Grocery shopping, Ducking at the yards arme and The Waltons

It’s been so long since I left the house, that when I had to drop the car off at the shop, Jim asked if I still remembered how to drive. We’ve been doing the social distancing maybe a little too successfully around here, because I had no idea how bad it was out there. Had to venture out to Costco today because I stocked up for two months in January and it was time to fatten the coffers or start hunting gophers and possums. Costco had a line down one side of the building and across a little street, but they were super organized and everyone was quiet and efficient. Walmart was a bit more like the jungle. San Diego passed a new ordinance requiring/strongly suggesting masks and so with all of the home-rigged masks there was a strong Mad Max vibe going on. At one point I backed up to let a man pass, and a lady started yelling at me because I’d violated her six foot space. I don’t handle yelling well so I’m happy to be back at home and have no plans to venture back out anytime soon. Pro tip though: If you’re having a hard time getting enough food for your large family with all of the “limit 1” restrictions, try a Business Costco. They don’t have any toys, or clothes or anything because they cater to restaurants, but your regular Costco membership still works and you can get things like a 50lb bag of flour for $17, a 40lb box of chicken for $38 and 50lbs of potatoes for $10 (you can also buy peanut butter, yogurt and pickles by the bucket, but I’m not to that level yet.) Bonus, no one will judge you for your full cart.

Over here in Chateau Ramsey, spring has come, the birds are chirping, kids are happy, healthy and sleeping better than they have in months. San Diego is experiencing it’s .2 seconds of lush greenness. I’ve been loving this slower pace of life so much, I spent a day consciously videoing little snippets so I could remember this stage of life. (although I can’t even remember which day it was…Tuesday? or maybe Wednesday? I’m not sure.) The kids and I made it into a Walton’s-style montage (see video at the bottom). Man-made calendars have ceased to exist for me, but I do know we’re due for a super moon (pink edition) in four days and that it’s supposed to rain two inches next week. Give me another month of quarantine and I will be wearing homemade clothes, dancing in the moonlight and canceling our internet service.

I’m spending my extra time at home editing my nanowrimo novel and writing a book for my middle boys. They love Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so I’m trying my hand at a historical version of it in hopes it will lure them into reading more. I’m starting with Columbus since that’s what CC will be starting with next year for Cycle 3. In reading through some original documents I found this list of punishments listed by the Santa Maria’s Marshall:

“The Marshall is to punish offenders and to see justice executed according to directions; as ducking at the yards arme, haling under the keel, bound to the capsterne or maine mast with a bucket of shot about his neck, or setting in the bilbowes.” 

It took me awhile to figure out that “ducking at the yards arme” meant “tying you to the front of the ship and letting you get dunked as the ship goes up and down through the waves”. And that was a mild punishment compared to the “haling" under the keel”.

So there’s your random trivia for the day. I’m off to feed my pet sourdough (we named it “Sandy”) and contemplate how grateful I am public officials haven’t implemented 15th century punishments for corona-violations.

Teaching Kids How To Learn

Sometimes I feel like Wendy with the lost boys around here, but it doesn’t really matter how you teach kids to learn things on their own as long as it gets done. If you’ve hung around Classical education circles at all, then you’ve read or heard about Dorothy Sawyer's essay titled “The Lost Tools Of Learning”.  (it’s a quick read and I highly recommend it). I’ll admit, I read and ingested the information while my kids were still in diapers and it seemed like a laughably far off abstract goal, but a worthy one?

Then I had one boy after the other who struggled with writing, reading and everything in between...basically poster children for those who do NOT do Classical education. My personality gravitates more naturally to the Charlotte Mason school of thought (and I still like it in theory and intuitively teach that way), but I was too unstructured of a mom to use it well. Classical Conversations is where we ended up, which is like the McDonald’s of the Classical education world. Franchised and systematized. Not going to lie though, it’s been a struggle. Nothing about homeschooling has come easy, last year Charlie memory mastered for the first time and it was through blood, sweat and tears. I googled ways to make things stick, I sat with him for hours, we tried all of the tricks. Over the years I’ve read enough books to fill a library on how to utilize working memory, how to work with kids with dyslexia, apraxia, auditory processing disorder, ADHD etc. One of these days maybe I’ll write my own curriculum with all of the things I’ve picked up from a hundred therapists, books and research, but for now… if anyone feels like they try to explain a concept to their child a dozen times and it’s not sticking, or if you’re in CC and have a kid who is struggling to memorize their grammar work, here are a few things that work around here. 

1. Flashcards with stick figures and pictures. This was the game changer last year. Last year I had to sit down and figure out where all of the holes and struggles were and then make up silly mnemonics and draw them onto flashcards or white boards. The three rules are: It has to be colorful. It has to be silly/funny. It has to be IN and ON the words themselves and not above it or beside it (i.e. “The Progressive Era” gets turned into a car with a giant ear riding on it). 

2. Laminate things that need to be memorized. Homeschooling moms are like Monica Gellar when it comes to laminators. We will laminate anything. We love laminating. It’s more satisfying than picking dried glue off your hands. Add some wine and a few friends and it’s my ideal party. Laminating memory work was the game changer this year. I let Charlie take it outside, on a skateboard,  in the mud, in the shower or wherever else. Since he’s an active boy, this is really what made the difference this year. But since he already learned how to memorize last year, it was a lot easier this year.

3. Cross the mid line. With younger kids you can do this with hand motions. With older kids, you either have to sit down with them and learn a bunch of Fortnite dance moves, or do those hand slappy things…  or bribe them. Whatever the case, taking a drink of water then breaking memory work into moves that cross the mid line really works. And don’t ask me why the water thing is really important, but it’s a scientific thing. 

I’m so proud of Charlie because while I dragged him through memorizing last year, this year he took ownership of it and did it himself. I remember when Jamie finally figured out how to memorize things and it’s almost better than the moment a kid is truly potty trained...almost.  

It gives me hope for Robbie and Will even though we’re still in the trenches. 

Debate Tournaments and Watermelon Seeds

You know you’re getting old when a speech and debate tournament looks like this to you.

When I was a teenager, my cousins did speech and debate, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. They might as well have been James Bond. Now, with my own teenager doing speech and debate, it looks like somebody released a 354 member cast of Spy Kids. I thought the last three days were going to be relaxing…maybe get some writing done, read a book, get some coffee. Nope. It was non stop judging, filling out judging sheets, walking to the next place to judge, freezing, eating, more walking, more judging, more freezing (clearly I didn’t pack well for the yo-yo freeze/heat cycle that is a CA spring). I don’t really enjoy judging, because a) I don’t really know what I’m doing, b) there are some “technically correct” speaking tips/tricks that are super distracting to me, but apparently everyone else thinks they’re the bees knees, c) I really hate giving extremely subjective criticism to sweet kids who have clearly worked super hard. When you judge a round you get to put a little sticker on a giant board as a way to publicly shame you into doing your allotted work. But no judgment, it helps make the tournament work. I of course totally forgot to put my stickers up.

Jim held down the fort while I was gone. I got home to Will very worriedly jabbering about giant killer watermelons. Jim explained later: Will saw him eat watermelon with seeds still in it and was so worried his daddy was going to grow a watermelon inside him, he had been watching for warning signs with a wary sense of impending doom. The only way Jim could assuage his fears was to tell him that because he didn’t eat any dirt there was no way for the watermelon to grow. Crisis averted. Parenting win.

The Spark Of Life

We dissected sheep hearts in class today. When I led this same dissection lab two years ago, I studied and poured over youtube videos and diagrams. This year a Navy nurse friend of mine led the presentation and dissection which made me realize I knew absolutely nothing. I was like a child reciting ABC’s, “Right Atrium, Right ventricle…”. I would have her back again tomorrow just so I could listen to her talk…about anything medical related. It was like having a real live“explain it like I’m five” person.

It sent me down a research spiral. Did you know that the heart of a baby fetus starts beating independent of the brain? I knew the heart always had its own electrical muscle, but I always assumed it went hand in hand with brain development inside the womb. They studied mice fetus hearts to see if they could break down exactly when that first “Spark of life” happens (pun intended?). They thought they had it figured out, but then surprise.

Check it out:

"We were surprised to find that calcium activity preceded the assembly of the machinery that does the contraction. You could imagine that the contraction machinery would have been in place first, waiting for the calcium signal to arrive, but in fact it was the other way around," said Shankar Srinivas, a professor of developmental biology at the University of Oxford, who co-led the study.

Hmmm… it’s almost like there really is a divine spark.

The calcium waves start off haphazardly in cells far apart, like lost fireflies. But then quickly—within a couple of hours—they come together to pulse in synchrony at a point when the beating becomes visible for the first time. Researchers want to find out how this switch occurs to be able to make functional heart tissue in the lab and to better understand heart disease.

3 Ways To Spark Your Kid's Imagination

I actually shouldn’t be writing about this, I should be reading about this. Somewhere in my desire to not raise kids as legalistically as I was, we developed an electronics addiction in this house. I need a step by step AA level-esque game plan to kick the habit that doesn’t include never using electronics, and isn’t full of inspirational quotes. I need it to be practical and pragmatic. Does it exist?

In the meantime, this is what works thus far.

1. Put them to work. Trying to lure my children off of electronics never works. All of their toys are boring, there’s nothing to do and it feels like they sort of wade through life waiting for the next opportunity to get on electronics…even if that’s five days away. But if I assign mopping the floor, scrubbing the toilet and raking leaves in the backyard, they all do their jobs and then magically find plenty of things with which to entertain themselves.

2. Play by yourself. Adults don’t usually sit on the floor in a batman mask and start building a giant zoo out of magnatiles and play animals. It’s like catnip. (see previous post on how I get my children to eat their vegetables.) The same mom radar that allows babies to sense when a parent is trying to lay them down in a crib, is still alive and kicking at older ages. If you build it, they will come. Good luck trying to sneak away.

3. Turn off the router. Preferably have your husband turn off the router remotely from an app for the best Deus Ex Machina effect. If they start to read the instruction manual for the router, crawl under the house to see if the Cat5 cable is still intact, and hypothesize with each other on ways to fix the internet, then at least they’re getting language arts, PE and Socratic discussions done.

I wish these were my kids, but it will never be that green here. Ahem.

Cranky children, French intensive gardening in the dark, and the moon

When I imagined having children, I was (am) naturally pessimistic enough to skip over the standard issue dreams of straight A students, star athletes and whatever else one hopes for when you see two lines on a pregnancy test. I did maintain a few visions perhaps of chubby, rosy cheeked toddlers with striped shirts, overalls and blonde curls (which coincidentally I got), but for the most part I’m hard to surprise.

So I wouldn’t say I was surprised by any of my children’s behavior today, but it did remind me that even though I may have passed the diapers and sleepless nights stage of parenting, there are plenty of new stages. Every time someone stops me at the grocery store and tells me to savor these moments because they go quickly, I want to stop and hug them for being one of the few people left who haven’t read the articles on Facebook and aren’t afraid to tell mothers that. I’ve considered passing out thank you notes to anyone who tells me I’ve got my hands full, or that I’m blessed…or cursed…. or that my child just ran over their foot with a cart, because I’m glad they’re not scared to say it (even though I’m somewhat scared of strangers). I like to live in a world where people notice children…. sometimes.

• One of my children ripped a reading book and evoked the berserker death glare that I’m sure is the fault of some Scandinavian grandfather nine generations back.

• One of my children didn’t earn his gummy bear in math, and proceeded to sneak the whole bag into the car where he was caught and burst into guilty tears and prostrations of penitence.

• One of my children is at camp this week and I miss him. He’s currently my only perfect child.

• All of my remaining children wouldn’t wake up today which made me think they might all have the Corona virus since early risings have been a lifetime achievement for all of them. They were so grumpy. I meant to check if the moon is waxing or waning although I’m not sure which one causes crazy behavior.

Speaking of the moon… I wasn’t into the whole moon thing until I couldn’t get a hospital room when the 3rd child was born and the nurses calmly explained it was because of the full moon. Now I blame almost everything on the moon. Your keys were found in the knife drawer? Can’t remember what a passive subjunctive verb is? A new pack of socks is mysteriously missing? All definitely caused by the moon. I’m only half joking, I read this study a few years ago that just solidified for me that all things can be blamed on the moon (or maybe just sleep patterns, I dunno).

We found that around full moon, electroencephalogram (EEG) delta activity during NREM sleep, an indicator of deep sleep, decreased by 30%, time to fall asleep increased by 5 min, and EEG-assessed total sleep duration was reduced by 20 min. These changes were associated with a decrease in subjective sleep quality and diminished endogenous melatonin levels. This is the first reliable evidence that a lunar rhythm can modulate sleep structure in humans when measured under the highly controlled conditions of a circadian laboratory study protocol without time cues.

One of my other New Year’s goals was to spend more time doing physical things and not abstract things, so when I got home I promptly went out to the backyard and worked on digging my garden (after I nearly put everyone in a worse mood with my own bad mood). I don’t think I’m cut out for gardening, but I like it so I’m going to stick to it even if it takes me months to dig up a 10’x10’ square of dirt. I hate jumping on the shovel and then hitting something so solid I either need to see a chiropractor or it is the chiropractor. I think there may be some leftover cement underground in my backyard… or maybe an old septic tank… or maybe a coffin. Who knows, but it’s square, and large and cement, and like I said, there’s nothing wrong with my imagination. I blame the moon.

Hair Extensions and Object Complement Nouns

I had the hair-brained idea to get extensions (literally I guess). Sometimes I worry my thought process runs on a permanent slippery slope fallacy.  I start out thinking about homemade kefir and somehow end up eating store bought ice cream. In my head the transition is always seamlessly logical.  I barely even notice going from kefir recipes, to raw milk sources, to researching ice cream makers on Amazon to settling for Trader Joe's coconut milk ice cream, to "Oh, well Walmart is closer and I'll buy the stuff with real cream and sugar" to "oh hey, sale on the store brand."  Ho hum. 

Some people are born with the ability to know what's socially acceptable and some people have to make themselves a spreadsheet and flowchart to know whether or not it's ok to shave your legs...but not your arms.  Or fake fingernails are ok, but not fake fingers. Push-up bras are fine, but fake boobs are suspect. For whatever reason, it's perfectly acceptable to color your hair, but not add fake hair. As someone with naturally curly hair, this has never really kept me up at night until recently when I was diagnosed with a subset of health conditions that has resulted in less than stellar locks. 

So I did what any normal person does and went straight to Amazon, then coerced a sister into installing my newly purchased 100% Human Hair Remy locks.  After I had an ethical crisis imagining some sort of Gift Of The Magi situation,  I pictured myself sauntering around looking like this. 

Instead I ended up more looking like this: 

Pros: I had more hair than Ariel, Elsa and Rapunzel put together (Ok, maybe not Rapunzel).  It braided beautifully, went up in a messy bun like I was born to be a nonchalant movie star with over-sized sunglasses, and my kids kept staring at me and backing away slowly.   

Cons: It clumped up and wouldn't blend with my regular hair, itched terribly, and I couldn't sleep. For those who don't like Jamberry or other sticker nails because of the way it feels like wearing a maxi pad on your finger... skip hair extensions altogether because that's exactly what it felt like, but on your head. 

Also, note to self: If the price is too good to be true, it will probably melt like green plastic army men. 

I stubbornly stuck with it though. My fake clumpy hair extensions were fabulous. I discovered a newfound appreciation for runway models, people with naturally long/heavy hair, and anyone else who has to endure weirdness in the name of aesthetics. I was trying to teach my 9yr old the difference between a direct object and an object complement noun and after the third time picking long stray hairs off his face, he said "Mom, I can't even take you seriously right now.".  Fair enough.  

So after a day of Jordan Petersoning all of my life's goals and taking a good hard look at my narcissistic tendencies, the hair extensions went back in the box and I resumed the normal pinned up and glasses look I've been sporting for years. It's fine. Better this way. On Mondays I teach a bunch of cute little preschoolers/kindergartners, and on Wednesdays I teach a bunch of equally cute but rather tall jr. highers, so channeling my inner Professor McGonagall instead of Trelawney is probably the better way to go. 

Next I plan to shave my head and wear a different wig for every day of the week (I kid, I kid...maybe).  

Oh, and if you're in the same boat with the whole teaching nouns thing.  And "No No D.O (direct object), label verb transitive" is a common refrain in your house. You might also try "Replace? Yes. Amen, label O.C.N. (object complement noun)" or "Describe? Yes. Hooray, label O.C.A. (object complement adjective)".