Soft Launch on a New School Year

"School" starts July 1 for us, and by start, it means we file some papers with our local district and begin logging our activities. Max is joining the official roster this year as he is now at the age where school is compulsory. Our homeschool style has largely become to follow interests, with lots of backwards documenting on my part, and a healthy sprinkle of word study and arithmetic to fill in gaps and promote strong literacy and math skills for everybody.

Max and Marko just finished the Phantom Tollbooth with M and loved taking the quizzes on the SparkNotes website. Max is working on math in Khan Academy, reading lots of Cat Kid and Dogman and learning to ride his bicycle safely in a group and on the street. He is really into making paper airplanes and does a lot of age-appropriate creative writing....lists and plans and notes to us. As long as he keeps writing on his own and shows improvement with spelling and handwriting, I will not do any formal curriculum in that subject. 

Marko is at tree camp this week and doing lots of interesting things like working in the tree nursery and setting bait on wildlife cameras. He reports that they have to write things down in a little notebook they were give, so I'm hoping that will come home and I can do some additional writing with him about that experience. He's getting a lot better at swimming in deep water and diving and holding his breath. Organizing gaming time with his friends, both virtually and IRL, is a priority for him. He reads a lot. Of all the kids, he is the least enthusiastic about anything school-ish, but I'm finding if I observe him, I can see lots of ways that he is developing math and vocabulary skills. He's also very intuitive about geography.

Laurel is starting 7th grade and working on her sixth grade math book to keep preparing for pre-algebra and higher level math. When she feels like she is ready, we will enroll her in some kind of accredited algebra class. This might not be for six months or a year. She writes a lot for fun, and enjoys meeting monthly with her aunts in a virtual book club. She is currently working on building a list of literature to read through with them this year. We will use some Brave Writer Arrow guides as well as Core Knowledge Series assignments and prompts, and maybe some Spark Notes. Some of the titles I'm excited about include Atlas of the Heart, The Nerviest Girl in the World and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She started riding horses again and is working on jumping at a canter. 

M is ramping up at a new job, doing a ton of house painting and other home maintenance things, and learning to build circuits from scratch. I'm working on a Coursera course on UX Design, and recently completed my safety certificate in flat water boating for Girl Scouts. Now I can take the scouts out on a lake in kayaks or paddle boards without having to hire a guide. 

As a family, we're working on planning together more. As the kids get older it's easy to just go off in a million different directions and get busier and busier without really having a purpose behind our activities. FOMO is a strong force, and there are many things competing for your attention these days. We know that having rest days built in and lots of "margins" between social situations is key for our health and happiness. "Lovingly holding each other accountable" has become a catch phrase. Writing things down a marker board helps us to 1) set a reasonable number of action items in a day and 2) finish what we started out intending to do. 

What are you doing out there anyway?

What are you doing out there anyway?

Sometimes, I just want to exchange pleasantries with a stranger at a gas station pump

Browse the local authors shelf at a library I’ll never go into again

Collect acorns that look so different from the ones on my street, but will sprout into magnificent oak trees nonetheless

Watch a sunrise over a different urban roofline

Order beignets instead of crullers

This time, we couldn't stop staring at the bridges

Marveling at how many there are, in every direction, crossing ravines and valleys, bays and marshes

Wondering if they were new or just recently painted

Holding a collective breath as we crossed, and they held fast every time,

Safe passage through our curiosity

Home looks different through traveler’s eyes

That scent will hit you when you turn the key and open the door for the first time in a week, a month, a year.

But pay close attention, because it only stands out for a few short minutes.

You can see your life as a stranger would, which mostly ignites gratitude, but may also spur you to finally patch that crack in the back stoop, move the chair to a better spot by the window, exchange pleasantries with a neighbor you’ve known for a decade at the gas station down the block. Bask in familiarity. Appreciate that the market has your favorite brand of milk. Enjoy the incremental change of a sunset from the same spot each evening.

So what am I doing out there anyway? Is it for the adventure or the homecoming?

A Year of Experimentation and Recovery

2021-2022 school year was pretty wild. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and repeating, "You are on time for whatever the universe has in store for you." Sometimes it felt like we were standing still, stuck in a weird loop, Groundhog Day-style. Other times it felt like life was changing way too fast, and that all the stuff that happened last summer was just a dream. 

We gave the kids a huge amount of free time and autonomy this year, with mixed results. Everybody learned and grew enough, and I am entirely unworried about that aspect. They also made a lot of friends, which was probably one of our biggest goals. Managing social time continues to be a challenge with the pandemic. I appreciated the very clear communication that our homeschool groups have around this issue. People have varying degrees of risk tolerance and everyone seems really respectful of this. The culture is to be very transparent about your possible exposures and allow people the opportunity to give consent to the contact they want to have with you. Often times this meant gathering outside and wearing masks. I miss having people over for tacos, though. Or spontaneous visits from neighbors for a cup of coffee. Nobody stops by unannounced.

The main downside to the autonomy was a chaotic home environment. We had a lot of friction over chores and use of computer/game systems. Our kids do a lot of things together, but they are three years apart, so there are definitely differences in what they can each contribute. For instance, Max cannot reach inside the washing machine to get the clothes out without basically falling in. Laurel can use the oven safely. Marko is the most awake in the morning. He doesn't get up super early, but is extremely efficient in getting things done within a few minutes of waking. 

We have taken Rest seriously this year, leaving Sunday as a day free from work and in general giving people the option to stay home or sleep more or read in bed or whatever they feel like they need, listening to their own bodies. I have seen a big shift in M taking days off running or sleeping in or playing video games after work or whatever he needs to do to chill out instead of always pushing himself. 

I'm about to do some planning for the next school year, which will actually just sort of roll over on July 1 without much notice to anyone, because the further we sink into this home education thing the less we pay attention to things like "school year" or "grade level." 

Natural Ebbing

Monday afternoon and the house is silent, but for the ticking clock and the periodic swishing of paper pages. We went out today, to drop off recycling and tidy some things in the camper, a quick stop at the grocery store. We went to the rock climbing gym to boulder, and finally the library. The rain has been falling steadily since mid-morning, with an occasional snow shower mixed in. Even though we did errands by car and not on foot, just the dashing from the curb to the door was enough to soak us through, and now everyone wants to snuggle up and dive into their stacks of fresh library books.

The fact that we can feels a bit illicit on some level. Like we are getting away with something. After many years of Powering Through, it occurred to me that I could just....not. Nothing bad happened when I took a break. Ditto for the kids. 

Snowbirds for Life

We loved our winter trip to the beach. Flying kites and hunting for seashells is better when it's not super hot. Everyone wants to go back next year. The most stressful part was getting home. We had some problems with our car and the weather was (as is typical in March) stormy. It was 75 when we left Galveston and actually started snowing on us as we pulled in to our parking spot in Pittsburgh. 

On the way home we went to the earthworks site at Poverty Point in Louisiana. This was one of the places I found online months ago when we were thinking of traveling through the area. It turned out to be a fantastic stop. The walking tour was really comprehensive and the rangers gave demonstrations and helped the kids complete Junior Ranger badges. The museum had tons of interesting displays as there were a lot of spear tips and pottery at the site. Since then, I've discovered that there are other mounds/earthworks in Ohio, and I want to plan a trip to look at them. The archeological discoveries at these sites are always evolving and I love learning how the story of the human history of our continent is changing. 

Since we've been home, a lot has come up about what our next steps should be. We signed up for a homeschool co-op this spring, so we are here for the time being, but what should we do after that? 

To the Edge of America

Back in early summer, when our road trip was the Best Thing Ever, M and I started looking at places in Florida to visit over the winter. We love being home for the holidays but winter always gets a little old by February. You have to book campsites far in advance, but we were ready to commit to more time on the road. Things got turned upside down a few weeks later and we spent the next six months recovering from the medical, mental and financial upheaval. But then, things kind of just went...back to normal? And since we have the homeschooling, remote work and camper all lined up, it seems silly to not take advantage. Florida was booked up, so we headed to Mississippi. It's warm and there are miles of white sand beaches, great birding, delicious seafood, carnival parades and really cheap camping. It's called the Secret Coast here because this is where the pirates hid all the treasure. Hurricanes have flattened a good number of towns on the Gulf Coast, and the sea is creeping ever higher. The town has optimistically rebuilt their park and put in a massive wave pool to attract visitors, but the road that runs along the coast is falling down in places. Many, many empty concrete pads hold spaces in between shiny new houses raised on 10 foot pilings. Rising sea levels are acutely felt here. Tomorrow's forecast includes a warning about coastal flooding. The tide will be a foot higher than usual and some roads will be underwater. The weatherman from the New Orleans station didn't bother to say which ones, he just laughed and said if you are in Waveland or Biloxi you'll know which ones to avoid. I'm not sure this park will be here in twenty years.

But for now, it's just high enough for us. We drove 1,100 miles in 2 1/2 days. It was really cold when we left so we didn't even dewinterize the camper until we got here.

Now we are playing outside happily for many hours, reading a Dart book, looking for pirate treasure, bird watching, drawing times tables in the sand, holding poetry teatime and learning about carnival season on the Gulf Coast. 

When the Earth Crumbles Beneath Your Feet

Yesterday morning when I got up, I heard a ton of sirens passing in front of my house. The roads looked very icy, so at first I assumed car crash and went about my business. But then there were just too many of them to be that. My neighbors were posting on Facebook about weird noises and a strong natural gas odor. Then somebody said a bridge over a creek collapsed and I was trying to think of where that could be. When I saw the first picture, I actually jumped up and ran around the house because I was so shocked at the image of pieces of Forbes Avenue laying in the ravine of Frick Park. True, the bridge does cross a creek, but it's at least a hundred feet high and probably 500 feet across! When you walk across it, you are looking down at the tops of the tallest sycamore trees. We more often are looking at from below, because the trail passes underneath. My kids liked to scamper up the steep hillsides and tag the underside of it. Yeah, it was rusty, but what isn't in Pittsburgh? The image was horrifying because so many of my neighbors and friends and kids I know travel on that bridge. During a normal rush hour, cars would be backed up at the light across the whole span. A lot of school buses pass through that intersection. Thankfully the winter weather + Covid closures kept a lot of people home and only a few cars and one bus fell down in the collapse. 

I was also briefly panicking because M was in the park, as he often is at that time, running with his friends before work. There is no way someone could make a complete recovery from multiple organ failure just to get crushed by a bridge in his neighborhood park. Right? RIGHT?? Anyway, he was fine, but had to take the long way back to our house, because police were closing everything off, due to the natural gas gushing out of the pipeline. 

Our street was closed all day while they figured out what to do, which I guess is put up some Jersey barriers and hang a few detour signs. Car and bus and bicycle traffic is going to be really negatively impacted, as this was a major four lane road in and out of my neighborhood, plus connecting all the suburban commuter routes from the neighboring boroughs. The bridge fell directly onto the main path that goes through the whole park. 

There were helicopters buzzing overhead all day and night, and it made national news, mainly because the President was already on his way to make a speech about infrastructure. But I imagine it will quickly fade from everyone's minds, except those of us who live here and will have to look at this pile of rubble for a long time, and be reminded of our collective priorities and fragility.

Marko is nine!

Wow, we have big kids in our house. Marko turned 9 years old today and I love how self-sufficient he is with many things. He has a really sweet personality and is thoughtful about including others and making sure everyone is having fun. His best quality is just always being so true to himself and knowing who he is. He spends a lot of time playing with Max these days, but also has made some good friends in the homeschooling community. He loves playing Minecraft, doing art projects, building with Lego, reading about Greek and Norse myths, fart jokes, and being cuddled at night before falling asleep. For this next year, I hope for him to continue to meet new friends and find things he is passionate about. 

January Homeschool

 Snow day! It snowed a ton on Sunday night so the kids have been digging snow forts and sled riding nonstop. The city actually closed all the schools today so our neighbors can even join in on the fun.

For January, I had a few things I wanted to prioritize. The first thing was to somehow connect over activities we could all do together. I downloaded a two week calendar of prompts from a blog called the Natural Learner and invited M and the kids to do them with me every morning. They were pretty simple little things for the most part. One day we painted name art using masking tape. Another day we each came up with a question that we would like to be asked about ourselves. My favorite activity was creating scratch n sniff art with salt and essential oils. There were additional prompts for the adults to pay focused attention to the kids and add more physical contact, if the kids desired it. For example, holding hands when you walk, or snuggling on the couch while reading. 

The second thing I wanted to kick off was project time, or self directed learning time. It's not that my kids never do projects they come up with on their own...they actually have a lot of things going on at any given time, and M and I are also very self-directed with our projects and how we learn to do them. However, it didn't feel very integrated with our homeschooling. The kids often talk about the workbook or textbook or copywork type things we do as being more recognizable as learning experiences, even though building a circuit from scratch or programming their Spheros to navigate an obstacle course are just as good, if not better. The projects were lumped in with "fun" stuff that could be done after you did a workbook page of math. My hope was to formalize our project time by dedicating a certain amount of time where they could work on stuff and I could be available to help them if they needed it. I also wanted to honor and respect the work they were doing by creating some kind of routine check in where they could talk about their work. So far this month, we have done a good job of setting aside specific time to work on projects. I am doing a good job of working on my own projects and being more transparent with my process behind them. M already serves as an excellent example of a life-long learner. He is never without a project, actually. Currently, he's trying to build a synthesizer. (From scratch!) The trials and errors are pretty endless, but he persists. 

We are also spending a ton of time playing outside with friends, especially when there is snow. Disney+ is giving us lots of viewing material for the times we want to cozy up. 

Laurel and I just finished reading a graphic novel version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the new Rick Riordan book, Daughter of the Deep, which draws heavily on cultural references from Jules Verne. We had our monthly book chat with her aunts. 

I'm going to do a reading assessment on a homeschooling friend in a few days, so I'm brushing up on my assessment skills with the kids and giving them tests this week. 

2021

Worst year ever. That is all.