Your Kids Seem Happy and Other Pandemic Musings of 2020

We say a prayer each night at dinner. When I was a kid, the prayer was God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. But now we say God is God, God is God, let us thank God for God's food. Amen.

This means, God just is. Relieve yourself of any notion that God will bestow good things on you if you are good. Bad things happen to all sorts of people, no matter how nice or mean or generous or greedy they are. Pray for them. Pray for yourself. Nobody deserves anything more than anyone else and none of this is really yours. Thank you for all of it anyway. Let's eat.

Frozen Mud Pie

The pain of the pandemic has been unevenly distributed, and we have been very lucky. We did what we could to support local businesses and charities. We tried to help neighbors and family when they needed help. We wore masks and practiced social distancing, recognizing that we could play a small but vital role in reducing community spread. We connected with our loved ones in new and interesting ways. We kept the Girl Scout troop going. M still logged 2,000 running miles, although he didn't run in a single official race. Our family is good at pivoting when circumstances change and this trait helps a lot when the world is in upheaval. 

Several people recently commented on how happy our kids seem. I assure you, they experience the FULL range of human emotions. But they continued to grow and learn this year and are generally happy and healthy. Yesterday we took a walk with our neighbors and found an ice-covered pond. After the kids had been playing with the ice for a while and had broken through it in several spots, a red-tailed hawk soared down from a tree and landed just yards away from us to take a drink of water. One of the coolest things I have ever witnessed. An auspicious end to a tumultuous year. 2020 was filled with extraordinary moments extracted from ordinary daily activities. Everything was stripped down slightly. Less people around us, empty calendar pages, very little reason to rush the kids out the door. There were so many times the delight expressed by one of us was infectious enough to raise the mood of the other four. 

This is what I wish for 2021, an unstoppable pandemic of delight over frozen mud pie or the thrill of catching a leaf in your hand before it hits the ground. Plenty of time for everyone to experience deep breaths and deep sleep and deep laughter. Happy New Year!

Happy Christmas, Pandemic Style

We are blessed with a huge extended family pretty local to us, so Christmas usually involves a lot of visiting across many counties. The pandemic has spread through every state, and there are no longer places with low transmission. The good thing is that treatments are better and several vaccines are starting to be distributed...an end in sight for COVID-19! However, the health care system is pretty overwhelmed at the moment. You aren't supposed to gather with people outside of your household, so we had to change a lot of our usual traditions. We are still having fun and making the best of it. 

Usually, Laurel and I kick off the holiday season by caroling with the Girl Scouts. In the past we have gone door to door in our neighborhood and to a nursing home. This year we made greeting cards and craft kits for our local food pantry to distribute with their Christmas food boxes. We aren't currently having an in-person scout meetings, so we met on Zoom with our troop, while we each decorated cards and made kits. It was actually a lot of fun. Our troop decided to use some of their money from the fall nut/magazine sale to donate to the food pantry since we probably can't go to winter camp this year, and they also started to organize a coat drive. Our scouts always have big plans!

For the past 5 or 6 years, we have gone to the Four Frozen Farmers Christmas tree sale, but they canceled their sale this year. Instead, we upcycled an artificial tree my neighbor was tossing. I pulled off all of the lights, which weren't working anyway, and cleaned it off and fluffed it up. It looks beautiful!

We couldn't do our usual celebrating with my parents, but we lucked out with some amazingly warm and sunny weather and had a campfire in their front yard and ate on the porch. We made a craft wreath by outlining each of our hands and pasting them on a piece of cardboard. The kids decorated their Christmas tree and we exchanged gifts on the porch. My mom even got a pretty good family picture of us!

We did a quick drop-off-presents kind of visit with M's family and on Christmas Day, we did a video call with them. Luckily, his parents and sister live near each other and are already podded up, so nobody was alone for Christmas.

Instead of visiting my extended family, we are going to do a massive video call with everyone. This is kind of cool, actually, because it will include some relatives that are usually too far away to be there in person. My aunts even organized advance delivery of the traditional Christmas poppers, which we will "pop" during the call and then somehow try to get a screenshot of all of us wearing our crowns. 

We did something kind of different with my brother and sister-in-law. It was way too cold that day for standing outside and visiting so we went on a car tour of holiday lights in his neighborhood. I printed out bingo cards with themes to look for and we put our phones on speaker so we could talk the whole time. We had a great time! It was snowing so everything was really pretty. 

We still celebrated with our next door neighbors, since we already have a lot of contact with them, but we opted not to eat anything together and we always wear masks anyway. We did crafts and exchanged gifts. I made my usual holiday version of Tic-Tac-Toe (Tic-Tac-Snow, lol), and holiday charades cards and my neighbor organized a candy cane reindeer craft and the most adorable mason jar lanterns with these really cool solar lights on the lids. 

It's been a lot more sitting around in our pajamas and reading books this year. I lost weight, exercised more, drank less alcohol and slept enough almost every night. We shifted into full "unschooler" mode for Christmas break. This means that I don't require any particular study or schedule but I log things the kids do that meet academic standards. For instance, we got a game called Sumoku that provides plenty of addition and multiplication practice. Reading books is another obvious one to track. They also keep up with Duolingo on their own (gotta keep the streak going). The kids feel like they are on a break, but never stop learning.

So, all in all, it has been a weird but still pretty fun holiday season. 

November Homeschool

November was...a lot. I really don't even know how to wrap my head around a lot of what happened in this country over the past few weeks. We tried to do a civics unit on the election process, but it's kind of difficult to wade through some of the speeches to use them with kids.

We got an epic library order from Ms. Molly, our beloved children's librarian. Everything is curbside right now, but she picks the best books, and there's always something we haven't heard about before. 

We started watching documentaries to learn about people who have different experiences than us. On the heavier side, we watched the Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which is a fantastic movie, but very sad and scary at times. On the lighter side, we watched a series on Disney called Becoming, which features actors, comedians, and professional athletes and what they had to overcome to get there. 

Marko started working on a lapbook project on Greek gods. Laurel became very motivated to sell nuts and magazines through Girl Scouts and did great at the sale, torching her goals and becoming one of the top sellers in our troop. Max started to sound words out a little bit and I gave him an official "reading lesson" from some of my decoding materials. Some kids don't need very much instruction in decoding, so we'll see if he asks for more lessons, or just starts reading. Marko is almost done with the second grade math curriculum. I'm not sure what to do about that for the rest of the year. He does Handwriting Without Tears every day with me and that does seem to be helping his penmanship a lot. He continues to balk at righting in a journal, but he does like dictating stories into Google Docs. 

December is always a tough month for school, whether in a building or homeschooling. I think we're going to ditch math for the month and double down on art and music. We made some silhouette art for the front window that is gorgeous at night.

Happy Thanksgiving! I am so grateful for friends and family who have adapted to new ways of staying in touch with us and making us feel connected and loved during this crazy year. 

October Homeschool

October was filled with beautiful sunny days. We did a lot of camping and hiking and went horseback riding several times. Laurel worked on a fundraiser for Girl Scouts by emailing her family and making a video. Marko took his first online class on Outschool. He enjoyed the content  (Scratch programming) and had no difficulty with logging on, using the mute/unmute button to participate and following the teacher's directions. Max is learning to read and also loves getting his time on Khan Academy, Scratch, or Garage Band. 

We listened to The Boy Who Saved Baseball by John Ritter. We haven't read a lot of sports themed books, but everyone enjoyed it. Baseball is also a good entry point to study immigration and segregation. I didn't really plan this, but just asked our librarian to pick out baseball books. They ended up being about the Negro League, women who played professionally during various wars when there weren't enough men to field teams and a team that formed at a Japanese internment camp during World War II. We also revisited some of the themes that came up a novel we read last year, Stella By Starlight. In that book, Klan members burn down a Black family's house after the father registers to vote. We followed a few news stories about current voter suppression, as well as efforts to register more people to vote. Laurel and I have tried to watch some speeches and debates, but they are basically unwatchable. 

However, it's generally going pretty well. From last year, I remember the need to switch things up, especially as the seasons change, so I'm trying to think of some ways to make November feel fun and cozy.

September Homeschool Recap

Not quite the end of September, but close enough to offer a summary. The weather here has been uncharacteristically divine. We have been camping and hiking a lot and M finally got back into running after a 6-ish week break due to surgery on his shattered wrist. As for homeschool, we are on track to finish our novel, Bronze and Sunflower, and covered most of the language arts material from the Arrow Guide. We pretty much just read through them and talk about it. The ex-teacher in me wants to come up with lesson hooks and practice exercises...surely they can't learn if you just have a conversation about it (!?)...and yet, they do seem to learn just fine that way. 

Kids are making great progress in Khan Academy...it's way smoother than last year. Everyone can log in on their own and they have finally been convinced that watching the videos before trying the exercises makes it a lot less painful, and dare I say even faster. It helps that Khan awards points just for watching a video and they are highly motivated by the points, even though it leads to nothing other than being able to change your avatar. I find myself doing a lot more clarifying, rather than full on teaching. This is a free program, but I like it so much I sent a donation. 

For science, we've been studying physical matter and changes of state and are starting to get into the periodic table of the elements. We read through a Core Knowledge unit on this topic. It's a grade 5 unit, but the younger kids have no problem following the content. I will give Laurel the chapter test so we have some kind of written work for the portfolio. 

For physical activity, we just added a slack line to our collection of random outdoor equipment (basically just a wide piece of strap you connect between two trees as a tight rope). It's a lot of fun and keeps Marko especially engaged. 

They have been scavenging leaves and nuts and seeds and pods to make crafts and we did some fall garlands with wax resist watercolor leaf rubbings that turned out quite lovely. They found a whole bunch of black walnuts that they will attempt to process and eat. Once October officially arrives, we'll start decorating our house and making Halloween costumes. 

History is unfolding in front of us, so we are doing a lot of constitutional rereading and looking at election law and times in history when voting has been suppressed. Laurel and I talk a lot about state vs. federal rights and responsibilities. 

We are continuing to work on our personal timelines and found a website called TimeToast where you can plug your text and pictures into and it will generate a timeline. It's very cool to see them add things from way in the past and see how their lives are just minuscule blips on the timeline of human history. Then if they delete those and just add a bunch of things that happened in the last year or two, it changes their perspective entirely. This project has definitely turned out to be more about process than final product, although I do hope to have something cool to show for it eventually. We were supposed to wrap this up by the end of this month, but I don't think we'll be done with it for another few weeks.

Our biggest challenge this month is interrupting each other. It's a constant puppy-dog pile of energy swirling around me. Max is the worst offender. I realized the other day that he is almost 5 years old, and while he can is doing some pretty advanced reading and math, he still cannot put on his socks and shoes by himself. He refuses to participate in most chores and spends a lot of time laying down on the floor in protest, or climbing into my lap when I'm with one of the other kids. Last year I started listening to Dr. Ross Greene's podcasts about behaviorally challenging kids and this phrase stuck with me..."Kids do well if they can." He assumes that behavior challenges come from kids not having requisite skills for handling different situations. I have found that to be a very helpful approach. So instead of focusing on not interrupting, I'm working at teaching independence at each of the things they interrupt me for.  

For October: 

Read The Boy Who Saved Baseball

Make Halloween costumes and fall decorations

Incorporate more music (playing, learning)

Bike rides and camping

Conduct a required fire drill and let the kids practice climbing out our bedroom window onto the porch roof.

Continue election study and actually vote, if my ballot comes

Finish-What-You-Start Month - digging out all the old Highlights puzzles and craft kits from the dusty corners of the house and actually finishing them or tossing them out, also applies to miscellaneous home improvement projects

Untangling History

We don't use a history curriculum. There's so much history they leave out! I don't think I can possibly teach my kids everything, but I hope not to overlook whole continents or entire cultures of people, which is definitely a problem in most of the options I've seen. Our problem is that we skip around a lot. Marko is really interested in ancient myths and legends and Laurel likes 18th and 19th century American history, so they tend to read a lot of books featuring those periods. M and I are really interested in the Americas before European contact. We also study the history and geography of settings in our language arts materials. Right now it's Bronze and Sunflower, which takes place in rural China during the Cultural Revolution. A lot of our history content just comes up in the course of us reading what we think is interesting, or from books that people send us. My aunt just sent us a book called The Girl Who Drew Butterflies and this provided some really useful insights into how some people in the 17th century viewed science. 

So, we don't lack content. But "history" does come up in some pretty random and unplanned ways.

My solution to all the jumping around is to keep a globe and a timeline on hand at all times to put things in perspective. We start with our location and then look on the globe to see where the history is happening. Then we look in the timeline book to see what was happening around the world at the same time. We have this Usborne Timeslines of World History book, which does an adequate job of showing what was happening on all the different continents at the same time. Our first writing project of the year is creating a personal timeline of important events and things that led to our existence, to reinforce that history is something you are a part of, influenced by, and can change. And that our interpretation of events is often very different in hindsight than it is when we are in it. (Ahem, 2020. Can't wait to see what we say about you.)

How do I grade history? We don't use grades at all in our homeschool. I record our reading materials, videos, and topics covered on our homeschooling log after we do them and periodically I have the kids write an essay about a topic that is particularly compelling to them and then I save it for their portfolio. I use the What Your Fifth/Second Grader Needs to Know books to get ideas for civilizations and topics that we haven't encountered yet. 

August Homeschool Recap

In spite of a very disruptive few weeks, we were able to get the school year off to a good start. In good news, Laurel found a kitten in our neighbor's garage. This poor thing was crying for days and Laurel finally coaxed her out and gave her some food. She was covered in fleas and only 3 pounds. We combed out all the fleas and took her to the vet to see if she had a chip. Our librarian gathered up all the books on kitten care that she could fine. We could not find an owner, so....we have a cat now. We named her Shadow and she's a very frisky and social 5ish month old kitten now. In less good news, M broke his arm and had to have surgery to repair it. The first few weeks of recovery were kind of rough, as it was his right arm and he basically could not use it at all. He had a lot of appointments at the hospital and could not drive, which in pandemic times involved some childcare gymnastics. Luckily, he did not have any complications and it's healing up really well. 

So how did we manage to start school despite all of this? First we started the year off with a celebratory breakfast on our porch with our neighbor Marlene. We drafted a schedule to give each kid 1:1 time with me on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Mondays and Fridays are reserved for outings, which at this point is just visiting relatives or friends, or going to a local park to play or hike. We also do group lessons at 3pm every day. Sometimes this also includes our neighbors. They joined us for a science observation activity. 

Laurel started a fifth grade science unit I downloaded from the Core Knowledge Foundation about matter. She designed a little science experiment with cotton balls that didn't work out how she thought it would, but was a good exercise nonetheless. Everybody started working through Khan Academy for math. Laurel and I are also working through a history course on Khan Academy. This month we learned about primary and secondary sources, and analyzing  context and bias. We listened to Franklin Roosevelt's inaugural speech, and then watched some of Joe Biden's and Donald Trump's speeches from the party conventions that happened in August. We finished listening to the book Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown, which is a sequel to Wild Robot. I highly recommend this book, it is a beautifully told story and raises many interesting questions about artificial intelligence and what makes something alive. We used the Arrow Guide from Brave Writer for discussion questions and copywork. Music ended up being mostly about synthesizers and recording layers of sound on Garage Band. We read a variety of articles on civilizations in South and Central America and watched a documentary on Machu Picchu. We learned a little about Hinduism and ordered a version of the Ramayana. We talked about how religion can influence a society and your life, even if you personally don't practice that religion. Laurel took a class on Outschool about the legend and lore of black cats. Marko and I started working through a program called Handwriting Without Tears. M reads stories to the kids at night. Norse Myths are in steady rotation, as is James Herriot's Treasury for Children (and we just found the old BBC series, which is delightfully wholesome television).

What I love about homeschooling is that once you set up a structure and some minimum guidelines for what must be learned or practiced, you can give yourself a lot of room to pursue whatever topic sparks interest. For this reason, I'm never really sure what the kids and I will talking about during their 1:1 time, or what they will pursue during their own time during the day. Marko tends to want to know lots of things about the ancient world, myths and legends. Laurel is more curious about American history from the 1800s and early 1900s. Max is very observant about our neighborhood and home and likes to explore these places in more depth. I check off what they are reading and studying about on our subject/book log so I can see if there are things they "should" be covering that their natural curiosity is not leading them through. Based on that log, we need to add more art and music. My neighbor just happened to send me a link to some fabulous art project ideas, so I think we'll do some porch art classes in September. 

Homeschool 2020

I'm actually excited about starting the 2020-2021 school year.  Last fall was rough trying to figure out curriculum, balancing work and travel, and getting used to spending a LOT of time together. (Now the whole world can relate to that last one, since everyone went through it in March.) Eventually we figured out a manageable and enjoyable rhythm. We will be using Brave Writer for Language Arts, Khan Academy for math, and a sort of modern Charlotte Mason approach for Science, Social Studies, Art and Music - basically using trade books instead of text books and just doing a lot of reading and discussing (what CM calls narration). I ordered copies of What Your Second Grader Needs to Know and What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know, which served as helpful anchors last year. Each day, the kids will do some math, reading, writing and physical education and then we'll rotate through geography, history, civics, music, art, safety and anatomy, and science on a weekly basis. This week, we rearranged some furniture and I'm sorting through things we have lying around the house....musical instruments, art supplies, wood scraps, fabric, games and puzzles to set up some different stations. 

I modified the forms we used last year for tracking what subjects we covered. For each month the form has a place for checkboxes for each subject and you just mark off what days you did them. On the back, there is a book list to write down what the kids read. Each month, we will gather whatever journal entries, writing samples, tests, etc. that we think are reflective of what we've done and stick them in a file folder until May. In May we'll go through our work and choose pieces to include in the portfolio. I know now from going through an evaluation, that this will meet the legal reporting requirement, at least for the evaluator we used this past year. I guess they vary a bit. 

Laurel will need to take a standardized test this year. I decided to not think too hard about this one and will just sign her up for the Stanford-10, which is one a friend used last year. I ordered a test prep booklet for her. 

But how do I decide what lessons to actually teach? Brave Writer has guides to go along with novels so we just read them together and discuss the points. It also has writing projects laid out, so we'll do about one a month. The only preparation I do is to read them in advance, and then I actually do the activities alongside the kids. When we do Khan Academy, I sit with them and basically watch them do the problems. I occasionally provide tutoring if they are stuck, but the website itself provides hints and and extra videos so I try to get them to use those first. Khan is limited in the number of unique practice problems so I bought each kid a basic Spectrum math workbook for extra practice if they need it. 

For the other "subjects," I have a file folder for each one and if I come across a video, book, podcast, event, or place to visit then I'll stick in the folder. Once a week, I pull the folder and just do the next thing. It's a little haphazard. We aren't exactly going through the centuries of human history in an orderly manner. Last year I had them keep daily journals and they would usually write or draw (or sometimes dictate to me) things about what they were learning and reading. This year we're going to work on making timelines to understand how things fit together so hopefully this will help. Last year I reviewed the state standards every month or so (searchable at pdesas.org), just to make sure we weren't skipping over something really important. I also have a few units from Core Knowledge Series and I use some of the tests and writing prompts to assess how Laurel can read and write clearly about a topic on a fifth grade level. 

Anyway, so that's the plan. I'm sure 2020 will come along and f*** that right up, but for now, we're going with it.

In Case We Want to Remember This

....and I'm not really sure we do. Nonetheless, this blog has served as a journal for many major milestones over the past 14 years and what is happening now is significant. 

We've been homeschooling and working remotely for over a year now, so when the pandemic first hit, we did not experience a major disruption. M was still able to work. The kids carried on with school. We have an 1,800 square foot house, a small yard with a jungle gym and a 600 acre park nearby. And of course, we have each other, probably our biggest asset. We were not isolated or lonely during stay at home orders.

Our routine did change a lot. The kids used to spend one day a week with my parents. I used to work at my aunt and uncle's restaurant. We used to take my mother-in-law to the library and out to lunch every other week. We regularly got together with my extended family. We were trying out some new homeschooling groups. The boys went to a three hour gymnastics class on Fridays. Laurel went horse riding or to Girl Scouts every week. M took the boys to an indoor skateboarding park and Marko went to a bunch of all day camps there. We spent lots and lots of time at the library and public parks meeting new people. Most of our road trips were planned around trail races, where we got to see our friends and meet new people. When we traveled the kids would immediately find some awesome family in the campground and start playing with them. We miss all of these things terribly. 

We planned to relax things a bit after a few weeks in the "green phase," but the uptick in cases made us change our minds. So where we are right now is basically where we've been since May. Visiting with people in small groups, mostly outside. My aunts have this social distance set up for their pool so everyone can visit and use it but not be close to each other. (They even drew a map!) Mask up if you have to go in to use the bathroom. Mask up if you share a car. Our kids are playing with a few other kids in outdoor settings. M is running with a couple of people a week. We went swimming in a pool at a state park that was not very crowded. We've gone camping a few time and just used our own bathroom instead of gas stations while we were driving. Basically, we try to be outdoors for all interactions.

Is this enough? Too much? I have no idea. If I follow the news, the world seems like it's ending. If I sit on my porch and watch what is going on outside, everything seems normal except people are wearing masks. I definitely would like to see more people. I also definitely don't want to get COVID-19. Not sure the two are mutually compatible. 

Someday I might think this was ridiculously conservative. Do you remember that time we basically stayed home for six months for no reason, lol.

Someday I might look back think oh, I'm so grateful I had the foresight to protect my children from a disease that left so many dead or permanently disabled. 

At this point, there's really no way to tell which of those future scenarios is the real one. Everybody's gambling on one of those two outcomes. 

Writing in Homeschooling

Writing is my favorite, so I was pretty bummed last fall when it turned out to be the absolute worst part of homeschool. They hated it, resisted any activity, called it stupid, would copy things off a cereal box just to get "credit" for the assignment, and cried. There was lots of crying when I tried to teach writing, from all of us. Not a good situation.

Three things helped me turn this around and get my kids to actually produce some decent writing, without fighting.

The first was a mindset adjustment on my part. I listened to a bunch of Brave Writer podcasts and experimented with a less is more policy,  not just with reading but with every subject. I asked the kids how much writing they thought they could do or how many math problems they could manage. I went with whatever they said on a given day, even if it was "1." This was magic. In terms of writing, it meant that I assigned far less writing than I thought prudent, but they still ended up with plenty of pieces to choose from to include in their portfolio.

The second thing I tried was "Free Write Fridays" - there is a whole series of Friday Free Write blog posts on the Brave Writer site with prompts. This is roughly how Julie Bogart describes doing this activity. Once a week, I would read a prompt, set a timer for 8 minutes, and we would all (including me) sit down and write. When the timer went off I would ask if they wanted to share. If they did fine, if not, fine. We put the pieces in an envelope. After doing this for 8 weeks, I gave them their envelopes, which at that point had 8 drafts in it and asked them to choose one that they wanted to revise into a longer piece. Not the "best" one, but one with potential to be something good. Then we started to move through the writing process with that piece. TWO months to get to the revision part for ONE piece of writing. And they could see that lots of the writing they started was worth abandoning. One of my kids suffers from crippling perfectionism, and this helped to reinforce the idea that not everything you produce has to be perfect, but if you want it to be really good, it's not something that happens on the first try. We humans generate a lot of garbage. 

The third thing I did was let them use Google Docs, including the Voice to Type and spelling/grammar check. Basically, they talk to the computer and it transcribes it for them. The feature is pretty accurate, but still makes lots of mistakes. They have to read it back to themselves to see if it captured what they meant. This tool helped them to see that they had great ideas in their heads, or sometimes they would get what they thought was a good idea onto the page and realize it wasn't as great as they thought. I could also get onto their document and leave my own feedback or suggestions and then they could take it or leave it. Does this even count as writing? I thought it was cheating at first. But then I saw that the kids were focused on different elements of writing instead of getting held up on spelling and phonics and paragraph construction. If you are familiar with the 6 Traits Framework, Voice, Ideas, Word Choice and Sentence Fluency are all important features of great writing and these emerged in their pieces. 

It was a nail biting experience for me to reduce the amount of writing I assigned. I felt negligent and anxious about it. But by June, I could see that they actually were learning to write, to revise their writing and to write across different genres. 

Little Things At the End of June

Last night we had a campfire at my parents' house and the kids ran around and caught lightning bugs. We roasted hot dogs and watched storm clouds blow in. We didn't get home until 10, which is very late for us these days. Other than the weekend we picked M up from the end of his trail run, I haven't been out after dark in months. Max slept fitfully and in the morning when he woke up he told me he had swallowed a Lego and he was really worried about it being caught in his throat. But then he seemed to wake up a little more and we figured out that was just a dream. 

I worked at the restaurant for a little while today.  I was alone and only prepping food and cleaning things up, which is the lowest-stress situation you can have while working in a restaurant. The basement is filled with bar stools and chairs, removed to spread out the customers. I listened to several podcasts in a row without interruption, a rare experience for me. 

On my way home, the man who panhandles on our corner gave me a sack of sandwiches for the kids. I thought it was a very nice gesture, sharing what you cannot use yourself. 

I'm not spending as much time on my front porch as I used to. We have air conditioning now so when it gets very hot we just turn it on and go about our business. Before we had air conditioning it would become too hot to do anything and we would sit on the porch with our feet in buckets of water. Just sitting for hours.... chatting with the neighbor or painting with watercolors or counting cars. It's the end of the month and there are moving trucks everywhere. One is parked across the street. The trees block my view of the porch, but I can hear a man talking loudly on the phone in Spanish. 

There are fireworks going off, of course. From all directions.

There is a man shouting into the booth at the gas station for a particular brand of cigarettes. 

There is the whoosh of a bus pulling away from the stop. Bass from a passing car rattles the flowerpots. 

Everyone going about business as usual. It seems fine, but there's also a sense of anticipation in the air that I can't quite identify. What will happen next? We're all thinking it, but afraid to say it out loud. 

First Homeschool Evaluation

Evaluations for homeschool were waived this year, but I decided to schedule one anyway. I felt if I went through another school year without knowing if my paperwork was adequate, it would stress me out too much. Plus, I wanted to recognize and validate Laurel and Marko's hard work in some way. They wrote letters and I wrote a summary and we put samples of their work in plastic sleeves. It was very satisfying to see them holding the completed portfolios and talking about what they had learned. We met with the evaluator on her back porch and did elbow bumps instead of hand shaking when we finished. It turns out she also went to Pitt to be a reading specialist and we knew a lot of the same people! 

As new homeschoolers, we ditched a lot of what we originally planned. I did a ton of planning and fretting last summer! I even went to a homeschooling conference. Thankfully I didn't spend a ton of money on things we didn't use, but I definitely filled up my computer with files.

I ended up not doing a lot of daily lesson planning in advance. Instead we followed some routines (math, reading, writing and physical education every day....all other subjects once a week) and I would log what we read or did on these monthly log forms. Basically I just jotted down the title of the book or video and maybe a short note about an activity. I sat down with each kid one-on-one every day, but not for very long. We kept a lot of goal lists in our notebooks and referenced them frequently. We came up with some ways to make sure M got to work with the kids. Every few months I would glance over the standards on PDESAS just to see that we were on the right track or if there was something I should steer us towards by finding a book or video on a subject. 

The best mid year purchase I made was Brave Writer Arrow guides, but I also got a lot out of the (free) Brave Writer podcasts.  Julie Bogart's advice that "help helps" and "joy is the best teacher" really helped me break some of my worst teacher-y habits. I used to make kids struggle for so long on their own when they didn't know what the hell they were doing because I thought it was good for them to figure it out on their own. It was painful for everybody. She also helped me trust that my kids could actually master skills and content without doing massive amounts of repetitive work. The key is to spiral back and have them review things periodically. Waiting until my kids were in a good head space to tackle hard material was revolutionary. They become incredibly easy to teach and we both end up learning and having fun with each other. And that last part is really the thing that I'm going to focus on during the coming year...learning new things is fun and a great way to build a relationship.

We had a lot of adventures this year and it was wild to hear Marko and Laurel tell about watching a video on the Spiral Jetty and then driving down a dusty dirt road to actually see it in person. "It's art made of rocks! You can walk on it!" But even these months stuck at home, Marko learned to use a dremel and Laurel learned to double or half recipes and everybody made some music and read a million books. 

The big regret of this year was not connecting with other homeschoolers as much. We traveled a lot and then when we came back the pandemic kind of killed the opportunity for meetups or homeschool classes. We are still in touch with school friends, but it's a really challenging time to foster friendships with children.

Relationships

When the stay at home order was initiated in March, we didn't have a hard time adhering to it. Some of my kids had fevers during those first few weeks so we stayed home to keep our germs to ourselves. We already homeschooled and M had all the equipment to work remotely. During the fall, we left town for 2 1/2 months, so it felt a little bit like that...just our little pod of a family, intensely sinking into relationships with each other. Yes, we missed our friends and family, but it wasn't a hard thing for us to do. As it turned into two months, and then three, we started to really miss our gymnastics classes and horse riding. We cried when Girl Scout camp was canceled. We missed our usual routine of sleepovers with grandparents. 

Now we know some more things about COVID-19, but not really that much more. A hundred thousand people died in just the United States so far, it will easily double this year. We have no idea if people who get mild cases actually suffer long term consequences. We don't know when a vaccine will be available, if you can get it more than once, or even really how to treat the various presentations of the disease. New advances for treatment are being made all the time. I try to focus on that, and not the politicization of the pandemic. 

What I love is how our friends and family adapted to this situation and logged on to Zoom to visit with us, or met us in parks, hung out in our backyard or called us on the phone or wrote letters. Even our librarian has written to us! My kids feel so loved and a sense of connection despite the physical separation. I hope that people will continue to foster a sense of togetherness.

Calendar Pages

I have a giant paper calendar hanging on the side of the fridge, and today all the old sheets spilled out from it and scattered all over the floor. This particular calendar was started in July of 2019 when we were brand spanking new to homeschooling, and overly optimistic about what we might do with our newfound freedom from school. The pages are chock full of appointments and lessons and classes and overnights at my parents and week long trips to the Poconos and lots and lots of trail races. Funerals in Maryland and Girl Scout camping trips and penciled in times to go grocery shopping before the camping trips because cooking for 100 requires a lot of grocery store trips. Then there is a blank October sheet, because we were on a road trip for that entire month, but you can see us hopping back in immediately following that road trip, all through the winter months, also known as birthday season in my house. The March calendar starts off full...a trip to the Smithsonian museums and Girl Scout cookie sales and gymnastics classes. The activities after mid-month are half-erased. April is blank except for notations where we picked up groceries or otherwise went out into the public world. For personal contact tracing purposes, I think, although that seems a little silly now. May has a variety of Zoom meetings penciled in, as we've begun to accept this way of doing things. But mostly white space.

The days don't feel like white space. There is a lot of trying to stay one step ahead of the kids, and their chaos and messes. Failing horribly at this, of course, because reactionary parenting is for amateurs and won't get you anywhere. We have a lot of unfinished landscaping projects and mud is everywhere, little muddy footprints tracking up the stairs. Muddy fingerprints along the edge of the door frame. There are so many dishes. Every day I say a prayer of thanksgiving for the dishwasher.

It's simultaneously fine. We did a book exchange with some friends and they sent the most delightful books. The food is very good, every day. We currently have a lot of turnips and I baked them into a gratin tonight, alongside a roasted chicken, and spring greens mix salad. And that's just a Tuesday. On Sunday, M and Laurel baked a pie with the best crust I have ever tasted. The kids craft elaborate worlds in Legos and swing upside down on the jungle gym while chatting with our neighbors over the fence. Homeschool is fizzling out, but everyone is doing great at math. We are digging deep into our collection of books and recently discovered that none of us had read the Wizard of Oz yet. M made me a bird feeder out of scrap wood and a whiskey bottle and it's absolutely captivating to watch who comes to visit.

It's a train wreck in slow motion on the outside, but a nice warm cocoon in here. Next month is the last page of this calendar. Should I get a new one? I don't know what to write on the pages.

April Update

Homeschool update? Well, everything is canceled. We planned to drive to Tahoe in June and then loop up through the Pacific Northwest. Hit North Dakota on the way home, a state M and I have never traveled through. We were in search of wild mustangs, high peaks, cool summer temps and a chance to travel again with all those lessons learned from our fall journey. I had so many good recipes to try. Have you heard of powdered butter? Anyway, all the races are canceled so we are staying put until further notice. Maybe forever. A lot of people keep saying "when things go back to normal," but I'm not sure that's a useful expectation to hold right now. This week we are closing out Stella by Starlight, working through an Art Assignment on paper weaving and homecraft, and following our whims of creativity. I've been following a permaculture course and digging a sort of swale/water abatement channel in the backyard. Laurel started ukulele lessons. Marko is building a wooden box and learning to use the drill, screwdriver, hammers, saws and sand paper. Max is experimenting with the synthesizer. M has set up all his guitar pedals and amplifier. Laurel is about 80% proficiency on 4th grade math and expects to finish it up by June. Marko finished the 1st grade math around Christmas time, but continues to practice with addition and subtraction facts. I feel confident that they are at or above grade level in all areas except writing. They produce plenty of comics, shopping lists, thank you cards, newspapers and plays, but getting them to write an essay response to a question does not yield excellent results. I'm pretty satisfied with the overall growth everyone made academically this year, and I feel like we worked out a lot of kinks in our schedule and plans. I have a good idea of what books I want to order at the beginning of the next school year.

The pandemic definitely changed some things for us. We were driving around quite a bit for activities or to visit people....and shopping for groceries almost every day. It has been very nice to do bulk orders from Frankferd Farms and meat and produce shares from Wild Purveyors. We are doing a lot of cooking from scratch and have reduced the garbage we put to the curb by half. Positive changes we hope to carry on.

M and I plan to give them a summer "break" from all subjects except writing. We will give each of them (and us!) a journal and write together every day. I put "break" in quotes because it feels impossible to tease out what is the Home part and what is the School part of our day. I doubt they'll stop learning over the summer. But we aren't going to log into Khan Academy or plan a STEM week or anything. I'm hopeful we'll do a lot of camping, finish more projects around the house, enjoy a bountiful garden, play a lot of music, read captivating books, make art and eat delicious food.

Poetry Tea Time in a Pandemic

We did some poetry tea time today. I got the idea from Julie Bogart at Brave Writer, whose writing helped me shift our homeschooling into something I enjoy. Joy is the best teacher. although admittedly joy has been hard to summon this week. We have had some significant disruptions in our schedule and are definitely just trying to get used to all being together all the time. I have learned a lot about learning this year and know better than to jam it through. When kids (or you) are stressed, back off. Make sure everybody is exercising and sleeping first. Read every day. Pay attention to each other. Play cards. Stare at the clouds. Once you feel ok in your skin again you can add more stuff in. If your kids are in elementary school, this will not set them back in the least, I promise. 

We skipped a lot of school this week, but I did have a book of poetry from the library, which we get to keep indefinitely I guess. I grabbed the book, our candle and some cookies and milk. It is so simple. Dim the lights, light a candle, give everybody a treat and read. It might only last five minutes at first, and this is fine. I have two fluent readers now, so we passed the book around and everybody read a poem, even Max. (I did whisper reading with him.) The poetry collection was all about small things, so when we were done, I sent everyone off to find a small thing. I told them I would write a poem about each of their objects. Old me would have asked my kids to write a poem about a small object, and they would have groaned and it would have gone terribly. But now I know to try the things I want my kids to do. Anyway, they came back with a horse figurine, a pokemon card and a piece of a jade plant that fell onto the floor. I'm not even going to ask them to write poems yet, I'll just leave out a dish of small objects and we'll see what happens. 

Anyway, here are my poems....

Laurel’s Object: Horse Figurine

The first time I saw her on a horse

It was like I saw her for the very first time

Focused eyes, soft mouth

Moving in tandem with a giant animal

And looking like she had been there always.

You never tire of watching your child as 

The best version of herself.

So if I step on a horse figurine in the night

I will still curse, until my fingers reach down

Curl around the plastic body, feel the trotting legs

Tail and mane flowing, molded to show movement

And then I will smile and think of her.

Marko’s Object: Jade branch fallen from the houseplant

Even in the best of times

A houseplant can be a burdensome ward

If you travel far and close your blinds

If you move it onto the radiator to dust the shelf

And it gets too hot

If you forget you have watered it

And water too soon

Or the other way, both are bad.

It’s a lot to keep track of.

But in the worst of times

A houseplant is a reminder of the way things

Used to be.

When your to-do list said something else.

Max’s Object: Pokemon Card

Stack of cards

Lay them straight

Flip them over

Count to eight

Who will be

The best in all?

Wait and see

Until I call.

February

All the homeschool blogs I follow had lengthy posts about "getting through February" and I thought we were going to be spared, but nope. February was long and there were more than a few blow-ups, mishaps, giving-ups and throw-downs. Mostly me vs. various children, but also between the children. Odd since they usually get along very well. It hasn't been very cold here, but lots of gray, damp and muddy days. I had a lot on my plate outside of homeschool and parenting responsibilities and it seemed some new complication came up every week. I didn't take enough time for breaks or to be alone, and I'll try not to make that mistake again.
We did have a lot of success with our Brave Writer Arrow Guide for Wild Robot. We listened to it on Audible and the kids loved the story. They immediately asked for the sequel when we finished. Laurel totally understands the purpose of copywork and the practice is helping her. Marko not so much, but then again, these lessons are for grades 3-5 so I don't expect him to be able to do all of it. I tested Laurel and Marko using my Wilson Reading System materials from waaaay back and decided Marko needed a little phonics instruction. The spelling and grammar lessons included with the Arrow Guide are sufficient for Laurel's needs. We keep plugging away at math in Khan Academy. Instead of requiring that they complete a certain number of lessons, I set a timer and sit next to them until it goes off. I was sort of frustrated that they couldn't do more of this on their own, but it's actually been a nice opportunity to sit and cuddle with each of them 1:1. "Couch school!" they call it.

It's cookie season for Girl Scouts and somehow ended up with all the inventory for our troop! I'm using a lot of Girl Scout badges and activities for Laurel's homeschool. She is highly motivated by earning badges. My main focus, however, is still protecting a lot of time for unstructured free play or reading. We went to the playground last week after Laurel's horse riding lesson. By chance another family stopped by and even though it was 30 degrees, the kids all played together for an hour and a half. It reminded me of how quickly kids become friends at a campground when you are traveling. I keep having to learn this lesson, but if I prioritize play, exercise, and fresh air, then it becomes so much easier to accomplish the sit-down academic tasks. 

Snow Day

"...There is no bill to be paid, only union to be made...." - This line is from the Richard Rohr daily meditation email and references a certain Christian view of salvation, but it keeps running through my head as a personal slogan as we settle into this homeschooling life. When I was a teacher in a school, the learning was very transactional. Not that I expected to be repaid by my students, but we operated on the principle that I would say and do certain things and they would learn and grow in predictable ways. Inputs. Outputs. At home, I have had to lean into the reality that my children do not owe me anything as learners, nor are they firmly stuck in the position of learner. We are all learners. We are all teachers. We do best when we come together. I'm not figuring out world peace over here; it's just fractions for days. But a cozy approach, tucked under a blanket on the couch, high-fives after every correct answer. Tea for me, always. Low cortisol all around. Trusting that when she says enough, it's enough.

Friday Free Write

Every Friday, we have been doing a free write, with varying degrees of success. I ask the kids to write what they want or in response to a prompt for 8 minutes. After 8 minutes, I ask if they want to share. If they do, I listen and compliment anything I liked. If they don't, I fold it up and put it into an envelope. After 8 weeks, I will open up their envelope, ask them to reread their work and choose a piece to revise. Hopefully they will have something worth revising out of those 8 pieces. (Last week, Marko was delighted with his work of copying the word "the" over and over again for 8 minutes, so this is requiring a little bit of faith from me.) I got this process from Julie at Brave Writer, who also advises parents to do activities along with their children. It's a good way to gauge how appropriate (or difficult or ridiculous or scary or tedious or boring) the task may be, and also follows that whole children learn what they live approach. If you don't want your children to swear, don't swear. Ahem.

In the spirit of doing what I'm asking my children to do, I'm sharing this poem that I wrote during free write time (and then revised) and I will tell you it is taking an unexpected amount of courage to hit Publish. But doing this exercise myself is really helping me to anticipate and plan for reasons that my kids might have trouble with writing and editing. This was the only thing I wrote in weeks and weeks that I felt even had the potential to be shared. This is reminding me that a lot of what my kids pull out of their envelopes will be trash and that's fine and hopefully there's something in there they are excited to fix up and expand upon.



Sit With It

Sit with uncertainty, sit with your sadness.
Sit with your neighbor while she tells you all of the messy details you didn't want to know.
Sit with your bread while it crackles, just out of the oven.
Sit, especially on the Sabbath, while the laundry taunts you.
Sit with your daughter while she painstakingly pens her letter.
It's not how you would do it, but sit with that idea and wait for it to pass,
And compliment her cursive, and smile at her.

Sit under a a tree, on a cold mossy boulder, a park bench with a dusting of snow.
Sit with your coffee while it's hot, instead of migrating it from room to room and in and out of the microwave a half dozen times before noon.
Sit with your son, while he sobs in your lap, for reasons you can't untangle.
You don't need to fix it right now, or maybe the sitting will do the work.

Sit for one extra minute at the end of dinner, to see who else lingers,
Who has a last thought they need to say out loud, now that bellies are full.
Let the sitting be enough, as it is. It may fix something, but then, it may not.
Either way, you can still enjoy the feeling of your ankles curled around each other against the chair leg,
And the assuasive liberation of not doing a thing.