “boards” to make pictures—fits the definition of a classic. Not necessarily the versions that come with pre-printed pictures of whatever is popular at the moment—Popeye, back in the day, or Dora the Explorer, now—but the original solid-colored shapes invented by Ogden Kniffin. Bright blue and yellow and red and green and white. Circles, squares, triangles, rectangles.

I had Colorforms when I was a kid, and I loved making almost limitless pictures with the bright-colored shapes. My kids had a huge set and loved it. I imagine little kids these days still play with Colorforms (if they have access to them), and that my grandkids, if I ever get any, will love them, too.

Classic toys include super simple (and endlessly variable) toys like balls and kites and yo-yos. Of course wooden blocks need to be on the list. Kids can use blocks to build almost anything. Legos are fabulous because, like wooden blocks, they can be used in thousands of different constructions—and these creations are far more durable because of the interlocking nature of the bricks. I also like colored number rods and magnetic building sets.

As much as I like classic toys, classic books can be another matter altogether. Many of the books considered “classics” in children's literature failed to earn fans in our household. We all loved Lewis Carroll's Alice books, along with the books by a trio of women authors—Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa May Alcott, and Jane Austen (books by the latter aren't classified as children's lit—but my teens loved 'em!)—but some other so-called classics left us flat.

We thought Heidi was a bit preachy. The attitude of The Swiss Family Robinson toward animals horrified us. We found Barie's Peter Pan odd, Travers' Mary Poppins unpleasant, and Verne's 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea slow. Do these truly hold their value for most modern children, as classics are supposed to, or do they stay on the list out of habit or even guilt? (I'm thinking some librarians somewhere have thought to themselves, “Well, it's not that accessible to modern kids, and certainly nobody reads it, but we OUGHT to love it and read it, so it stays on the list!”)

Obviously, I know that some people love each of the books that failed to thrill us—taste being personal and idiosyncratic—but I wonder if these books still have widespread and enthusiastic child readers.

I also wonder which of the books written recently—within the past decade, say—which of those that have been touted as “modern classics” will actually turn out to be classics? Certainly a well-written book can be called classic immediately, because one meaning of the word is “top-rate high quality,” but I wonder which of the current batch of children's books will garner truly enduring interest.

Any suggestions?

Journal Entry 4

2010-01-12T22:01:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, September 25, 1987

Today I put my foot down and have all three kids sit down, at the table, for breakfast. Unfortunately, Camille pouts a bit (it's so much harder to know how to respond when it isn't your own kid, too!). However, even she eats a little bit.

All three help me clear off the table when they are done. We all troop to the bedrooms so that my girls can get dressed, and I see that Mindy has a surprise for me: she made her bed! Yeah!

While I do the dishes, I encourage the kids to play. Mindy makes a Colorform picture (I notice that she names the shapes correctly as she uses them), Camille listens to a tape on Talk'n'Play, and Lindsey pages through several different dinosaur books (making quite knowledgeable comments).

Lindsey asks if it is her turn with the Colorforms yet, but Mindy says, “No, I want to copy my picture.” She gets out crayons and a piece of paper and begins to copy each shape.

Lindsey says, “I want to sit down and watch you, okay, Mindy?”

Mindy's fine with it, and I feel great. The peace here is wonderful! I think that Camille's presence sometimes causes my two to behave better.

(Except when it doesn't.)

Lindsey is now doing Colorforms on one half of the board while Mindy copies her picture, which consists of a house, snowman, sun, snow, and grass. Lindsey goes for abstract art, with a picture that is randomly arranged shapes and colors. (Actually, it's pretty cool!)

The kids discover the masking-tape number line I had laid out on the floor near the piano. I suppose it is the proximity to the piano that inspires this, but Mindy starts to use it exactly as I had planned to use it, singing “Little Bird” by numbers as she steps on each number. We all join in.

After we're done with “Little Bird,” we sing-and-step to “Thumbkin” and then “Mr. Froggie.”

Camille asks if she can measure herself. She carefully lies down along the number line, her heels at 1 and her head at... Her head is between two numbers, so I discuss the concept of "half" in a measurement. Of course, Lindsey and Mindy want to measure themselves, too. We round everyone's height to the nearest half.

Next we decide to do standing broad jumps. As each girl jumps, I play the interval jumped on the piano (1 to 4, 1 to 5, 1 to 6), and of course the girls compare their jumps, using words like longer and longest and best. I'm ready to defend Lindsey as shorter and younger, if the girls get competitive, but each is more interested in figuring out her own best jump, instead.

I make up a song about their ages, using the tune of “Thumbkin,” and we sing and step and hop and play the piano:

“How old's Camille? How old's Camille?
She is five! She is five!
She is such a big girl! She is such a big girl!
Run, Camille, run! Run, Camille, run”

And so forth...

Finally done with the number line and the piano, I can hardly wait to see what's next. Mindy goes right back to copying her Colorforms picture. Lindsey gets out paper and crayons, too, and starts drawing; she is not copying her Colorforms abstract piece. Camille uses the Colorforms, too, this time. She arranges shapes while saying stuff like, “There are three balls. Guess which one is Mickey Mouse?”

Adventure

The girls are finally well enough to walk to the park. We take our plastic toy dinosaurs, some foil, and a camera with us. At the park, the girls use the wet sand to build volcanoes and swamps. They pick up leaves and twigs and plant these around lakes lined with foil (to hold water), and then they pose the dinosaurs in a scene, chatting about what to do and how to do it.

There are two other children at the park. Mindy says, “Make sure the other kids don't let the dinosaurs eat each other.”

Indeed, there seems to be no bloodshed at all in their play. Camille hides her dinosaurs from Tyrannosaurus Rex; no carnivorous eating allowed. The dinosaurs barely even growl and roar (although there is a little of that). Mostly, they just talk to each other.

Now the three girls have run off from their dino-land and are playing on the swings and slide. They are, of course, pretending to be some sort of characters—I can tell that they are changing identity every once in a while—but then they drop all of that as Mindy shows the others “a new trick.” Everyone happily copies the new trick.

Then Camille shows THREE new tricks. The others try to copy her but do not succeed. Camille does things that Mindy can't do (or won't do, from fear?), but Mindy seems a little more determined today and works really hard to travel across the bars. She succeeds with only a little help—she will probably soon be doing it herself.

Once again, I feel so glad that the kids aren't competing with each other. Nobody compares, nobody pokes fun.

I pick up a plastic dinosaur and start making footprints in the wet sand. Mindy notices and comes over to do the same thing with another dinosaur. Camille decides to make her own footprints in the sand.

But wait! She IS a dinosaur!

Soon we're all dinosaurs. The girls decide that we are a family of duckbill dinosaurs. We are peacefully eating when all of a sudden an invisible T-Rex shows up (so to speak). We all whack it with our tails until it leaves. (Strictly self-preservation!)

Home Again

Once we're home, we get cleaned up and then sit down to watch a Disney tape about health and nutrition. When that's done, it's lunchtime. The kids take turns “taking orders” from each other and me, then they carry those orders to the chef (also me) while they set the table. When the food is made, the kids serve the customers and then become customers (me, too!), and we all eat.

With our little outing taking the better part of the morning, and both breakfast and lunch enjoyed at the table, like proper meals, the food situation is working out much better today!

While I do the dishes and put away the food, the girls choose to play outside. Soon Lindsey is back inside and upset. She's being left out. The older girls are mean to her. I sympathize and then coax her into playing a tape on the Talk'n'Play.

I hurry to finish the dishes, but before I get done, Mindy and Camille are back inside, too, Mindy in tears. The girls tell me that they have hit each other with plastic bats!

Yikes.

The lovely peaceful home, gone, just like that.

I suggest to Mindy that she play Kermit's Electronic StoryMaker, and she agrees. Camille takes my suggestion to tape record a message and a song on the piano. Both girls get happy pretty quickly, and soon they trade off activities. When it's Mindy's turn with the recorder, she plays “Little Bird” on the piano, for the recorder, but then also expands on the tune with her own improvisation.

Mindy and Camille go back to the bedrooms to play together. After their altercation outside, I am hoping they play well together this time. I peek in and see that they are combing their little ponies' hair and putting clips into the manes and tails. I decide to try to keep Lindsey busy with me (especially since she is tired and crabby). She agrees to a story, and I pull her into my lap to read to her.

Camille uses her sixth sense, or something, to realize that SOMEBODY IS BEING READ TO—and she comes running in to hear, too.

It seems to me that it is hard for me to do ANYthing with Lindsey without accidentally interesting one of the two older girls, too.

(Oh, well, the next time Lindsey goes to Mommy and Me class with Camille's cousin and aunt, the older girls will get a chance to free play alone without the lure that Mommy is having special time with someone else!)

So we read and read. Fairy tales, The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy, Who Sank the Boat?, When It Rained Cats and Dogs. After a good long reading session, all three girls squeal their way through a game of Raining Cats and Dogs: they gather up all the soft toy cats and dogs they can hold, count to 3 and then throw them into the air. The stuffed animals come pelting down, of course, and the girls gather them up affectionately and come to me saying things like, “Look, I have two dogs and a cat!”

I say, “Where on earth did you find all these animals?”

The girls' answers vary from things like, “It was raining cats and dogs!” to the more practical, “They fell on my head!”

Of course, I'm just using a line from the book, but there really are an awful lot of stuffed cats and dogs in there. I ask the girls to count them, and they do. Twenty-seven.

Good grief, we have 27 stuffed cats and dogs?

We have even more bears and rabbits, and who knows what other sorts of soft-and-cuddly critters? Wow!

The kids proclaim that they are ready for a snack and ask me to read again. This time, I read Jack Prelutsky's Read Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young. The girls are excited that one of the rhymes is about a dinosaur.

Passport for more Adventure

Mindy has been wanting to play “passport” for a long time. Inspired by the passports given out at the Wild Animal Park (in San Diego), she puts all the stamp pads outside, in a line, and then puts one animal stamp next to each ink pad. Each of the girls has her own passport, and the three travel down the line together, carefully inking each stamp before pressing it onto their passports, and waiting “in line” patiently.

Obviously, at any time one or another of the girls could avoid the line and go to another stamp station, but doing this activity quickly is apparently NOT what it's about. They keep together the entire time.

When Maria comes to pick up Camille, we have another session at the piano to show her all our songs. So ends another day.

When Does Pretending Become Lying?

2010-01-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

As I re-read my third journal entry, I notice that I entered into a pretend game that Mindy had started by leaving a note purportedly from an elf. And I “lied” about it: I said, “I didn't write it.”

Only thing is, I wasn't lying.

I was playing. I was pretending. The kids knew the note was really from me—I hadn't disguised my handwriting (or, rather, printing), and I even used the same pen I had been using all day writing in my journal.

So, that exonerates me, right?

This rhetorical (and rather silly) question touches on the subject of fantasy characters that our entire society seems to claim are real. Namely, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, and Santa Claus.

Many of us feel pretty comfortable pretending these things for our kids. It's fun! Most of us had these characters in our own childhoods, and we often have fond memories surrounding their names. It's not lying...is it?

But when kids start to question these characters, it can be tricky. When do we continue the fantasy (that is, lie)? When do we answer truthfully? How far should we take such fun pretenses?

Some parents hate the idea of lying to their kids and always present these characters as fun fantasies. (Of course, non-Christian parents have an entirely different set of challenges regarding two out of three of these characters!)

I did do the tooth fairy thing. I also hid eggs. I ate cookies left for Santa and put presents in stockings. But, when I was doing all that fun stuff, I made sure there were PLENTY of clues that my kids could use to figure reality out, when they were ready to. For example, if Santa left a thank you note on top of the cookie crumbs, or left a gift with a gift tag, he used my writing. If he wrapped a gift, he used the same wrapping paper I used. It really wasn't too hard to figure out.

Mindy asked if Santa was real when she was about five years old. I asked, “Do you really want to know?”

She said yes, so I told her that her dad and I played Santa by putting presents in the stockings and under the tree. I said some mish-mash kind of stuff—you know, the idea of Santa (as a form of love or a spirit of giving) is real, stuff like that. Then I told her that she shouldn't ever ruin the pretend game about Santa for other kids—especially not younger kids. “Can you keep playing pretend about Santa?” I asked.

She solemnly agreed to do so and never, to my knowledge, broke that promise. She seemed really pleased to be in on a secret.

Wow, that went so well!

I vowed I would do the same thing with Lindsey – wait until she asked, check to be sure she really wanted to know, and then tell her truth.

Flash forward two + years. Lindsey was five or six and had reservations about the tooth fairy, who had supposedly made a visit to our house the night before.

“Mom, is the tooth fairy real, or do you put the money under the pillow?”
“Do you really want to know?” I asked.
“Yes!!!”
“Well, I put the money under the pillow. But it's fun to pretend about the tooth fairy, so we can keep pretending if you want.”
“Yes, I do!” Lindsey said. She's a smart cookie. Pretending would undoubtedly keep the money flowing.

A few minutes later, everybody else had gone on to other things. But Lindsey interrupted us, asking,

“What about the Easter bunny, Mom? Is that real?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes!”
“Well, your dad and I get the things for the Easter baskets and hide the eggs, too. But don't you find it fun to pretend?”

Lindsey seemed so pleased. I think she'd always been nervous that a real, large (some of the baskets were fairly large, so it stood to reason that the bunny carrying them would be jumbo-sized, too) rabbit sometimes roamed around the house. I was pretty sure that Lindsey was pleased that she'd figured all this stuff out, too. She agreed to keep on pretending about the Easter bunny.

A minute or two later, she asked the final question.

Notice, it was phrased a little differently:

“But Santa's real, right?”

The way she put it made me gulp a little. It sounded to me like Santa was in an ENTIRELY different category than those other two fantasy characters. But I was in truth-telling mode, so I asked, “Do you really want to know?”

At that point Lindsey did know, and she was really, really disappointed. I can't even remember what happened—what she said, what I said, whether or not she cried. I remember it was a painful moment for me, probably because it was a very painful moment for her.

It wasn't devastating or long-lasting, thank goodness, but I wondered what I had done wrong:

Was my mistake playing Santa (that is, lying to my kids) in the first place?
Was my mistake telling Lindsey the truth before she was really ready – and, believe me, I knew that she was going to be disappointed from the way she phrased the question!
Or did I honestly not make a mistake? Maybe things just played out the way they played out, end of story. We can't spare our kids every disappointment.

But...I'm not positive about any of this...

Messes

2009-12-29T21:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes our desire for a certain level of neatness and cleanliness actually gets in the way of things that, in the long run, are perhaps more important.

As I say this, mind you, I am sitting in an office cluttered with old computer cables, writing projects, receipts, and wrapping paper used in the last-minute Christmas-wrap rush. Apparently I think a LOT of things are more important than a spic-and-span, neat-and-tidy house. But I think we all (even people who have a low tolerance for clutter) can endure a certain amount of arts-and-crafts mess—with a few tricks to keep things as clean as possible.

Expect the kids to help clean up, even from a very early age.
Clean as you go, when possible. Having a wet rag or a roll of paper towels right at hand can keep the Elmer's-glue hands from spreading to outfits and hair, and keep the purple-tempera fingers from spreading to tables and chairs.
Buy some plastic placemats that are used only for playdough or other clay play. If you store the placemats with the dough/clay, the kids won't forget to use them.
Get a large plastic divided picnic plate to use when painting. You can squeeze a small amount of paint onto the edge of each area, and still have room in that area to mix colors. Plastic pop-out ice cube trays can work, too, especially if you leave some of the holes empty so that kids can mix paint. Of course, plastic paint palettes with lots of divisions are available at arts-and-crafts supply stores.
Use old men's T-shirts or reversed button-up shirts as smocks.
You can buy special paint pots, complete with paint brushes and lids. Using clean concentrated juice containers and foil works fairly well, too.
Glitter normally comes in shaker-bottles. Definitely save any empty bottles, and then you can save mixed-glitter residue from art projects. Make sure the kids are working on a table covered with newspapers or a plastic tablecloth. Put a “mat” of waxed paper in front of each child; when the glitter project is done, form a funnel from the waxed paper and carefully pour the excess glitter into the mixed-glitter shaker.
Having a special school supply box (like the ones I gave the kids) or art supply box can help kids know where to put things, and can also motivate their cooperation. It's just so much more fun to put things in their special places! (Some parents draw outlines of toys, school supplies, or whatever on the bottom of storage boxes so that they kids have puzzle-like fun putting things away.)
It won't do for everything, but you can call some of your kids' toys collections. When it's time to put these items away, you can say, “Let's arrange our beanie baby display,” or “Let's fix up the dinosaur exhibit.” (I never prevented my kids from playing with their toys for collectible value purposes, but arranging, say, stuffed animals in a wall-mounted toy hammock when they aren't being used in play keeps them up off the floor, helps the kids find them the next time they want them, AND looks mighty cute.)
Play rock'n'roll music when it's clean-up time. Or the sprightly parts of the Nutcracker Suite. Or any music you enjoy! There are special clean-up songs (if you don't know one, Google “clean up song” or search for “clean up” on YouTube), or sing “A Spoonful of Sugar (Makes the Medicine Go Down)” from Mary Poppins.

Some messes may not be worth it (we once made confetti eggs for a sleepover, but I should have had the kids use them OUTside—we were still finding a few bits confetti a year later!), but hopefully the concept of messiness doesn't get in the way of arts and crafts.

Homeschooling and Television:

2009-12-11T18:44:00.000-08:00

The Slippery Slope to Raising Boob-Tube Headed Couch Potatoes

I am surprised to see from my journals that, in the first three days of homeschooling-with-Camille, two of them included watching a video! I hope that the reason I gave in my journal-keeping—that the kids were sick—explains this, because I honestly don't recall having the television on very often during weekdays....

As a young mom and homeschooler, I had read research conducted at the time, and all the findings seemed to point out that television watching is too passive to be included in the best learning environments. Kids need to move, play pretend, and interact, and if they are sitting still in front of a TV set for hours at a time, passively soaking up whatever is on, then they aren't learning nearly as much as they should be. (Not to mention, they aren't nearly as healthy and fit as they should be.)

There have been some research findings I've encountered since those early homeschool days that say some positive things about television as an educational tool, but at the time I basically felt at least a little bit guilty every time I let the girls watch TV.

Of course, even us concerned parents tend to take a moderate stance about things like TV, computers, and sugary foods rather than an extreme attitude of NO TV, ever, NO white sugar, ever, and so forth. I do remember that I always felt like I was trying to skate a fine line between too much TV (by definition of the words “too much,” a bad thing) and “too little” TV in which it becomes a wonderful-forbidden-enticing mystery (also a bad thing, in my book).

I also notice that, according to my journal, the kids were pretty active during the movie (especially the one girl who wasn't sick), and the girls used their play as an inspiration to watch the movie and used the movie as further inspiration to play pretend. They talked and sang, interacted with each other and the story, moved around, and did art.

Not passive.

Not boob-tube heads.

Not couch potatoes.

And, 20+ years later...
How do my kids interact with television now?

Nowadays, I can report that TV viewing never takes precedence, for my kids, over interesting activities with friends, but thanks to Tivo and Hulu, we can watch things that are important to us any time we wish. Lindsey chooses to live without a TV set but enjoys a wide range of international movies and sometimes gets sucked into watching a few shows when she visits television viewers. Mindy watches favorite shows, including dramas, comedies, non-fiction (mostly science) shows, and “reality” shows (such as cooking and dance contests), but she still multi-tasks while watching. Today, for example, she exercised in the morning and embroidered items to sell in her Etsy shop in the evening, both while catching up with her Playlist on Tivo.

Some of my kids may watch “too much” TV, at least at times. But they definitely aren't passive viewers. Not boob-tube heads. Not couch potatoes.

Journal Entry 3

2009-11-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

Thursday, September 10, 1987

Lindsey and Camille are both still sick. So we have a fairly toned-down, quiet day.

Before Camille arrives, my two sculpt with play dough. As soon as Camille walks in the door, however, she asks me to read some books. We all cuddle together, and I read five picture books. (This would never happen on a normal day, because Lindsey is far too physical, usually, to sit still so long, but it was nice.)

None of the books are about dinosaurs, but when the girls finally get restive with storytime, and go off to answer the question, “What next?” they see the paper, pencils, glitter, glue, and dinosaur stencils I had put on a table. Glitter's a pretty rare thing in their lives, so they are drawn to it like iron filings to a magnet. The girls begin to make sparkly dinosaurs and then branch out to sparkly pictures of everything else in the world.

Yes, this does include a certain number of sparkly fingers, plus the very occasional daub of glitter on a cheek or in the hair. I deal with the latter as quickly as possible with warm, wet washcloths.

After each kid has made several pictures, they seem poised to move off to another activity. But I ask them to help clean up the mess. The bulk of the mess we just toss out with the newspapers that had protected the table. Then I bring out a surprise:

Dinosaur “school boxes”!

These inexpensive cardboard boxes are built along the lines of old-fashioned cigar boxes, and they're decorated with colorful, rather silly dinosaurs wearing clothes. The boxes are identical, but I've labeled them neatly, and the kids carefully put their pencils and glue bottles inside. Then they pore over those funny pictures. Soon the girls have brought the boxes into the realm of their imaginations—Lindsey (they claim) is Debbie Dimetrodon, Camille is Mary Louise Allosaurus, and Mindy is Muffie Parasaurolophus.

Soon these characters are ditched, however, as the girls soon decide to play wedding. (What? Like anthropomorphized dinos can't get married?) Each of the girls takes turns being a bride, and the other two layers are flower girls. After several marriage ceremonies, the play morphs into other sorts of pretend scenarios. I'm busy jotting down these notes as I realize that they are playing something completely different.

“You're Mary Poppins,” Camille says. She goes on to inform me that she is Jane Banks, the girl in the book and movie who has Mary Poppins as her nanny. I wonder which of my girls is playing Michael Banks, but it turns out that Mindy and Lindsey are playing Jane's friends, Emily and Kelly. The Banks family in the books (but not the movie) includes twins, Barbara and John, and two dolls have been chosen to play those parts.

I am wondering if we can get a good room cleaning out of this game, but the girls have something else in mind: they want to watch the movie. I put it on, figuring that at least the sick kids can get some rest—but Mindy and Lindsey sing and dance through most of the movie.

They also go in and out of the kitchen with some frequency, getting small snacks and drinks (just like during “Dumbo” two days ago). They go in and out of the art area, also, getting chalk and chalkboards so they can be like Bert the chimney sweep and draw chalk pictures. Mindy decides to really be like Bert and goes outside to make large chalk drawings on the sidewalk.

I am definitely having a problem with the kids wanting to eat constantly. Normally, with my own kids, I'd probably say, “No, sorry, kitchen's closed,” but I have two problems doing that right now:

1)Camille and Lindsey are sick, and “normal” just doesn't seem to apply.
2)Camille really doesn't eat at established “mealtimes” and “snack times,” so I am afraid I'll starve her if I don't accede to her wishes to eat at other times.

I decide that, when all the kids are well, I will try to lay down the law and have set times for morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack—then have the kitchen “closed” all other times.

I hope it works.

The movie is over, and the girls go out to see Mindy's pictures. On the way back inside, Lindsey finds a little folded bit of paper just inside the door. She opens it...

“It's a note!” she says.

“It's a note from the elves,” Mindy says with a huge grin.

Earlier that day we had read a book called I Don't Believe in Elves, by Jane Thayer. The elf in the book had left secret notes and surprises for the girl he lived with, trying to convince her that he existed. Although everyone can recognize Mindy's hand in the careful letters and flower picture on the note, we all agree that it must have been left by an elf.

Lindsey and Camille are quite delighted.

I go into the family room, where the girls had been watching the movie, to get the chalkboards and chalk so I can put them away. Then I have a brainstorm—what if I leave a note, too?

I carefully write a message on the chalkboard and sign it, “from the elf.” Then I pick up some cups and napkins and go back into the kitchen. “You guys left the chalkboards out,” I say. “Mindy and Camille, can you bring in the chalkboards? Lindsey, you pick up the chalk, please.”

Mindy is the only one to immediately comply, but she shrieks, “Look! Another note!” and the other two girls go running to see.

“It must have been an elf,” Lindsey says.

They need some help from me to read the note. They seem ecstatic over these secret messages and talk about elves as if they were real--but I am dead certain that all of them, even Lindsey, really knows we're just playing and that I wrote that note.

They know—but they still find it really, really fun.

The rest of the day, all of us continue to write and draw notes, fold them up, and leave them here or there for the others to find. A little routine happens each time we find a new note: each of us says, “I didn't write it!” and after we've all denied authoring the note, one of us says, “It must have been an elf.”

In between notes from elves, the girls bang and plink and plunk our musical instruments, ask me to read more stories, and play with Jeannie, a neighbor who is home from school. During the reading session, I read another wonderful dinosaur book by Aliki (My Visit to the Dinosaurs), plus a book called Do Not Open, by Brinton Turke.

Camille gets picked up early (because she is sick), but the neighbor, Jeannie, is still here. Mindy asks if I can read Do Not Open again.

So I do. This is the story of an old woman and her cat. They find a bottle washed up on the beach. The bottle says, “Do not open.” But the woman opens it, and unleashes an evil genie...Now she and her cat have to trick the genie back into the bottle. It's an exciting book!

Then Mindy asks if they can use the dinosaur stencils again.

“Okay,' I say, “but no glitter this time.” (I'm a pretty nice mom, but I'm not a martyr!) I get out the stencils, and the kids get out their special dinosaur school boxes. While Mindy directs Jeannie to Camille's box and pencil, I bring out the kind of colored pencils that can be blended with water. As the girls begin to show Jeannie how to use the stencils, I get a bowl of water and some paintbrushes. The three girls love experimenting with the new medium. When someone gets a good result, the others immediately try to copy that technique.

Lindsey gets tired of drawing first, and she gets out the play dough again. She starts to make play dough “cookies.” Soon Jeannie and Mindy join in.

When Jeannie goes home, Mindy goes back to drawing with the colored pencils and water. She is really enjoying this!

Then Mindy remembers that she wanted to water the plants out in back.

“But you have to come with me, Mom,” she says.

“Why?” I ask, surprised.

“I'm scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That scary book Do Not Open.”

Leave it to my daughter to ask me to re-read a book she found frightening! I scoop up Lindsey and follow Mindy out the door, realizing that I am learning as much as they are, every day.

Electric Matching Game

2009-11-29T10:05:00.000-08:00

It's difficult to describe well the dinosaur matching game I made for the girls (mentioned in my second journal entry), and I didn't take any pictures of it, worse luck. However, I was able to find a similar electric matching game at the Bill Peet Book Project, and there are step-by-step instructions and photos!

By the way, I had a small collection of materials in a special science cupboard available to the kids whenever they wanted to play with it. As the years passed, of course, my collection grew and grew, but I started with a few good magnets, a magnifying glass and microscope viewer, a kaleidoscope—and also the tiny bulb-in-socket and wires that I used for this game. Once I took the game apart, the kids could continue to experiment with making circuits with these and other materials. Once in a while I made a new electric matching game, with new subject matter, and Mindy made one, too.

John Holt...one of my heroes...

2009-11-27T20:05:00.000-08:00

In my second journal entry, I casually mentioned John Holt, who was at the time (a couple of decades ago) still well known and influential. He was one of the heroes of the modern homeschooling movement and certainly one of my personal heroes. However, it's been so long since he's been gone (he died of cancer in 1985), that I'm sure the name is vague-bordering-on-meaningless to many homeschooling parents today.

John Holt was a teacher who really cared about teaching—that is, he really cared about communicating with kids, watching kids, imparting knowledge to kids, learning from and with kids. His early books, particularly How Children Fail (1964) and How Children Learn (1967), helped motivate an education reform movement that urged open, multi-grade classrooms, portfolios and written evaluations rather than “objective” tests and letter grades, and cross-curricular, hands-on learning centers rather than sterile worksheets. Free schools and alternative schools such as Summerhill were tried by some; schools-within-a-school were developed by others.

However, the bulk of the school system barely swerved in the direction of the much-discussed reforms, and indeed rather quickly spun off into a backlash of sorts—more testing, under the guise of more “accountability;” more homework, under the guise of keeping up with Japanese students; and “fundamental schools” that emphasized reading, writing, and arithmetic rather than what was seen as either hippie classes or frills (you know, things like art and music, Women's Studies and Ecology).

John Holt gave up on trying to change schools and instead began to suggest that parents who want alternative education teach their own children. He began a very non-slick newsletter called Growing Without Schooling in 1977, and he continued to write books as well. Feeling that the public schools were fundamentally flawed, Holt did not recommend recreating a classroom at home, but rather unschooling.

John Holt's clear thinking and transparent writing influenced me greatly. I had my first taste of his ideas at age 13, when I read How Children Fail. I read each new book as he wrote it, and I studied in college to be a teacher partly because of the exciting education reforms Holt and others suggested. I could see that the best ideas weren't getting wide acceptance, but I wanted to help make it happen. However, by the time Holt had decided to drop the idea of changing the system from within, I had my first teaching job and, like Holt, had decided that the system was too broken to work with. Career-wise, I switched from teaching in a public school to writing and editing educational materials. On a personal level, I decided that, if I ever had kids, I would homeschool them—or, rather, I would UNschool them.

You can see that John Holt was a true hero to me.

Meeting my hero I was lucky enough to meet John Holt. I didn't have children at the time (circa 1980), and therefore I wasn't a homeschooler of any sort, but I'd heard about a homeschooling conference in Redlands, and I decided to go. I was lucky enough to be one of three women who picked up Holt at the airport and drove him to the house where he would be hosted for the weekend. What a thrill, to get to actually interact with this man who had wielded such a great influence over my own ideas and educational philosophy (and even my career and life)! It was reeeallly interesting!

First, John Holt was terribly unassuming (even shy, perhaps), and he quite refused to be an object of hero worship.
The other two women on the airport run did a certain amount of fawning over him, but his brief answers to their compliments short-circuited the conversation long enough for me to ask if he had read Douglas Hofstadter's book Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid. (His answer: no, but he'd heard about it. Did I recommend it? We had a nice discussion.) When we got to the house where he was to stay, there was an enthusiastic group of people waiting to chat up the guest of honor. He smiled, said hello, thanked them for the reception, but begged exhaustion and the need to practice his beloved cello and almost immediately retired for the night. At the conference, more people lined up to fawn over him. They had read all his books. They had adopted all his ideas. They had named their homeschool after him, one couple said. (He looked pretty alarmed by that.) Instead of reveling in the discussion of his own wonderfulness, Holt spent most of the potluck dinner with a university student who also played cello.

Second, he loved kids.
At the airport, while we were waiting for Holt's luggage to appear, and while the women were beginning the adulation-and-adoration session, Holt was playing a game-at-a-distance with a toddler. Peek-a-boo stuff. I wouldn't say that Holt was being rude, exactly, to the adults, but he saw that the adoration squad could carry on without him, and his attention was very naturally captured by the alert sparkle in a little kid's eyes. Later, as he was speaking at the conference, Holt was interrupted by a crying baby. He carried on for perhaps 15 seconds, but as the baby continued to scream, he stopped his speech and looked around for the source of disturbance. I imagine that many of us felt that he didn't like being interrupted, but he expressed, instead, a mild hope that everything was okay and that someone could help the child. He just seemed a lot more interested in the child's well-being than anything else at that moment. John Holt never married and had no children of his own, although apparently he was a very good uncle.

Third, he reminded me just a bit of my father.
One of my favorite moments at the conference had to do with the potluck dinner we all participated in. I had made an enchilada casserole that didn't last long enough for me (somewhere in the mid-back section of the line) to taste. By the time I got to my casserole dish, all that was left was a few sauce-and-cheese-encrusted bits of tortilla that had stuck to it. John Holt, as the #1 VIP of the conference, had been very first in line, of course, and as I was getting my food, I was surprised to see him get up from his table with his empty plate and make a beeline for MY casserole dish. He said something to the effect of, “Oh, it's gone. Well, it was good.” I was busy being totally thrilled that my hero had not only eaten something I had made, but had enjoyed it, when he picked up the serving spoon and worked hard to scrape those little crusty bits onto his plate. I don't know if anyone thought that was a bit gauche, or not—but I was struck by the fact that this was just exactly what my dad did every time I made that casserole! All I can say is, I was doubly, triply thrilled!

An analogy
I would definitely recommend John Holt's books to anyone who hasn't tried them. I will leave you with an analogy he made that is one of my favorites:

We know the things that people need in order to learn, and they do not include constant tests and evaluation. Testing and grading retards rather than enhances learning.

In the same way, we know what carrots need in order to grow. A gardener spends his time preparing and enriching the soil, planting the carrot seeds properly, weeding the area, and most of all providing water and sunshine. A gardener does not spend time digging up all the tiny carrot plants and measuring the teeny roots (and then of course replanting them) each day! A gardener who feels terribly insecure about whether or not the carrots are growing—instead of trusting that what has always worked in the past with carrots will, in fact, work again—and who digs up his or her carrots every week, every day, or even multiple times a day, will NOT grow better, healthier, straighter carrots. Instead, the insecure gardener will weaken or damage his or her crop.

Basically, Holt's message was that humans are learning “machines.” We should of course supply interesting environments and our own support, but we should trust our little learners to learn.

Unit Studies – Pros and Cons, for Pros and Amateurs

2009-11-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

First, the Pros: A couple of decades ago, “unit studies” were highly promoted for classroom instruction. Education publications informed teachers that, by exploring one interesting topic—such as dinosaurs—reading about them, painting them, measuring them, writing about them, and counting them—they could tap into genuine interests of their students while still teaching readin', writin', and 'rithmetic. Teachers were encouraged to pull together all sorts of resources and activities about the unit study theme into one section of the room, often called a learning center.

When I started homeschooling, I thought that unit studies would fit even better in a home than in a classroom. Interest-based learning, after all, is easier when we only have to consider a few children's interests rather than the desires of 30 kids! Also, the whole family can learn about a particular topic together, each person bringing to the exploration his or her own level of maturity and skill. It goes without saying that the fluidity of “cross-curricular” units fits most of our lives better than separate lessons on math, science, reading, etc. Homeschooling typically has no “periods,” no bells, no rigid external structure.

Created by Amateurs: Two decades ago homeschooling was rarely acknowledged by society, let alone by educational publishers, and the World Wide Web was barely beginning to be spun. “Unit studies” weren't products sold by “experts” to homeschooling parents. Instead, they were a way of thinking about homeschooling. As I mentioned earlier, Mindy and Camille wanted to mark the change from pre-school age to school age by “studying” something—and they decided that something would be dinosaurs. We were motivated to plan a couple of special events—a visit to a museum to see dinosaur bones, and a fun end-of-the-unit dinosaur party—partly because we had an “end.” The week after our dinosaur party, I asked the three girls what they wanted to study next, and we had a giant discussion and a quick, unanimous vote—and we were soon off on another unit study.

All New! Unit Studies Brought to you by Pros: Nowadays, homeschooling apparently provides a thriving market for educational publishing. When I googled “unit studies,” not a single standard-education resource popped up (in the thirty or so websites on the first few pages, at least—at that point, I stopped looking); instead, a flood of homeschooling resources flowed across my screen. Most of what I saw were ads for products that can be purchased, but there were also several sites promoting free unit studies. Web pages that describe unit “lapbooks” and how to do “notebooking” indicate that some homeschool parents today are keeping their kids' art, scribblings, and photos in scrapbooks, just as I did 20+ years ago.

I don't know if the unit studies one can purchase today are expensive or cheap, worth the cost or a waste of money—but I do encourage those interested in unit studies to at least consider gathering resources on their own (the amateur route) rather than always purchasing published kits (the “pro” route). Lavishly illustrated books available in the library will be better than black-and-white worksheets downloaded from the internet, and less expensive than books in a purchased unit studies kit. DVDs are available for inexpensive rental (especially with a service such as NetFlix), and many videos are free on YouTube. Homemade games and hands-on activities may well be better suited to a family's particular interests, ages, and abilities. Finally, gathering resources can be lots of fun and perhaps even more educational than using them!

Now for the “Cons” Although unit studies suited our family for a while, when my kids got older, they no longer wanted to use them. Instead, each child took her own path and developed her own projects. I am sure that some children and families prefer this sort of individualized learning all through homeschooling. Of course parents should use strategies that work for them and their kids!

I have heard some criticisms of the underlying philosophy of unit studies. Some have suggested that, by having a beginning and an end to a particular “study,” we somehow shut the door on further learning. By being so structured, some have said, we squelch the more natural flow from topic to subject to interest. Sandra Dodd once expressed this concern in her signature pithy style: “Yeah, my kids are doing a unit study on dolphins. Because they know dolphins exist, and my kids aren't dead yet.”

In other words, her kids (along with everyone else) will continue to learn about dolphins (at some level) all their lives.

This is a concept that I can totally get behind! Still, Mindy, Camille, Lindsey, Maria and I did have fun focusing on particular interests (chosen by nobody but us) for particular chunks of time (set by nobody but us). We especially loved having an “endpoint” of sorts—can you say “party”?

Naturally, none of the three girls were actually “done” learning about dinosaurs—and they still aren't. Of course they are lifelong learners-about-dinosaurs!

Just the other day, Mindy was reading that paleontologists have decided that what had been considered different species of dinosaurs is now being considered different stages of life of one species of dinosaur. Also, she recently wrote a blog entry about the early (and, we now know, largely erroneous) models of dinosaurs created for England's Sydenham Park in 1854. These two tiny anecdotes confirm the fact that unit studies—while not necessary to homeschooling or education in general—neither squelch interest nor preclude lifelong learning.

And they can be great fun!

Invoking a Substitute

2009-11-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

When our young children are too tired to finish an academic task or chore, too shy to give an oral report, or too upset to make peace with their siblings, we can sometimes help them by suggesting that a substitute do the job.

A substitute?

Of course, we can't call up a substitute kid to do the task, but dolls, stuffed animals, and even costumes and masks can provide, through the power of make-believe, a substitute ready and willing to do stuff.

I noticed that the second day of my homeschool journal tells an anecdote about Lindsey, age 3, being too tired to play the entire piano keyboard/alphabet. But when I asked if her doll wanted to finish, Lindsey rallied and used her doll to do the task much more energetically, even, than she had done the first half as herself.

Naturally. After all, the doll wasn't tired. And, unlike Lindsey, she didn't have a virus.

By pretending to be her doll, Lindsey seemed to tap into reserves of energy.

I remember many times when donning a costume or mask, or manipulating a doll or stuffed animal—or even just pretending to be something or someone else—made my kids braver or more confident or more capable. Even the simple act of holding a stick puppet, for example, allowed Mindy to do a presentation to a group that she was otherwise to shy to speak to. Having dolls negotiate a peace treaty helped my kids distance themselves from the action and gain a more reasonable perspective. Pretending to be Mary-Poppins-style magic as we cleaned the room—singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” at the top of our lungs—made the chore much more fun.

So when the going gets tough, consider calling on a substitute.

Musically Speaking

2009-11-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

Reading through my journal, written more than 20 years ago, I find myself thinking about music education.

I always knew that I wanted to expose my kids to making music as well as to listening to music. All through homeschooling, I had on hand my old childhood piano along with a small assortment of other instruments, including a balalaika my beloved sister brought me from Russia, a sturdy set of rhythm instruments I bought from an educational supplies catalog, a recorder, and two guitars. With my children tagging along (and sometimes egging me on), I occasionally bought a new instrument to add to the mix: a couple of ocarinas, castanets, more recorders and drums. When Lindsey and Mindy were teens, one got a drum kit and the other an electric bass guitar.

As long as little kids have strings to pluck, drums to pound, and keys to plink-plunk, they will make music (or at least sounds!). However, research conducted since Maria and I started homeschooling has suggested that learning to make music—and by this I mean actual musical training, not just exposure here and there—helps improve intelligence and learning. My kids did have some formal musical training in the form of several years of piano lessons. Later, as a teen, Lindsey had drum lessons. We also continued with some informal self-teaching.

Another important aspect to musical exposure is modeling. Kids who grow up in an environment in which everybody makes music will usually quite naturally want to make music. In our case, the modeling has been at a higher level of sporadic enthusiasm than of dedication or proficiency. I've picked out songs I love on the piano and learned a few favorites by Bach and Pachelbel, and Jim has belted out “Solitary Man” and Simon and Garfunkel songs on the guitar—but we have both indulged our music-making in on-again-off-again fashion. Months of playing daily, then months of ignoring our instruments.

After quite a bit of exposure to music, plus some formal training and some parental modeling, how did this “all turn out”? Certainly my kids are not professional musicians or even dedicated amateurs, but they love music, and Mindy at least has copied my husband and me: she makes music, but sporadically, as an on-again-off-again hobby, on both piano and guitar.

How about Camille?

Camille took formal piano lessons and enjoyed playing from age 6 to 18. She added the Celtic harp to her music making at age 12, and continued to play it most of the way through high school. Obviously, once she went to college, Camille's music lessons and practice routines were interrupted, but she did continue to enjoy playing piano when she was home from college, during the summer. She received an electronic keyboard as a college graduation gift and was well positioned to play the rest of her life--until she was afflicted with Repetitive Strain Syndrome in her wrists. Since RSS is a chronic condition, she basically hasn't played since then.

So did Camille's parents waste their money on all those lessons? Did Camille waste her time?

I never feel that music training is wasted, even if someone ends up dropping a hobby and no longer plays the instrument. When we study music, we learn to listen to music better, and often to enjoy it more. We learn more about learning itself, about coordinating our hands and eyes and feet and brain. We learn to let go, explore, improvise. We learn to memorize, practice, persevere. And hopefully we enjoy the hours and years we do all that learning and playing music.

Journal Entry 2

2009-11-10T16:19:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, September 8, 1987

Camille has arrived for the day. She is dressed and brushed and looking good—whereas my two daughters are rocking the jammied-and-bed-head look. But one look at their friend, and they are suddenly motivated to get “homeschool ready,” too. Clothes are soon on, hair is soon brushed, and the girls begin—

Well, not anything that looks like school. Today our homeschooling starts with doll play.

The past few days, Mindy and Lindsey have been very involved with their Cabbage Patch dolls. Camille borrows a doll and joins in as they fiddle with clothes and talk about doll names. Soon the girls are setting up our coffee table with small chairs and a high chair. “Mom!” I hear. When I pop my head into the room, I see three girls and three dolls waiting for service.

I'm figuring they want breakfast, but it turns out they only want some apple juice. I serve three paper cups half-filled with real apple juice and three cups filled all the way up to the top with virtual juice. Everyone drinks (or pretends to) happily.

Her mom has told me that Camille is a bit sick (Lindsey is, too) and that she is leaving early today. So I decide to hold our planned piano lesson early in the day, when everyone is rested.

My kids had asked for piano lessons, and I thought I would try the lessons that John Holt recommended, Mrs. Stewart's Piano Lessons. The first lesson involves playing the musical alphabet (the A-B-C-D-E-F-G sequence of notes), finding all the C notes on the piano, and using a numbered strip of paper on keyboards to help kids play simple tunes.

Camille especially loves all of this. She loves going all the way up the piano keyboard, from the low-low A to the highest C. Mindy does well at the activity, too, but Lindsey poops out about halfway up the keyboard. (She is, after all, only 3!) I suggest that her Cabbage Patch doll might want to play some notes. Invigorated by this notion, Lindsey carefully uses her doll's hand to play the 40-some remaining notes, naming each one in a slightly higher doll-voice.

Camille easily finds all of the C notes. Mindy's turn next; she hesitates several times, either not finding the white-note/black-note pattern as easily as Camille did, or perhaps just wanting to be sure she's right before pressing the key, but she finds them all, too. I don't ask Lindsey to do this task (she is, after all, only 3), but instead I introduce the numbered paper keyboards and a new song: “Little Bird.” We sing the words, sing the numbers, and play our paper keyboards as we sing. (Most of the time, while Mindy, Camille and I sing and “play” the numbers, Lindsey continues to sing the words.)

“Now,” I say, “can you be little birds?”

The girls jump up. I tell them that, while I play the piano, they can fly around the room. But as soon as I play “Little Bird,” they should nestle into their nest (the sofa) and, as the song says, “go to sleep.”

Major enthusiasm from all three. I play some tunes, and the girls' arms start fluttering up and down as they stampede around and around the sofa (birds never made such thudding sounds!). Suddenly, I stop halfway through a song and shift to the “Little Bird” song. “Little bird, in your nest, goooooooooooooo tooooooooooo sleeeeeeeeeep,” Lindsey sings as the three girls jump up onto the sofa, curl up, and abruptly stop moving.

What a hit this game is! They want to play it over and over.

And over again.

I find it fascinating that the kids seem so wound up and excited as they fly around, and yet they still manage to instantly recognize the song that they hadn't known just a few minutes ago!

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When we stop the piano lesson, I notice that Camille is looking a bit bleary. Her nose is running, so I help her with that. As we all wash our hands, I try to think how I can help Camille and Lindsey get some rest today.

Well, there is always TV...

I ask, “Who wants to watch Dumbo?” The kids agree and sit down to watch.

While they are watching the movie, I give Mindy and Lindsey some breakfast. (I try to urge Camille to eat, too, but she doesn't want to.) They have some cereal. Soon Mindy asks for some cinnamon toast. Lindsey decides she wants some, too. So I give each a slice. Camille still turns down any and all food.

Lindsey asks for some more cinnamon toast. I'm surprised (hey, she's supposed to be sick!) but when Mindy chimes in, too, I make half a slice more for each girl. Before they can ask for more food, I say, “Now the kitchen is closed until lunchtime!”

Camille and Lindsey are resting nicely, with all of their attention on the movie, but Mindy seems to want refuge from something. (The movie? The other girls? The girls' colds?) She uses pillows to arrange a private corner to sit in. I watch her carefully, wondering if she is coming down with something, too.

After the movie, the kids seem filled with purpose and ambition. Mindy suggests using a computer program we have on loan—Kermit's Electronic Storymaker. Each child makes a grand story—exactly one sentence long!

All this story stuff has reminded the girls that they're in “school” now, and they're “studying” dinosaurs. “Let's play the dinosaur game, Mom,” Mindy says.

“Dinosaur game?” Camille asks.

The day before, Mindy and I had made something new for our “unit study” on dinosaurs. I had suggested making a dinosaur game. Mindy wanted a track on which they could move game pieces, “like Candyland.” So I drew a big loopy track divided up into squares, and Mindy found our smallest plastic dinosaurs for game pieces. I scrounged a die from another game, but Mindy wanted game cards, too. (Candyland has game cards! Must keep up with Candyland!) So I cut up some three-by-five cards and wrote things like “Forward 2” and “Back 3.” Mindy carefully wrote “START” at one end of the gameboard track, and I wrote “END” at the finish line. While I colored a few spaces on the gameboard (the cue to take a card), Mindy colored the backs of the game cards. For the final decorative touch, Mindy went to town putting dinosaur stickers along the sides of the track. Now she is practically dancing in her excitement to show off our new game.

Camille says, “I'm first!” and apparently that's fine with the others. As the girls play, Mindy and Camille take turns well, follow the rules (such as they are), and have great attitudes. Lindsey is less capable today of playing in this big-girl way (being sick and all, plus she is only 3!). She really wants to be with us, though, and to be a part of what we're doing, so I help her cope as well as she can.

I notice that all three girls are in slightly different places as far as ease of use of the die. One dot is easy for all of them. If Lindsey rolls anything other than one, however, she lets me announce the number, and then she carefully counts aloud as she moves that number of squares. When Camille rolls any number higher than one, she points to each dot on the die and counts. This point-and-count behavior is called pecking. For example, Camille rolls a two, pecks, “One, two,” and then picks up her dinosaur and counts as she moves, “One, two.” Mindy is already somewhat used to using a die. She is able to glance it and immediately announce the number (although the first time she rolls a five, she does peck like Camille). I know that she has played games with a die before and suppose that perhaps Camille has not. Mindy also seems to be reading the cards, but I think she probably merely remembers that the long word that starts with “F” means go forward, and the short word that starts with “B” means go back. Camille is happy to let me read the cards for her.

The girls seem so actively interested in playing games that I wonder if they want to try a matching game, too.

I had some electrical equipment from a science class Mindy took—some covered wires, a battery, and a tiny little bulb fixture. I got a file folder and inserted brass fasteners, evenly spaced, on each side of the fold. Next to each of the fasteners on the left side , I had glued a picture of a dinosaur. On the other side, in a mixed-up order, I had written the names of the dinosaurs. I connected the brass fasteners of the matching items with wires (first carefully stripping about half an inch at each end) and taped the wires firmly to the file folder. The girls could hold the covered wires that were attached to the light fixture and battery and then touch each metal end to a brass fastener. They would only complete the circuit and see the light go on when they matched the correct name to a dinosaur.

Now I bring out this homemade marvel and ask if they want to play. They do! I read the names of the dinosaurs to the girls, and each takes a delighted turn in being the one to touch the wires to the fasteners. Camille seems to know half of the dinosaur's names from the very start (Tyrannosaurus rex, of course, being one). But all three quickly figure out the matches using this little gizmo.

Mindy keeps turning the folder over to look at the back side. I assume she is wondering how it works, but she doesn't ask, and I don't interrupt their excited play.

I expect the kids to run off and play on their own after they tire of the matching game, but instead they decide to draw. Camille starts off tracing around her hand and making a turkey. Mindy and Lindsey each have a circle template and color various sizes of circles on their papers. Then Camille decides to make her own new gameboard. She draws a large heart- shaped track and then divides it into spaces. She is numbering the spaces when Mindy asks if she wants to make a really BIG gameboard with her. They start the project in grand style, using one of my pieces of posterboard, but Camille soon gets bored, and eventually Mindy drops the project as well. Lindsey has persevered with her circles all this time.

It's finally lunchtime. Camille, who has had nothing all day long, except half of a small cup of apple juice, eats half a pancake and drinks two glasses of milk. My girls eat a fair bit more in variety and quantity.

After eating, the three girls go off on their own. Every time I pop my head into the kids' bedrooms, they are playing “make believe” and, by the way, making a gigantic mess! A few times I notice that they have a disagreement as to how the pretend play should proceed...but each time they work things out with compromises and discussion. I am surprised and pleased; I'd expected a bit of emotional meltdown from the sick kids.

Mindy asks me to make apple dinosaurs for them, as I had for her the day before. I suggest that she help me, and she eagerly washes her hands and abandons her playmates to do so. We get out three brightly colored plates and start arranging apple slices and chunks to make rough pictures of dinosaurs. Camille gets a triceratops, Lindsey gets a stegosaur, and Mindy gets a tyrannosaur.

Camille and Lindsey are very pleased to be presented terrible-lizard-shaped food. All three chomp through their dinofruit.

While they eat their snack, I read to them. I decide to read another of the dinosaur books we'd checked out of the library (Dinosaurs Are Different, by Aliki); then I read three more library books that are not about dinosaurs.

Mindy finishes her snack early and decides to illustrate her Kermit Storymaker story.

Something in the last book, which is about a pony, reminds Camille of some books she and her mom read together. She decides to share with us some of the things she learned. I cannot believe how old she sounds as she tells us, “Cowboys wore clothes that were very practical.” Later she sounds a bit more young-and-innocent as she assures us that buffaloes (she means American bison) “were very big and could almost knock you over.”

Yeah, almost!

Camille's mom comes to pick her up at this point, and so our lesson on Cowboys in the West is over, for now. Another day of homeschooling is over, as well.

For now.

"How It All Turned Out"

2009-11-03T23:12:00.000-08:00

As I look back at the journal of our first day homeschooling, about 20 years later, I have a few notes.

The Power of Play

As anyone who is around kids realizes, imaginative play is powerful, and kids learn a lot from such play. (I think all home-schoolers, whether they “unschool” or follow a curriculum, should allow unstructured time for kids to play in any way they want, and should honor as well-spent the hours that their kids spend playing “pretend.”) On this first day of homeschooling, my unschooled kids played at being in school. And they loved it.

For a while.

A very short while.

I homeschooled Mindy and Lindsey (and my third daughter Whitney, who was born when my older girls were 9 and 7) from pre-school up to college, and you could probably count the days that looked like school days on two hands.

Games and Competition

Looking back at that first day's play with Candyland, I smile as I realize how unimportant "winning" and "losing" seemed to be to the girls. These days the family plays a lot of games, especially during family holiday get-togethers, and we now generally play non-competitive games. That is, we tend to turn “normal” competitive games into non-competitive versions of those games. Lindsey and I, in particular, seem to prefer it that way.

Some people are surprised how easy it is to convert just about any board game to a non-competitive game. We often disregard certain rules, don’t keep score, and or ditch the board and playing pieces! The fun of a drawing game is getting a complex idea across with lines and shapes, more than racing another group. The fun of a trivia game is challenging the brain, not moving along a gameboard track.

Of course, competition can be fun, too!

Repetition. Repetition.

Looking back at the first day, I found it interesting that Lindsey kept going back to the same activity among so many choices. Specifically, she kept going back to the magnetic letters.

Arranging the letters alphabetically must have been briefly fascinating to Lindsey—probably until she mastered it.

Babies babble the same sounds over and over again, until they reach mastery. Little kids practice walking; I remember Mindy, age 10 months, running up and down the hall over and over again, exhilarated by her new power and speed. Kids are often motivated to practice self-assigned tasks, repeating as much as necessary until they master a new skill. It's wonderful to sit back and notice and honor this willingness to work, practice, and learn.

What Was I Thinking???

As I read my journal, I find myself second-guessing some of the decisions I made.

Like: What was I thinking, putting my 3 year old in this situation where she clearly thought she “should” keep up with two 5 year olds?

Was I setting her up for years of having extremely high expectations of herself?

(Breathe deep, I tell myself. Lindsey is fine, and you did fine.)

It worked for us!

2009-11-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

An educational philosophy that worked for us:

Have cool stuff lying around.

I know that sounds obvious, but just having art supplies, books, balance scales, number rods, computer games, and puzzles out and available meant that the kids very naturally wanted to use and play with these things. Also, I would periodically change things up by putting away items they'd explored and bringing out something else.

I'm sure anyone who read my First Day of School post would wonder, why so much focus on dinosaurs? In the countdown to the start of school, the kids had decided that we should “study” dinosaurs.

Maria and I spent a fun time and a modest amount of money shopping for dinosaur stuff. I found some stencils, feltboard pieces, and placemats.

I also checked out a pile of dinosaur library books.

By following our kids' lead in "studying" dinosaurs, we were engaging in interest-based learning. This philosophy of education entails following kids’ leads. Do what they want to do, what seems fun and interesting and valuable.

I’m sure most adults would think that would be a recipe for disaster. Won’t kids just sit around watching TV all day? Eating junk food and playing video games? When they’re older, they’ll just sit around talking on the phone, right?

Well, interest-based learning can be scary if kids are clamoring for TV and video games and French fries. But in an interesting and varied home environment, with lots of materials and fascinating things lying about, kids can be trusted to choose a variety of things to do.

Some families make a no-TV rule or limit time on computers and video game systems. Others think that this sets up those activities as especially desirable “reward” type activities that the kids will naturally then crave, so they make no such rules.

Still other adults ask, “What’s wrong with TV and video games?”

Basically, having a rich-and-varied environment and trusting kids to choose well is as easy as—and as difficult as—providing a healthy and varied diet and trusting kids to choose their own food.

It helps not to have too much junk food (however you define that) sitting around.

Also, it helps not to model eating tons of junk food.

So the corollary to "Have cool stuff lying around" is "Use cool stuff, and do cool stuff, yourself."

When our kids say they want to go to school...

2009-11-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

Way back at the beginning of our homeschool journey, Mindy seemed to want to go to school. After all, everybody in society--all the strangers she met, and all the well-meaning relatives, and her doctor and the dentist and on and on--everybody seemed to be conspiring to make kindergarten sound so, so cool.

Mindy seemed to feel she was going to be missing out.

I asked what she was going to miss. What was it that school kids had that homeschool kids didn’t have?

Her answer was prompt but surprising: “Lunchboxes.”

That was easy to fix. Soon my two girls were the proud owners of Popple and Smurf lunchboxes.

Still, something seemed to be missing.

“A school name,” Mindy said.

I realized that all the adults fawning over my 5-year-old’s assumed entry to the fun, fun world of school had asked, “What school are you going to?”

Of course, the girls would want an answer to that almost-daily question!

My two daughters got together with fellow-homeschooler Camille and chose a school name: “De Colores,” which was the name of a song they liked.

Now our homeschool had it all. Lunch-boxes AND a name!

First Day of HOME School!

2009-10-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Friday, Sept. 4, 1987

It’s the first day of school! The kids are so excited!

With school and kindergarten hyped by every adult they meet, the kids have been so looking forward to starting school.

Never mind that Mindy, age 5, lives here, and that Camille, age 5, has been coming over here several days a week most of her life, on account of her mother’s job. Never mind that Lindsey, age 3, not only lives here but is supposedly in “pre-school,” not kindergarten.

Never mind that I am Mom to two of them and Auntie Cathy (babysitter extraordinaire) to one of them.

Never mind all that. This is the first day of homeschooling, and the girls are bound and determined to do school. They all sit down in front of me and stare at me.

Okay.

I can play school as well as the next mom:

I give a lesson on the letter “D.”

I slowly draw various objects on a mini-chalkboard, letting the girls guess what it is that I am drawing. “It starts with the sound d-d-d-,” I say, “and the letter D.”

“Dinosaur!” Camille calls out.

I start another drawing.

“Door!” Lindsey proclaims.

The next item is a bit harder. I am only partly done drawing when Camille says, “Cookie.”

“No, cookie starts with the sound k-k-k and the letter C,” I answer. “This word starts with the sound d-d-d and the letter D.”

I draw the hole in the middle, and Mindy asks, “Doughnut?”

“”Yep.”

Soon the kids are asking for the written word for dinosaur. I write it on the little chalkboard, and the kids do the very important school-type activity of copying the word down on lined paper.

This takes a good long while. I contemplate starting the dishes, but I am supposed to be playing a role…

Finally the girls are done, and they all look up at me expectantly. “What now, teacher?” Mindy asks.

“It’s time for drawing,” I say in my most teacherish voice. “Each of you must draw one thing that begins with the letter D.” I solemnly hand out art materials—markers, crayons, and paper.

Camille asks if she can draw on the chalkboard. “Yes, you may,” I tell her, handing over the chalk and eraser.

Mindy watches her friend erase everything I’d drawn and written that morning. “I want to keep my picture,” she decides, “so I’ll use paper.”

Camille begins to draw a dinosaur on the chalkboard. I know it’s a dinosaur because she says, “I’m drawing a dinosaur.”

Mindy begins to draw a dinosaur on the lined paper on which she had earlier painstakingly written the word DINOSAUR.

Lindsey has already covered her first paper with exuberant red scribbles. Now she is onto a multi-colored scribble on a fresh sheet of paper.

Camille’s very original dinosaur seems to be coming out of an egg.

“Is that an egg?” I ask Camille.

“Yes.”

“I am drawing an egg in my picture, too,” Mindy says, and sure enough, soon there is an odd-shaped egg near her dinosaur.

Lindsey gets up and moves to the magnetic board. There is a plastic pail full of colorful letters. She begins to pick through the letters, looking for “her” special letter, L.

Mindy: Mom, how do you spell egg?

Me: E – G – G.

Mindy: [Writes EGG next to DINOSAUR.]

Camille: What else should I have in my picture?

Mindy: A turtle and a lake.

Lindsey: [Halfway done spelling her name in magnetic letters.] Mom, I have the letter D in my name.

Me: Yes, you do!

Mindy: I’m done with my drawing.

[She has added another egg to the drawing. Now she gets up and joins her sister at the magnetic board.]

Still Mindy: You put letters over there, Lindsey, and I’ll put numbers over here.

Camille finishes her drawing—it’s hard to tell, but I think she’s added suggested items, a turtle and a lake—and she watches Mindy and Lindsey arranging magnetic letters and numbers on the board.

Then she grabs our “Learning Keys” computer gameboard and starts using it in the “Discovery” mode. She pushes a letter box, and a picture of an object that starts with that letter appears. There is a little sound ditty to accompany the picture. She pushes another letter, looks at the accompanying picture, and then says, “Auntie Cathy, I want to do the quiz.”

In the “Quiz” mode, a picture appears, and Camille has to press the letter that it starts with. This mode keeps Camille interested for quite a while, and she gets almost all of the initial letters right on the first try. She is stumped by the picture of the walrus, though.

“Auntie Cathy, what does walrus start with?” she asks.

I’m surprised that she hasn’t even tried one letter, but I answer her question: “W.”

Soon there is one of those collaborative moments when everyone decides to start a new activity, together. Somehow, wordlessly, they all stop what they’re doing and look around as if they are wondering, “What now?”

“Let’s play Candyland,” Mindy suggests.

Everyone agrees. We all sit down around the colorful board.

Camille isn’t familiar with the game but easily picks up the simple rules. Still, she never seems to know whose turn it is. Lindsey, much younger, is similarly clueless. Mindy directs everyone else (and, luckily, doesn’t upset the others in doing so):

“It’s your turn, Camille.”

“Now it’s your turn, Lindsey. Pick a card.”

I am playing, too (and I don’t even need Mindy’s coaching!), so I know that it’s just luck that allows Mindy to speed over the board and win by a Candyland mile (26 squares).

Nobody seems to notice. Mindy doesn’t seem excited in the least. Nobody uses the word win (nor the word lose). I wonder if they even realize that the game is over—but they must, because Lindsey is pulling the game box over to me, asking, “Mom, can you read us the story?”

Sure, I can do that.

Printed on the inside of the box is the Legend of Candyland. I read to the girls about King Kandy and Queen Frostine and the bad guy, Lord Licorice. Camille and Mindy sit nicely, with crossed legs, but Lindsey bounces around while I read. I know from experience, though, that moving actually helps her to pay attention to what I’m reading.

It’s not long before the story is over. Camille asks, “Is it noon?”

Sounds like she’s either hungry or she could use a break.

Come to think of it, I wanted a break, too. (A wash-the-dishes, straighten-the-kitchen break.)

I get up and check the clock.

It’s only 9 a.m.!

I’m amazed and a little dismayed. Camille won’t be picked up for hours! And I’m already kind of tired of playing school!

“It’s not noon,” I say. “But it’s recess.”

“Yeah!”

The three girls run off, happy, healthy, active kids. I dive into my kitchen chores.

A few minutes later, they race past me, running from the bedrooms to the patio playhouse. Something Lindsey screams as they run attracts my attention, and I poke my head out the slider a moment to listen.

Queen Frostine? Lord Licorice?

The kids are playing Candyland, a kids’ game, in perhaps the truest kid way: no competition, no board, no cards, tons of imagination.

After a nice, long time of indoor / outdoor play, the kids troop in to have a snack. I suggest that they fix their snack for themselves. They are delighted.

Each girl carefully counts out crackers into small-size paper cups. They decide to add string cheese and apple juice to the snack. I have to help a bit with removal of the plastic wrap, and I insist on pouring the juice, since the jug is huge and full.

After the snack, the girls say, “Cleanup time.” This is something they got from Mommy-and-me class. They each throw away their own cups and napkins.

I like this playing-school business!

“What now, teacher?” Camille asks.

I start to suggest that we paint dinosaurs, but then I remember my role-playing duties and turn it into a teacherish order.

The kids eagerly dive into tempera and watercolor painting. They use the dinosaur stencils, tracing the outlines and then filling in with color. They add volcanoes, lakes, footprints.

“Cleanup time!” someone says. I look up from writing this journal. They all seem to agree that they’re done, and they split up the “work” of cleanup without any discussion. Camille washes the brushes, Mindy washes the paint cups, and Lindsey wipes the table. I watch in amazement at how careful Lindsey is being. (She’s only three.)

Hey, I really like this playing-school business!

Lindsey goes back to the magnetic letters, which nobody has cleaned up, and takes all the letters and numbers off the board—dropping them all onto the floor! (Oh, well, she’s only three.)

Then she begins to build a new arrangement. Mindy joins in. Camille starts to play with the number balance, but after a couple of minutes, she joins the other two at the magnetic board.

I realize that this time the girls are arranging the letters on the board in ABC order. When they get done with one alphabet, Lindsey suggests that we sing the ABC song. I start them off. While we sing, the girls start finding and arranging another magnetic letter alphabet.

We’re done with the song. Mindy says, “Let’s sing the Janet and Judy ABC song.” I sing along the whole time, since the song is less familiar, but the kids sing this version with twice as much enthusiasm.

Afterwards, the kids run off for some free play. I notice with a smile that they forget ask the “teacher” for permission.

I don’t have to do anything about this, though. Thank goodness, we aren’t really a school.

I start some laundry. I try to keep my ears peeled to see what the kids are playing. They start with Tiger Attack (isn’t that a lovely game?), which somehow effortlessly evolves into playing Indians.

One of the girls must’ve remembered that they’re “in school,” because all three kids are back in front of me, asking the day’s question, “What now, teacher?”

“It’s story time,” I say. I read Digging Up Dinosaurs, by Aliki, and Dinosaurs—A Pop-Up Book, by Dot and Sy Barlowe.

Then we take a nature walk. At the end of the walk, Lindsey decides that she wants to climb up the ivy-covered hill to the Secret Passage, which is a place where the overhanging plants make a kind of green tunnel over a bit of the lawn. She seems nervous to do it by herself, but she does it.

Afterwards, she is obviously empowered by her success. She leads the two big girls up the hill and into the Secret Passage. Then she leads us all into the garden in the backyard, where we pick tomatoes.

Time for lunch, I decree. I put out some healthy food—yogurt, fruit, juice, tomatoes, and sandwich supplies.

Sadly, it appears that the kids are going to starve. They eat a little, tiny bit of food and then start playing. They do the dinosaur-placemat mazes. Camille quickly puts together a number-rod puzzle. Lindsey and Mindy arrange another magnetic-letter alphabet.

They start doing balancing feats and other tricks in the living room.

I clean up and put away all the uneaten food.

Camille’s aunt and cousins arrive for swimming in our backyard pool. Eric is older than the girls, and Kiki (Enrique) is close to their age. We all jump into the pool and have fun.

All three girls had taken swimming lessons this summer, and I notice that, away from the lessons, there has been a sizable regression for Mindy and Camille. Not so much for Lindsey, who seems to be part fish. Both the older girls still put their faces in the water and occasionally venture out to the deep end of the pool.

Mindy has the advantage of daily swimming and joins her sister in going down the slide, swimming on her back, and swimming underwater.

Most important, they all have a good time.

After swimming, the kids clamor for a snack. I take out all the uneaten lunch food, and the kids devour yogurt and sandwiches. Camille eats two entire containers of yogurt and a sandwich!

I guess they won’t starve, after all!

With Eric and Kiki there, the whole playing-school thing seems to have ended, but the kids do many of the same sorts of things they have been doing all day, anyway. They play with a top, they do games on the computer (Eric spearheads a lot of this), and they do some pretend play.

When Maria comes to pick up Camille, she visits with her sister and nephews, reads the journal, and listens to the kids recount their day. I bet she’s jealous that I got to pretend to be a teacher when she was stuck being a real, true school librarian.