2021

Worst year ever. That is all.

Holiday Time

It's been a pretty chill December so far. Laurel and I read a Christmas Carol and finished her unit on the Industrial Revolution (2 thumbs down to child labor and debtor's prison, says Laurel). We watched the Muppet version, and I wanted to watch some other ones, but my kids are so freaked out about ghosts! They even considered the Muppet version to be too scary. We discussed the book in our Aunt Niece Book Club, which meets once a month on zoom, and one of the highlights of the month. Thank you so much to my aunts for showing up every month for it, since like April 2020. 

We have been doing lots of hiking and playing outside with our homeschool friends. I love the fact that we can be outside during the day when the sun is out, especially on these extremely short days. 

We are reading Heartwood Hotel for Brave Writer. So far, it's a really sweet novel and Max is totally into it. Marko stole my kindle and read the whole thing in one sitting, which he is not supposed to do. It's supposed to be a read aloud, where you discuss it along the way and do things like Copywork and little writing projects based on what you just read. Oh well. He is listening along again as I read it aloud to Max at breakfast time.

Marko is hyper focused on Minecraft. He starts a video call almost every day and various friends join in. Some of the play gets a little on the murderous side (!) but it seems to be a good way for the kids to practice working out conflict. He has a google doc where he logs all of his research on ways to build things and other cheats, which he shares with the other kids. I like that they all look forward to connecting at the end of the day and it kind of reminds me of daily happy hours with friends when we were in our twenties.

Laurel is working on a gingerbread house. The first iteration experienced a catastrophic collapse. She enlisted M's help on a second one, and they are busily measuring angles and cutting out a new template. On Brave Writer this month, the focus was on project time and it's so cool to witness Laurel's project unfolding. In the beginning it was all recipe research, and whimsical sketches. Actually tackling the baking and assembly herself was pretty stress inducing, but she talked herself off a few emotional ledges. There are crumbs everywhere, royal icing everywhere, sketches and crumpled cardboard, and baking pans and wet rags. It's a hot mess down there. 

We have some shopping to finish up and will be smoking a turkey later this week to take to my parents' house. My brother and Laurel are working on a "Christmas Light Bingo" driving tour that we will all do sometime on Christmas Eve. 

I love how relaxed our schedule is these days. I don't miss being busy at all.

Max is 6!

 He's still as cuddly as ever, so don't worry. I'm not sure he'll outgrow that. I think for his whole life he's going to be one of those people who will give you a hug when you need one.

He seems to have taught himself to read, the decoding part anyway. He still loves being read to, and we are continuing our daily routine of "Max reads 5 books" which means he hears books from each of us and reads to one of us each day. We bought him the new Cat Kid Comic Club for his birthday and also got him a gift card to the bookstore, which he can't wait to use. I'm not sure about his spelling and handwriting. He can write notes and add things to our to do list, but he really balks any sort of writing assignment. I didn't even submit paperwork on him because school is not compulsory until the school year after they turn 6. 

He is definitely the least schooled of any of the kids, so it's kind of interesting to see what skills and learning practices he develops on his own. He's very intuitive about numbers and computation, and works out a lot of problems in his head. He works on Khan Academy on his own sometimes. He is an enthusiastic participant in Poetry Teatime.... reading and sometimes even writing a poem, to share with everyone. He enjoyed his homeschool co-op classes in the fall, and was able to participate appropriately whether they were on zoom or in person.  I don't have any solid assessment data points to know that he is 'on the right track' but I also feel super confident that he's doing fine. Maybe that is just part of the homeschool journey, you start to trust your intuition more?

He loves playing Minecraft with the older kids, pretty much any board game with Marko, riding his bike, hiking and running around in the woods with friends, and cooking. 

His bedtime routine is to take a melatonin gummy, brush his teeth, and listen to a story or snuggle in his bed with either M or me. He's almost always awake by 6:30, and eats a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast every day. He has not lost any teeth yet. 

I am such a different kind of parent to him at 6, than I was to Laurel when she was 6. I ponder this a lot, but I wonder how it will turn out in the end.