We visited Malibu Creek State Park on Saturday.  I’m getting smarter about bringing both balls and shovels & pails where-ever we go, and so the kids had plenty to occupy themselves.  Actually, with her pail and shovel, DD is more of a menace to all walking.  And with two pails, she had twice the amount of rocks and pebbles to collect.

The visitors’ center had some awesome docents who eagerly pointed us in the direction of all the things the kids could touch and pick up.  We were just about to walk out when one of them asked if DD just might be old enough to understand animal tracks.  Boy, would she.  She points out the horse shoe prints in  Madeline and the Gypsies every time we read it.

We had fun looking for alligators in the river bed, throwing her first rock collection into the water rock-by-rock, and smelling different leaves.

Apparently, she wants to be more like mommy and use the porta-potty instead of the potty we brought along for her — which if you know my husband, was about as likely as a Beatles reunion tour (it’s a germ thing).  So she wildly ran around playing dodge-the-parent as she tried to get into  the porta-potty door without being caught.  Who knew that using the stinky things was a rite of passage?

We also attempted THE FAMILY PHOTO, hence the matching outfits.  If the goal was to get the kids to look cute and charming, we failed.   Here’s how we did.

So, if we don’t do any better in the near future, that may be in a Christmas card soon…assuming I get them done this year.

As we were leaving, we had to stop every twenty feet for Miss Gravel Collector USA to do her thing.

Finally, we made her get into the stroller, which made her so hopping mad (we’d hiked through her nap) that she started to bludgeon her sibling with her plastic shovel.  Turns out that DS has had enough of such behavior and — being armed with the other shovel– whacked her back a few times before all shovels were confiscated.  Was I wrong to be proud of him?

Map-reading is pretty stinkin’ important in our family.  We take it seriously.

For one thing, Gram’s a professor of Geography and Anthropology.  This is Gram.  (Sir Poopsalot was grumpy that day.)

Isn’t she cool?  We can’t disgrace her, can we?

So, for two months before we drove to Florida, we showed Little Boo on the globe where we were and where cousin N, who she was pining away for, was in Florida.

Then when we left I grabbed a 99 cent map from Target and  we marked our progress moving across the country.

You see, we want her to like maps and to understand them.

And ultimately, to find her way home.

The Alligator’s name is Hollywood.  He’s three years old.  (And yes, I should have used a flash.   I’m hoping that if I find my other camera there will be some flash photos in there.  Maybe it’s hiding with my deodorant. )

When DD was two, we bought her her first 24-piece puzzle.  But that wasn’t until I’d gone to multiple stores to find the most suitable puzzles (fruitlessly, as I was being a perfectionist) — hoping to find 14-piece puzzles, wholesome themes, etc. .

Yes, I am retentive sometimes. 

So we sat her down and did a puzzle for her.  I think to her, it was a kind of magic — all these pieces coming together to make a picture.  She’d ask us to do it over and over.

She immediately wanted to help do one.  I carefully explained how we separate the edge-pieces, how we turn the pieces face-up, bla, bla, bla.  I’m such a dork.  I SO didn’t get it.  It’s a year later.  She still doesn’t start with the edges.  She starts with the eyes…always the eyes.  I think that she’ll be doing puzzles for years before she does it the way I instructed her that day one year ago. 

I have much to learn as a parent about how kids acquire knowledge, understanding and wisdom.

Until then, I remain a dork.

My husband is reading Winnie-the-Pooh to Kate in russian while she takes her bath.

It’s a good day.

The Papa book (or Daddy book) 

Basically, this is the book that is read by the parent who isn’t home all day long.  If there’s a stay-at-home dad and the wife works outside the home, then this would be the Mommy book.   The idea works like this.  Who-ever spends the least amount of time at home–their time with the kids is often considered golden.   For ease-sake, I’m going to call this the annointed book or the Papa book, because that’s my situation. 

Reading with Papa is lifted up as a reward.  Kate would be reminded to behave well, or she might lose story time with Papa in the evening. 

And whatever book Papa is reading at that time (assuming that when the kids are older, we start moving to longer and longer books) — is to be read by no one else.  Mama won’t read that book to the kids if Papa is out of town.  And when you go on vacation, this is the first thing put in the suitcase.  Part of the idea here is to create bonding around books and between fathers and children and books.  Boys will see that reading is masculine.   Also, it sets aside special structured time in the evenings with Papa.

Ginger talks about this well at her post .

I’d also like to talk about the gems that I took away with me from the Carole Joy Seid Seminar on a Literature Based Education.

Reading to children doesn’t stop when the kids can read for themselves.  

I think as busy people, this is a mistake we make.  We read to the kids until they can read for themselves and then stop.  After all, we’ve done our job. 

Family story time can continue on and on and this way there are books that unite a family together  and around which a family has shared history.  I remember first reading about families that did this in the 1990’s.  I thought it was so cool.  A family was reading through one of Charles Dickens books together in the evenings.  It seems a bit like having your own multi-age reading group.  I remember thinking that if I could “read ” through the classics while snuggling on a couch with family, that would be much more fun [than trying to cram it in for some high school requirement].

And what great memories!  I suppose a family could do it with audiobooks, but somehow the memory of hearing your dad or your mom read to you from the greats just seems like a warm-blanket memory.  When I was a junior in college, my mom and I  joined her cousin (A.C.) and A.C’s sister (B) in Pagosa Springs, Colorado just after Christmas.  One night, in front of the fireplace,  A.C. read us her favorite poems from Sharon Olds’ The Gold Cell .  I was enthralled.  After I graduated and had a regular paycheck, I went to Vroman’s Bookstore and purchased the same volume.  It is still on my bookshelf, in the poetry section.  And I still remember which was her most favorite poem from the book.  I wonder if I would have a poetry section if it wasn’t for that snowy vacation and reading books aloud in front of the fireplace.

On Memorial Day, we headed out to Travel Town in Griffith Park.  I don’t think I’d been there since grade school.  Travel Town, as I remembered it, was  a place with old train cars fully furnished in their glory.  I remember climbing into cars as a kid that had velvet upholstery and polished wood walls, like the train cars that you see in old westerns, and imagining myself in long skirts and a bustle.  It turns out that almost all of the cars are closed and locked now except on the second Saturday of the month, when they open them up for tours.  I guess there’s been too much vandalism.  What a shame.

This is Kate’s favorite book right now, hence the field trip.  Kate and I read this three to four times per day and we practice our “Chuff, Chuff, Chufferty Chuffs” and “Woo Woooooooooo’s” –much to Papa’s delight. (He can hear us in the other room).

What took Rome and I by surprise was how terrified she was of being up in the engine room of the trains (several of these were open — no upholstery to slash, Iguess).  All the engine cars we climbed into  were HUGE black engines and something about it scared her to death…even with all-powerful Papa by her side.  I wonder if that’s why so many engines in children’s fiction are blue and red.   This was the only picture I got where she even remotely smiled.

Thankfully, there were still other fun past-times for a three year old at a railway museum.

Rome and I went to a Carole Joy Seid seminar last Saturday.  I walked in with strong Charlotte Mason leanings thinking I would walk out a Charlotte Mason devotee.  (Charlotte Mason was a 19th century British educator).  But I didn’t.   The seminar wasn’t what I was expecting.  It was called A Literature Based Approach to Education and I guess I walked in expecting a Nuts-and-Bolts-How-To mixed with philosophy seminar.  

Show me the how-to’s of teaching language arts, grammar, etc. using this method.  And if used in a home-schooling context, how does one translate that into what the state (let alone my mother) is expecting to have covered.

What I did get was a lot of statistics about when children are physiologically ready to learn certain tasks; some great book recommendations; and a really fast (and rushed) overview of the how-to’s.   She started the seminar out laying down the scriptural basis for wise and thoughtful parenting, which of course, makes sense; but she was all over the map; it was frustrating.

She put the “meat” of the seminar at the end, when I was least-able to absorb what she was conveying, and when she could compress it or speed through the material as much as she needed to in order to finish on time.  To a certain extent, what she covered at the end of her seminar was what I went for.  And  I would guess that she’d done this seminar so many times that the nuts and bolts part is dull for her.

A significant part of the seminar was spent reading from books that she was selling at the book tables (not of her authorship, but books that she recommended for relating history, values, science concepts, etc.).  Now, I kinda understand her doing this.  She went to a lot of expense to bring some excellent resources there and she’d spend a lot of money shipping them back if they didn’t disappear.   And they were good resources;  but somehow, having her read from her recommended books didn’t teach me what I came there to learn.

A lot of her seminar came down to this. 

If you teach something to a child when s/he isn’t yet physiologically ready, you will spend four frustrating years doing it and will have a frustrated child who thinks s/he’s a failure and hates to learn.  Or you can wait till they are ready to learn and they’ll pick “it” (reading or grammar or algebra) up in three weeks.

Now, to a certain extent, I agree with this.  But as Rome and I drove away, we compared this approach (which might be considered a Charlotte Mason-y approach) with a Classical Education.  And we determined that we’d both rather start with a Classical approach and then fall back on the Carole Joy Seid approach if one of the gaggle hit the wall.

Would I go again to one of her seminars?  I did walk away with three or four gems, but not the guts of what I came there to learn.  I certainly like her policy of spouses coming free.  And her book table rocked; truly it did.  I have a feeling that she’s probably really good with one-on-one consultations with families.  So in the end, I’m not sure what the answer is.

They’re here! (500  1-cm-thick wood pattern blocks)

Singing:

They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here.

A special thanks goes out to Grandma and Christine for this gift.

I’m just too excited thinking about all the math fun we’re going to have.

Kate liked stacking them. 

I made snow flakes.  

OK, maybe Momma’s more excited than Kate.

But, they’re just so cool.