making thank-you notes

Do you write thank-you notes? I have a few people in my life who are absolutely wonderful thank-you note writers: prompt, thorough and specific, very thoughtful.  I remember the first time, as an adult, that I received a thank-you note for dinner from a peer - another just-barely-adult - and I was flabbergasted that they were so thoughtful in the midst of our self-centered twenties.  It obviously made an impression on me, and though I have not always been the best or most prompt of thank-you-note writers, I always think that if I just had a stack of cards already made, it would be easier to send them out the door.  

Ah, maybe that's the problem - I feel like an important part of it for me is that I get to make them.  Hmm. 

So when we returned from Christmas visiting this year, we set aside an afternoon to make cards.  

Ani's wearing her new "hat" - a casserole warmer
that used to be my gramma's.

We decided to make prints out of foam sheets and carved rubber blocks.  The foam sheets are so easy for Ani to use and make such a satisfying print; I would highly recommend this as a first forray into block-printing. However, she is also capable of doing the carving, especially when we use the rubber blocks instead of the harder linoleum.

the fuzzy mess of it

I don't get the tools out often enough, and I encouraged the girls to try the different tips and see what kind of cuts they made before jumping into it, but you know how that goes - they wanted to Get To It! It worked out just fine.

Ani carving a Totoro, who looks a lot like an owl...

Eliza's beautiful leaf

One of Ani's owls

Ani's foam owl

We talked about our trip and the time we spent with each member of the family. We talked about some of our favorite gifts, and pretty much every time it was a memory of what we did that trumped the present.  Lunch with Papa Marzo, sledding with the cousins, the sleepover with Mormor and Lucy.  The girls decided to make a list of people to send thank-you's to (So sorry if you weren't on the list!! This wasn't a "mandatory activity" and I'm certain people slipped through the cracks!) and got started. Now, Emily Post would have a lot to say about our certain brand of thank-you's, because they aren't very specific (it was actually hard for the girls to always remember the who that went with the what, there was so much gift-opening in large groups of people, but we usually remembered something), and ended up mostly being love notes, but to my thinking, getting a note in the mail that says I am so glad we had that time together is the most important part of it anyway.

The clementine box of materials - the cards, envelopes, postage stamps, pens, ink pads and stamps and  the address book - sat out for a week or so, so that just a couple of cards could get written in a sitting, and eventually the lists were crossed off and all cards were sent!  And we have a few left over for the next time we need to send a note, which is maybe the best part.

snow days, the daily do and the Bechdel test

Monday was truly a snowday - we woke up to a blanket so thick and silent. Well, except for the snowblower across the street and the scrape of the plow. No, I'm not complaining - our street must be the best cared-for street in the whole town from what I hear, and at this point, several weeks into the most serious winter anyone can remember, folks are serious about their snow removal.

This sign should read NO SCHOOL - EVER!!! They've been more closed than open.

So we enjoyed it.  We suited up and shoveled.  We saw more neighbors than we have since summer, out battling snow. It was lovely! Eliza was off on a last sleepover with Esme, so Dan and Ani and I walked uptown for coffee and hot chocolate and returned for legos, stories, cards...

The rest of the week has been equally weather-obsessed.  Freezing rain? Yes.  Ice? Yes.  Sudden melting and possibility of flooding? Yes.  We did make it to the homeschool coop for the second time this season, which helped with the cabin fever.  The classes the girls are taking are great: the History of Salt and Sugar, Basic Physics and World Geography for Ani, Storybook Art and a Dungeons and Dragons game/class based on the world of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe for Eliza, where she plays a knight.  It was the right amount of busy, but we come home zonkered.

Today we got to some reading about Ancient India and watched a bit of the PBS/BBC production of The Story of India which is a bit goofy but held the girls enthralled with beautiful images and explanations of the migration of people in the earliest days of the Indus civilizations.  

And...that's about it.  Oh yes, more legos, some french conversation with Eliza, listening to Polly Horvath's Mr. and Mrs. Bunny Detective, some cards with Dan when he came home between classes and rehearsal, and a slow descent into bedtime reading (Ramona the Brave for Ani; Pretties for Eliza). 

Oh there was also a detour for Scooby-Doo, which my kids have decided is the best thing ever.  "What do you like about it?" "It's so funny! and we love the mysteries!"  Having tried the old 1970's Hardy Boys T.V. show on Netflix one desperate family movie night (it's really not very good.  Parker Stevens and Shaun Cassidy.) I wasn't quick-thinking enough to offer another alternative, but I did ask if we could quickly review the Bechdel test before watching an episode.  The Bechdel test or Bechdel rule looks at the presence of and relationship between women in a movie (or book, tv show, etc.).  Basically, to "pass" the test, a movie must have 1) two or more women in it who 2) talk directly to each other about 3) something other than men.  I had been feeling uneasy about the last episode I had overheard; it sure seems that Velma and Daphne's obsessions over Shaggy and Fred are over-the-top and while I get that the girls watch Scooby-Doo for fun and, you know, entertainment, I want them to be critical watchers and at least be smart about how they're taking it in. Ahem. Luckily they find this interesting, so we did a quick review and then started the episode.  Ok, we knew there would be two women - Velma and Daphne - and they definitely talk to each other.  Aaaand their first conversation was completely about boys.  Eliza threw me an "ew" look. Then the plot thickened and while they got wrapped up in pursuing a clue, Shaggy and Fred had a conversation about...the girls! Huh. Well, at least it's even.  (I wonder if there's a test for heterosexual world view?*) And...that was it! The rest was about, like, food, and you know, like, solving the mystery, and if it weren't for those meddling kids....(Now, of course, a movie can pass the test and still be totally sexist, but this is at least a good starting point for a more articulate conversation about the way women are portrayed in the media.)  

Before I leave the Bechdel test, Wikipedia had this quote from Virginia Woolf about gender portrayal in literature that I really like:

"All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple.... And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends... They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that..."

Indeed.


*Aha! There is! It's called the Russo test for LGBT representation in movies:

1. The film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender.
2. The character must not be solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity.
3. The character must be tied into the plot in such a way that their removal would have a significant effect.

In which case, Scooby-Doo totally failed.  Something more to talk about...

following the red through winter

Myy eye has been drawn to the reds this week, that pop of color in the grey darkness of the last days of January...

Tokarz paints a pomegranate

Ticket to Ride

Ani's art-making

Duckie enjoying the day in his new fez gnome hat

Rufous-sided towhee and sumac berries

the beautiful Tokarz

I noticed the light shift this morning at exactly 7:00.  It was almost as if a streetlight went on, but it was the sun emerging from over the hill behind our house, and with it came an hour of bird song.  Bird song! Happy February.

I didn't really document the snow of our past 2 weeks (maybe because I suspect there is more coming...like tonight), but just so you all know we're in step here in Ohio with the rest of the United States this season this was us one week ago:

Today, with the bird song (what songbird makes a call that sounds like "puberty-puberty-puberty"? I feel like it's talking to me in the wee hours of the morning, or maybe I've just got puberty on the brain?) and the near-50 degree weather it of course is feeling like spring, but I will not be fooled!  Our friends-from-the-woods came into town to stay for a few nights this week, escaping the freezing pipes and bottomless pit of the woodstove for some visiting before they head to Chile for 2 months.  They're heading for summer-ish weather and when they return, we'll be in the gorgeous throes of an Appalachian spring...

Gnomes, Outhouses, and more about our days...

(So, we had a wonderful sleepover in the woods last week, in-between snowstorms, and the best photos I got were of Ani taking a trip to the outhouse.  Granted, it is the most beautiful outhouse I've ever seen, and she was wearing a brand-spankin' new hat that I made all in one afternoon, but really. For as beautiful as it is, this photo shoot is a little silly.)  (And yes, there was the "Mama, you aren't going to take photos of me sitting down in the outhouse, are you?" Um, no darlin.)

I found myself wanting to talk more about what I was writing about last time - the routine, the structure - in this one-sided conversation I am having.  I felt like I gave the impression that we are quite formal these days, and schooly.  Well, for us I guess we are. The fact that we are doing anything at approximately the same time every day is revolutionary.  However, the flexibility, the meandering, the spontaneity, it's all still there.

isn't it so pretty?

Our days are still mostly conversations.  What kind of mouth does the Giant Squid have? Do you think the ancient shaduf looked like this? Doesn't it look like Spain and Africa are actually touching? Do you think they might be touching? 

I also found myself thinking about a quick conversation I had with a vendor at market, just before Christmas.  She has two grand-daughters who I discovered are living with her, and she threw out an exasperated sigh to me and set into talking about how hard it is to homeschool them when they don't want to sit still or learn anything (these girls are roughly 6 and 4).  Knowing there was a short line behind me, I took a second to start to say something about how we do it at home, but I guess I made the mistake of saying, well, we mostly unschool in our house, and the dismissive smile she gave me, along with the "well, that'll do it" told me that she has an image in her head of what that means, and it doesn't match how we live.  Her look told me that I take the easy route, not schooling my kids, and it stung. 

Finding the line between interest-lead learning and providing some flow is tricky.  It can take a lot of energy to be available and spontaneous. I would say that our choice is far from "easy", but it makes for a rich and mostly really enjoyable life.

I've spent a lot of time since that moment at market thinking of how I could give this woman a glimpse of another way of doing things.  I would tell her I spend most of my days with my children, listening to them and paying attention to what they are drawn to.  I would tell her that we play a lot of games, read a lot of books, and listen to music. I would tell her that I don't freak out when they are so deeply into a game that I can't possibly steer, because I value their play time just as much now as I did when they were 6 and 4.  I would tell her that my kids learned to read when they were ready to read (at ages 9 and 6), and that I wished I hadn't panicked about math so many times. 

Really, I wish it hadn't mattered that she scoffed when I said we mostly unschool.  It just revealed a lack of understanding on her part, not a shortcoming on mine.  I could also have told her that the whole thing changes every season, that we are constantly tweaking and figuring out what is working and what isn't - that our fall was confusing and disappointing in many ways and that I am so thankful that our fresh start is feeding us right now.  I am learning that we all do better when I can shape some of what we're doing.  I'm not so interested in debating whether or not that makes us unschoolers, as the label truly does not matter to me.  I am interested in finding that sweet spot that feeds all of us, kids and grown-ups, and makes us feel whole and engaged.

But enough navel-gazing.  Back to this mischievous gnome...

Little stinker.  I see you...

(Interestingly, as I've been writing this post, I've seen a couple of others out there in blogland talking about how their families do or don't "unschool" (here and here.)  Must be the contemplative nature of this January...wish we were all sitting around with our afternoon coffees together, talking it out!)

You know it's a good day when...

...there is chocolate on your shirt and clay drying on your elbow.  Make that shirt a pajama shirt that you never got out of, and make outside a winter wonderland, and it's a near-perfect day.  I need to record more of those, because they do happen! They do! And it helps me to be able to go back and remember...Last week was our first week getting back into some rhythm since Eliza and Dan began their Appalachian Christmas Carol rehearsals back in November, and it was as rough as you might imagine it could be.  But this week, we're rockin' it.

French class

The secret has been finding times throughout the day when we are gathered.  The girls are so independent now, which I couldn't imagine ever being a problem when they were younger, but it means that they are often absorbed in something in their rooms and cannot be pried away.  

I can hear you asking "why do they need to be pried away from something that is so absorbing to them?" It has to do with staying connected to each other.  It has to do with having some common experiences to build from.  Meeting for an afternoon tea and poetry (this is where the chocolate on the shirt came in) means that we are interacting and sharing, laughing at the Shel Silverstein that inevitably shows up in someone's hands. Playing with words together.  It is so easy to disappear into one's own bubble, and resurfacing can be tricky.  Having some predictable times of the day to make contact helps us share the day.

je suis un yak

What seems to be working right now is a bit of structure.  Eliza has a math program that she's working through at her own pace in the mornings.  We read through lunch - currently from Story of the World, or something related to the time period, from the library.   After lunch Eliza does the cleaning up while we all listen to Pimsleur French.  These photos are all from "french class", which is to say, there is always something else going on - making clay models, drawing, folding clothes...

Gathering together at several points throughout the day also carves out the "free" time of the day, which then gets filled with art projects, reading, and, for Eliza, hours-long writing sessions.  Something about having a framework for the day provides rich pockets for delving into other things.  I don't know that I'm describing this particularly well, but it's as if rather than having hours and hours of open time, there are stepping stones to lead us through the day, and the stones show us not only where we are going, but also describe the gorgeous other time that gets filled in in whatever way interests us.  

I've heard of a Waldorf concept of in-breathing and out-breathing which is maybe what I'm trying to describe here. It's a pattern of together, apart, together, apart that lends a nice rhythm to our days.  It's a structure flexible enough to accomodate the spontaneous sleepover or need to follow a question down the rabbit hole of the internet, and the best I can say is that it's what is working for us right now!

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

Now to some of the particulars.  (This is really two posts in one, but I've heard some complaints about my lax blog-writing lately, so I'm trying to catch up a bit...)

This fall we read Mark Kirlansky's The Story of Salt, which is so interesting that I think we'll probably return to it several times, and occasionally we find some follow-up to that interest.  This week it was Saltmen of Tibet (or Salt Shakers of Tibet, as Ani calls it), the story of a nomadic community of people in Tibet who send a small contingent on a 3-month journey every year to the holy salt lakes to gather salt.  It is a beautiful, slow movie with subtitles, and you never quite know how those will go over, but we loved it.  At one point, as a symbolic animal offering to the Goddess of the Salt Lake, one of the men sculpts yaks out of clay.  Ani was inspired, so one French class resulted in several sweet little yaks and one "Lord of the Animals" as the character was called.

Eliza has jumped into writing a novel this past week that had her on the computer for several hours a day, giggling and exclaiming and interrupting herself to read aloud from chapter after chapter.

Ani's math time is centered around game playing.  Occasionally we read a math book (Life of Fred or something by Marilyn Burns who is big into Math through Literature), but lately the practice comes from card games like Kapaga (the national card game of Greenland, of course) or cribbage, or strategy games like Pente.  A part of the practice comes from being the one keeping score.

for the record, in this game you don't want points.

Eliza spends a lot of time drawing (she bought a couple of new Mark Crilley Mastering Manga books with Christmas money; you can see her work over at her blog, Rattlesnake Plantain) or reading (she just finished a book she loved, called Ivy's Ever After and has been listening over and over to an audio version of Gathering Blue, the sequel to The Giver).  Ani is usually immersed in a book (recently it's been The BFG by Roald Dahl and compilations of the American Girl books about The Depression) or drawing while listening to a story (Anne of Green Gables, The Penderwicks, Dragon Rider and Harry Potter ANYTHING being her favorites).

Choir has started back up, we've joined back up with the learning coop for this quarter, and we've been trying to spend as much time as possible with our friends-in-the-woods who have returned from living in Texas for the past year.  We're happily busy, with the snow slowing us down just enough...