Teach your grandmother to suck lemons

Mesopotamian feast

Spring visited today. Temperatures reached almost seventy degrees and the sun was out for much of the day. Even after a winter as weak as the one we just had, a day like today still makes me long for the freshness of spring. Along with the warmer weather, another cold is visiting our house, complete with snuffles and the glassy-eyed stares of the slightly infirm. We've been fortunate on the illness front, though, so we won't begrudge the season a few snuffles and we're trudging right along.

A couple of days ago I read My Father's Dragon to Calvin. It's a short book, and only took about three days of bedtime reading to get through it, but he was so impatient for the next two books that he read them on his own yesterday, and read them again this morning. Today he declared a strong desire for a Boris the Dragon, and he's sure this is something I can produce with fabric and a sewing machine. Unfortunately my ability is limited to items of two dimensions only. A stuffed dragon may be beyond my skill.

We have swimming lessons on Wednesdays and I figured that the warm, moist pool would be good for snuffles, and since he wasn't coughing or sneezing, and the chlorine to boot, we kept to our obligation. Lunch with Gram and Grampa after, and a romp in the sunlit park. As my father pushed him in the what Calvin calls the "big comfortable swing", Calvin closed his eyes and actually rested. He swore, again and again, that he was busy dreaming of his dragon, but I think he was actually tired. Colds will do that.

A day like today just calls for outside play. Calvin turned our driveway into a map of Boris the Dragon's world, and our neighbors came over to meet Iris. The only thing less than perfect about today, then, was our dinner, and that was something I'd expected. As we explore the world around us we like to try ethnic recipes, and being in ancient Mesopotamia right now, it was there that we ate. Tough beef with about a million different kinds of onion (shallots, scallions, chives, garlic, leeks, and white cooking onions) in the slow cooker (since I don't have an ancient stone fire pit), turnips stewed in beef broth (it called for blood, but I couldn't find that) with more onions, and some couscous I threw in on the side.

We had a good time researching the menu, making a shopping list, collecting the ingredients, and cooking the meal, and it was fun, edible even, but not at all thrilling. Jon and I tried two ancient brew beers with dinner, but even those didn't help much. We had dates and apples for dessert, and we're glad we tried it out, but thankfully there aren't many leftovers.

Monday—Ziggurat meets Mayan temple

Over the weekend Calvin attended a program at the library about healthy eating and living. It was presented by UofM's Natural History Museum, but had been poorly advertised and only one other kid showed up. The truth is, if we hadn't already been at the library for the book sale, we wouldn't have known about it either. As it turned out, Calvin had a great time at the program while I worked the book sale, and he came home with four different starter plants that he planted himself.

So Monday started with a little watering.

In addition to chocolate cherry tomatoes, ladybug tomatoes, green beans, and carrots, Calvin came home with a stuffed red blood cell that he won in a game of Bingo. He named him Mr. Red Blood Cell, of course. I had no idea such a toy existed, but apparently there is a whole line of these things, from brain cells to the black plague, so after breakfast this morning we did a little jogging around the Giant Microbes site (just watch out for the venereals).

Then a little Lego play with Mr. Red Blood Cell and the Ziggurat he and his dad built yesterday.

Ziggurat, meet Mayan temple.

Mayan temple, meet Ziggurat.

There was some nomadic hunter gatherer play, obviously set in the time before farming but after domestication of wild animals. Either that or this nomadic hunter is in serious danger.

Calvin did some cut paper art, and we read all our library books over again—lots of great story books about the evolution of farming, technology, and eventually civilizations. While I was on the treadmill he read The Enormous Egg, and while I was showering he watched a few Schoolhouse Rock videos.

I had a dentist appointment this afternoon (possibly my least favorite thing) while Calvin got some Gram and Grampa time. Then the store, a walk with Iris, tea with tangrams.

And a piano lesson for everyone.

A scrapbook for Pooh

There was a time when I might have been called a scrapbooker. After Calvin was born I scrapped every moment of every day for his first couple of years. And then nap time slowly disappeared, and more and more time was spent on games and reading and puzzling and discovering, and there was no time for scrapbooking, and no time to miss it, either.

I still dabble every once in a while—I love the colors and textures, and the printed pictures—and the trip to Florida seemed like a great subject for a book, so Calvin and I have been working on a pair of books ever since our return. And although it takes longer when we do it together, the final product is twice as rewarding and the process twice as fun.

So the Disney books aren't quite done yet, but Calvin, very intrigued with the process, began a collection of scrapbooks for Winnie the Pooh and his friends at the beginning of the week. He disappeared into his office and emerged an hour later with a finished book for Pooh, and each day he made another book for another character.

Construction paper, crayons, scissors and glue. We've often done art projects together, or he's done projects on his own at my suggestion, and he's certainly disappeared and drawn pictures of his own accord, but the creation a full scale project on his own was fun. He even knew exactly how he wanted to bind them, all I had to do was help tie the strings. I didn't snap shots of all the pages—there are about 80 of them—but just a few of my very favorites.

We're linked up to OLM's Saturday's Artist.

Up on stage

Over the past few months I've mentioned several times the homeschooling group we joined that meets weekly in a rented space in Ann Arbor. There are about fifty families in the group, each with different styles of learning and teaching, different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, different religious or political or what-have-you view points, and different numbers, ages, and genders of children. As a general rule I lean toward the introverted so committing to weekly group meetings with so many children has at times been an effort, maybe even a burden. Still, the group comes with fantastic benefits, and time and again has proven its worth. Aside from wild play and free exchange of ideas, we've loved the parties (homeschooling does not have to mean that your child will never exchange Valentines with others), and the this term we took advantage of the classes offered as well.

For the past eight weeks Calvin has been taking a theater class taught by one of the members of Wild Swan (especially fun for Calvin since he'd seen her perform on stage in one of their productions). The class worked on a short stage adaptation of Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief. It's a book we haven't read, and probably still won't, but Calvin had a great time with the whole process: day 1 auditions, days 2-6 rehearsals, and day 8 performance.

Calvin was the youngest participant with a speaking character, and he did worked hard to memorize his eight lines and to deliver them loudly and with with clear diction. He became fond of the word diction, in fact. They talked about choreography, they planned stage entrances and exits, they practiced line delivery and expression of emotion.

Performance day was today. The audience was made up of fellow homeschoolers, other members of the group, and in some cases extra parents (including Jon), and the play went smoothly, the most difficult part being keeping the youngest quiet in the wings. They were just so excited. At the last minute I found myself on stage reading the parts of Zeus and Mr. Brunner because one of the kids was home sick. There was one other stand-in as well, but other than the two of us wandering around on stage with scripts, the rest of the kids did a great job with memorization and had a great time up on the stage. The kids in the audience had a great time, too.

The next term starts next Friday and when Calvin found out that theater would again be offered, this time putting on an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, he immediately signed on.