love comes to town

Sophine came home from school with a big smile on her face.

"Mommy, Johnny loves me" she announced happily.
"Oh, really? Did he tell you that?"
"No, he asked me to marry him."
"I see, what did you say to that?"
"Maybe."

Sophine skips off and gets busy playing with her sister. About five minutes into their play she comes back to me with a very serious face.

"You know, mommy, I love Johnny too. But I love him as a friend"

And so another door opens.

At the doctor's office

At the annual checkup for the girls, Dr. F plots their growth on the charts. As expected, Sophine comes in as tall for her age and a good, healthy weight. Heidi is average. I flippantly comment: "Well, that's pretty nice," when he looks up at me and quietly says "No, it's not nice. This is amazing."

And so I am again reminded that I live in the awesome presence of a medical miracle every day.

hanging up a hat

No worries, the title does not mean that I'll be closing down this blog, in spite of the lack of posts in recent weeks!

The hat I'm hanging up is one I've worn for 3 years. At times it fit like an old friend, and then again there were times when it was just plain uncomfortable. Since a number of my readers are homeschoolers, I'm not sure how to break this to you all gently: Sophine is going to the local Waldorf School.

This was a huge step for us, prompted by a generous offer of family members who have never been comfortable with us homeschooling.

There are many reasons to homeschool, and for the last three years it was the best way we knew to meet Sophine's needs. Being home with me allowed her to develop socially and emotionally at her own pace. We chose not to send her into the public school system , which, as we were informed (by the school district's psychologist), was going to watch her fail before stepping in to offer help.

Lately however, I found more and more that the things which served Sophine so well previously with homeschooling had become a hinderance for her. As a very shy child, she was able to use me as a mediator between her and the world. This was a wonderful thing to be able to give her when she was five, six and newly seven. Recently, however, I had become concerned that it was stopping her from stretching as a person. It was beginning to interfere with her self confidence. She seemed to need me for the smallest social interaction.

So we filled out an application to the local Waldorf School. After meeting with her class teacher and the Resource Teacher at the school, it was decided that Sophine should visit the First Grade for three days. On the third day we were informed that the school would love to have her return - not in the fall for Grade Two, but Monday to finish out the year with her class.

I cannot begin to tell you how magical the last ten days have been. My shy child has blossomed in this class, I almost don't recognize her. She has been embraced by a wonderfully loving and strong teacher, who is familiar with Sophines sensory issues. She made friends quickly. Most importantly though, she comes home deeply nourished. At least for now, it is so clear that this is where she is meant to be. Over the last ten days, she has not just done your typical Waldorf Main Lesson, Eurythmy, painting, drawing, flute, Spanish, handwork and lyre classes. She has also helped make a present for a classmate who is leaving. She helped wet felt a present for a teacher. She was assigned a Senior, and presented her a rose in front of the whole school today. She loves being at school, and we can tell that something deep within her is being met in a way we have never seen before.

So where does that put me with regards to this blog? Well, new hats are waiting to be tried on. I am not sure yet what I'll be doing, but I'll be sure to keep writing about Waldorf in our home, as well as things I learn from teacher training. After the initial shock of handing my child over to a different teacher in the mornings, I am thrilled at all the possibilities for next year. I'll keep you posted when the universe has chosen to reveal its plans to me.

socialization

No homeschool blog would be complete without some discussion on this often sticky subject. I won't have a full discussion on this topic, but I do have a little story to illustrate just how well homeschooling socializes children.

The other day, Heidi's friend from down the street came over for a playdate. They used to go to preschool together, until we switched Heidi to the Children's Garden in January. Sadly for our youngest, this friend is completely fascinated with Sophine. What happens is that when Heidi goes over there to play, the two girls (and her younger siblings) have a grand time together being four year olds. However, when this friend comes to our house, she forgets just who Heidi is, and is glued to the ever-fascinating older sister Sophine, asking tons of questions. You can imagine that this is not a happy scenario for either of my kids. Heidi feels hugely left out, while Sophine's finely tuned antennae make her feel responsible for Heidi's unhappiness, but don't give her tools to help the situation. And let's just say that being bombarded with questions by anyone isn't exactly the favorite pastime of our most private child.

So what does any of this have to do with socialization? Well, the friend is only exposed to children her age in preschool (she goes to two separate programs for long hours each day), or younger siblings. My children however routinely play with children whose ages range from under one to about 11. Even at school, Heidi is in a room with children up to ages 6 and almost 7. Over the last three years, the girls have become comfortable looking at other children for the people they are. They mystery of "older" is gone, and it's all about the games. So with some children they will play dressup and become cats or puppies or babies, or they have fairy tea parties. With others they will play pirate or go on adventures involving shovels and the back yard, or they will build things from any kind of construction set they can get their hands on. I don't quite know how they do it, but the kids (all of them, not just mine) are very adept at figuring out what kind of play works with whom. There is rarely any fallout from age differences or even gender differences.

I used to worry about Sophine's socialization, since she is such a shy person. But these days she gives me lots of reasons to smile, as she skillfully navigates all kinds of play situations and strives to make sure that every child gets to feel included. All this social training has helped make her into one of the most kind, loving and sweet children I know. So is socialization an issue? For us it certainly isn't one I worry about.

be afraid, be very afraid

Sophine is in the midst of some significant developmental step. Just weeks ago she was a little girl, and all of a sudden we see the emergence of the "middle of childhood" person she is becoming. She will be 8 in July, and slowly her features are maturing, she is stretching in body, and oh yes, in personality. She is still sweet and helpful and kind. Along with those traits however, she is finding her inner trickster. Just a few weeks ago, she grew wide eyed and almost breathless at the magic of fairy tales. Now she's all like "eh, been there," and loves funny stories. She just told me that she wants to hear more stories about "that spider."

You know where this is going - it's April Fool's Day today. And oh, how my trickster had herself a ball! We had the toothpaste under the doorhandle, the salt in the sugar bowl (thanks for that cup of coffee!), the pasta in the pillowcases, and numerous other little tricks. So she goes about learning the boundaries of funny and annoying.

All I can say is that I'm already planning ahead for next year. If I have anything to do with it, she will be spending April 1, 2008 with her grandparents!

math is done

This was our last week of math for First Grade. We walked our math board stars in the driveway (without numbers, just from memory), we inhabited a new island and planted a garden and an orchard, we figured out how many baby chicks we will have when all those eggs hatch, and then our chickens and ducks got loose and we had to find their nests! So it's been an exciting week in our little homeschool.

What stands between us and summer break is a Language Arts block (still thinking on this, but we'll do some work with vowels, then perhaps start on Word Families), and a knitted chicken. Sophine avoids handwork as much as she can, but alas, the chicken, it needs to be finished before we can move on to Grade 2.

If this seems early to think about ending the year, that 's because we break for summer from May until the end of July. Those are the months when we're most likely to be outside, and I cannot get myself to spend May inside when there are no bugs to bug us. By August the girls are usually "done" with the heat and the bugs, and are more than happy to go inside and start some work.

been busy

Hello there, I'm back! I apologize for the sporadic posting of late. All my time and energy have gone into an application for teacher training this summer, and of course into fighting all those colds we keep getting! Meanwhile Sophine and I have started a math block in which we focus on some of the times tables. We are making use of the coolest math tool ever: the math board. I want to give credit where it's due, so thank you Rebecca for introducing me to these a few years back. Here is how it works:

Husband cut a piece of wood, which Sophine then sanded. We traced a circle on it, then the numbers , added nails and a string attached to the number 0. Sophine has been working on her times tables, looking at the patterns, figuring out all kinds of neat things ("9 is just like 1 backwards!"). So here we have:

Counting by ones:

Counting by twos: Here the discovery is that you always wrap the same numbers, 0,2,4,6,8. I love how this leads to discovery by doing. Hard for me to remember sometimes, but these things are not obvious or intuitive.

Counting by 3's: We'll be working with it this week. I cannot wait to draw that pretty star! Then we'll try to walk it, see how good we get. I'm sure we'll come up with lots of other fun things, and I look forward to hearing what Sophine has discovered.

Beyond schoolwork and applications, we have a visit from my parents coming up, then some traveling, and six different birthdays to celebrate in the span of two weeks. I don't think we'll notice March passing by, we'll be too busy!

telling stories

I always feel challenged with the First Grade letter stories. While Sophine and I love a good fairy tale, bringing the story with drawing and then writing letters, can easily feel like you are applying a formula. I find it much easier to throw together a fun math block, than to figure out creative ways with letter stories.

So since Sophine is itching to learn how to write, and I'm itching to take a break from letter stories, I have decided that for the next two to four weeks we are doing a block on story telling. This will allow me to bring more stories in more creative ways (pictures, paintings, table top stories, puppet plays etc.) , and it will allow Sophine to indulge in writing, as long as she is driving that particular effort. I am not at this point willing to have a formal "writing block" because it's not really age appropriate yet. Then again, who am I to stop my child from learning something she is highly interested in? So she writes, but I'm not telling her to. Another wonderful homeschooling compromise is born!

Today we began our block with a HABA game. It consists of little cards with pictures, and we drew random cards and turned all the pictures into a story. First I made up a long story that involved a princess, and old lady, a key, a scroll and a boy with a broken balloon. Next we had cards depicting a crown, a town, and a frog with a crown on his head. This soon became the story of a crown in search of a rightful king, who turned out to be a frog. Finally, Sophine drew a card of a mill and a dog. She told me a very simple story, then decided to write it all by herself. Here is the finished product:

For those of you less experienced with inventive spelling, it reads "Once upon a time there was an old mill and in that mill lived a funny dog and that dog loved to do silly tricks."

Interestingly, Sophine did not think that it was a silly trick for the dog to carry a basket on its back. It quickly became clear that there is more to this story, as she declared "But that dog is going shopping at the market, mom!" Well, duh, should've known! I do like her dog though.

In other news, she is convinced that she saw a fairy in a raindrop today. I think we can call it a successful day, as we also did Form Drawing, circle and recorder. Next week we plan to bring a story she's been working on to life with beeswax. It's going to be fun!