A play, a talent show, and more

Today was the last day of indoor gathering for our weekly homeschooling group. During the summer we meet at various parks and eschew indoor activities in favor of learning from nature. It's a great arrangement, because while learning doesn't end when summer comes around, I think our desire and focus changes with the season, so why not follow them.

If I thought I might miss out on some of the cyclical nature of the public school system—the yearly plays, the parties, etc. that I always loved as a child—I have found instead that at HAA we seem to one-up them. Today all the kids gathered along with all the parents (both parents today in many cases) to share in food, games, a play performance, a talent show, and a "talented display". Calvin participated in all three, as a munchkin and a monkey in The Wizard of Oz, as a pianist in the talent show, and with a Lego display of ancient structures from around the world (Egyptian pyramid, Mesopotamian Ziggurat, Mayan temple) on the "talented display" table. 

I will never stop reveling in the camaraderie that exists between all the kids in the group regardless of age, gender, race, belief, yadda yadda, nor in the amount of time, effort, and interest the parents invest in their children, and in others in the group. There are about forty families in the group, and today's gathering was a joyful, raucous affair, without being either too big or too small. Although I barely saw Calvin once he was no longer on stage (a sign of our growing comfort with the group) I know we both had a great time because we came home tired yet positively filled with exuberant, happy energy.

Talented display...

Talent show...

This is the second play Calvin has been in through our group. The first one was Percy Jackson, which they did earlier this spring, but it really was nowhere near as good as The Wizard of Oz, which they put on today. Calvin's own acting ability had grown some, and he spoke with great diction and a loud, clear voice, he remembered all his lines, and I could tell he had a great time. Of course, doing The Wizard of Oz as a play was like a dream come true for him.

"Please take the ruby slippers as a thank-you gift."

"We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz..."

"I don't have a heart."

"Please take us to see the wizard."

"Hooray!" (she melted)

"Dorothy, you have saved us from the evils of the Wicked Witch of the West. But what do we do with our lives now that we're free?"

"The wizard looked at us and said: 'monkies, you have already found your purpose in life. You said it yourself, you enjoy helping people and you can fly. Combining those two things should give you great opportunities for self-fulfillment."

We are linked up to Saturday's Artist at OLM.

Cricket in Times Square

Calvin loved the book, and today we saw it as a stage production.

Cantaloupes and goals

Calvin and I have been talking a lot about units lately. It comes from some of the math he's been doing, most notably the word problems.

A measurement of anything requires definition of the unit being measured. If you plan on sending someone to the store to purchase 60 cantaloupes, it's imperative that the grocery list say "60 cantaloupes" because if it merely says "60" there's no telling what they'll come home with.

It follows that if you plan to measure your success it's imperative that you define the unit of such success. In homeschooling, at least in our state, setting the goals and declaring when they are met is entirely up to the discretion of the people at home. It's a wonderful freedom, but I have too often suffered from a lack of unit definition. I am a wishy-washy homeschooling parent, and by that I mean I'll mosey along thinking I'm doing okay, and then I'll happen upon another homeschooler's website where they're plowing through ten science projects a day, or twenty craft projects, or reading through both the Iliad and Odyssey at the ripe old age of five, and suddenly I feel rather like a failure.

The internet can be a lifeline, but it can also be dangerous. When we chose to homeschool we did so based on the belief that we could guide Calvin to a life of learning best at home, but we never had any grand plan in mind. No beloved curriculum to follow, not even a full-blown philosophy, and that has turned out to be a weak spot for me, because not knowing for sure what we are doing has left me vulnerable to a feeling of failure in the face of others' proclaimed successes; if I haven't defined a goal, then I cannot possibly declare a measurement of success.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not second guessing our choice, nor do I actually feel like I am failing on any deep level, it's just that I am chased by the constant, nagging feeling that I could be doing a whole lot better. Then today I found this article, a blog post that probably every homeschooling mom should read, the gist of it being that every homeschooling family has to decide what is right for them, that not every parent is going to love crafting, for example. She's right, of course, and it wasn't those words in particular that I needed to read, but they did remind me that in order to succeed, I have to be clear with myself about my goals, abut my units of success, so that when I see a family reading through all of Shakespeare's plays at the age of six, or the family traveling the world to study history, or the family doing thirty physics experiments a day, I will already know that these weren't my goals, and that I don't need to measure our days against theirs.

It sounds petty, it sounds simple, it sounds obvious, but the reminder is so welcome. So needed.

This afternoon, while Calvin and I sat in the driveway and tossed a football back and forth, he said to me "let's practice math!" (complete with exclamation point), so I started quizzing him on multiplication before I tossed the ball, and he asked me such hard questions as "what is 600 times 80,000?" before he tossed it back. He was cracking up, he was thinking, he was discovering (that the multiplication of numbers with lots of zeros wasn't harder just because of all those zeros). He was empowered in his own discoveries, and I thought, 'you know, this is what my goal really is: for him to be thrilled with learning, no matter the subect', and that definition will empower me until I realize how abstract it is, and then I'll obsess some more, but for now, things are all good.

Mummies and tombs

In Calvin's own words.

Back in the garden

Many times during any given day I find myself composing a great blog post, all in my mind. While doing a puzzle I'm rehearsing a monologue on my inability to keep up with the housework, all in my mind. While baking bread I'm writing an essay on the sad state of grocery shopping today, all in my mind. While helping with piano practice, or researching Egypt, or painting a mummy, I'm waxing poetic about the many joys of homeschooling, and possibly its faults as well, but still all in my mind. Little of this writing ever seems to make it onto the blog these days, and when it does it's usually in a paragraph or two of watered down, hastily jotted recaps of the day. I need a stenographer and a secretary, Mad Men style, like in season one.

For instance, today it warmed up a bit and turned pretty and sunny, so I embarked on my first long run of the year. It didn't go all that well (the first one never does) but while running and listening to Gone With the Wind I was thinking all sorts of things I wanted to say about the resilience of our small town in the wake of the tornado (the outpouring of support has been tremendous), or about the state of the flora around here after the strange weather (the leaves on our tree are a deep fall-brown in early spring). Now for the life of me I can't remember what exactly I wanted to say on either of those topics that was worthy of being more than parenthetical.

After lunch and some relaxed reading time this afternoon we got back into the garden, pulling weeds, trimming bushes, trenching and edging, discovering worms, feeding the birds. The cowbirds are back. The finches are bright yellow again. The robin is settled into her nest under our deck. We haven't seen the hummingbirds yet, but we've got their food out, and I'm sure they'll come. We're also hoping to see the oriole again this year.

This same time last year we had only buds, no leaves yet. I'm kind of digging the bright green against the deep reddish brown, but it's definitely unusual.