the sleppys

This post has been sitting in Limbo for two weeks. I don’t know how to finish it, so here it is, with frays and everything:

Since the first week of October, we have been learning Geography in our home school. I started the first week by looking at the globe. I reminded the boys of the poles, equator, and meridian. We looked at the oceans, compared their sizes to land. Then I introduced to them the desk atlas. Ty was all over the table of contents, flipping pages back and forth, looking up state capitals and African rivers. Kyle, being quieter and more low-key, watched Ty. So I took the book back and explained how to read natural vegetation charts, climate charts, and sea and ocean currents. Aside from their regular home school work (maths, English, piano, knitting), they studied maps and the globe.

The second week, I started our geography lesson by telling them a story:

There were two brothers who grew up in a fishing village. All they knew was how to fish and camp. They had acquired some skills such as navigating, rope making, and small game hunting because they never had to go to school, so they spent a lot of time with their parents and learning their livelihoods.

These two brothers, who knew nothing about anything except a few stories and how to survive, told their mother and father and sisters that they were going on an expedition to learn about their land, to see how far Wardead Field extended, and to see if there were any other villages on the land.

Kyle and Ty decided that the two brothers lived on an island, so I drew a circle on a sheet of paper. They drew coves, other forests and fields, deserts, mountain ranges, one volcano, capes and bays, a few more islands, a gulf, and peninsulas. Now the two brothers had somewhere to go on their expedition:

Of course, their parents were very worried for them, but the two brothers already knew so much about life that they allowed them to go. Together, they walked thirty miles a day while staying along the shore.

Ty and Kyle mapped the brothers’ progress on the map that they had drawn, marking an X on every campsite. It took us five days to track the two brothers’ progress. On the last day, we decided that the two brothers’ younger sister would go with them, being that she knew how to sail and could confirm their suspicions of their land being alone in the sea.

The third week, I taped four sheets of watercolor paper together and drew the outline of the island to scale on the large surface. Ty and Kyle used watercolors to make their map of the island. I supervised their labeling the names of the forests, rivers, and other landforms.

I still have to take a picture of it, a decent picture because my own camera phone is low quality. And we have yet to name our island.

Not saying that ALL home schoolers are lazy. We certainly are, however. I don’t like getting up early to run around the house, brushing people’s hair and making breakfast and yelling at people to brush their teeth. I don’t enjoy coming home from work, hungry and sleepy, to check homework and plan the next day’s clothes. I don’t have the energy nor the desire to make my children’s lunches the night before and nestle them in their lunchbags. By the end of the day, when we’re all back home, neither Dad nor I want to be deprogramming our children from the non-academically related information they would be acquiring from ill-mannered children in school. School didn’t suit me as a child, and it certainly doesn’t suit me as a parent.

On the other hand, we aren’t “lazy” home schoolers, really. I spend most of the summer researching our state’s education standards per grade and subject, looking through the materials that are in our private and public libraries, and, finally, drawing a general outline of what our school year will entail based on holidays and seasonal changes. On the weekends, I put in at least three hours’ of deskwork, writing in detail what each child will be learning on what day in the upcoming week. Every home school morning, I wake up, do my exercises, make breakfast, and have everyone ready to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at 8:20am. The children do three to four hours’ work before lunch with a ten to fifteen minute break.

But this past weekend, I just didn’t feel like making lesson plans. I was being lazy. I woke up early on Saturday to go to work. I came back and sewed a Link costume for the boys. The children and I spent time outside, sitting in the breeze, eating carrot bread. Monday morning was suddenly upon our household, and I had no plans for the week!

Thank goodness for comprehensive curriculum workbooks. If we were really lazy, we’d purchase thousands of dollars of prepared curricula for each of our students, but we’re too poor to be lazy. So we’ll keep writing and drawing in our composition books that we bought for a quarter a piece.

This is a list of the subjects and content that the children have mastered or completed during the first four weeks of school.

Math ~
Ty: Place value through 100s, addition and subtraction using two-digit numbers and regrouping.
Kyle: Place value through 10s, addition and subtraction through 15.
Taylor: Counting, one-to-one coordination

English ~
Boys: Narration and copywork of fables, poems, folk tales
Taylor: Beginning letter sounds,

Health ~
Boys: Nutrition, food pyramid, creating square meals; Safety, personal choices; Hygiene, hand washing, dental

Art ~
All: Horizontal, vertical, diagonal lines; Straight, curved lines; Positive, negative space; Working with primary colors

Phys. Ed. ~
All: Ballet, five positions of arms and legs; Workout DVDs

German ~
Ty: Copywork lyrics
Kyle: Narration lyrics
All: Singing children’s songs

Penmanship ~
Ty: Lowercase letter refinement, preparation for cursive
Kyle: Capital letter refinement

Music ~
Ty: Technical drills on piano; C, F, G, D major chord studies
Kyle: Technical drills on piano; Middle C position and G Major pieces
All: Scale and arpeggio solfege singing.

Handicrafts ~
Ty: Knit and purl
Kyle: Knit
Taylor: Finger crochet to make ropes

This morning, the boys woke up a little bit earlier and were reminded to get ready for their first swimming lesson. They did their chores, had their breakfast, and donned their swim trunks before 7:15am. We piled into the van with Taylor, who wasn’t having a lesson but went to accompany me, and pulled up to the pool ten minutes to eight. The boys went into the locker room that leads to the pool deck. Taylor and I went around the pool and watched the lesson from the bleachers.

Children started showing up just before eight o’clock. Ty prayed with Kyle next to him at the edge of the pool. “Dear God, please make me and Kyle brave so we don’t drown. Amen.” The children sat on a green bench facing east and were instructed to sit at the edge of the pool when the instructor called their names. She called a few names, and the children did as they were told. She called Kyle’s name but mispronounced his last name, so no one answered. She continued to the next name. “I’m not sleepy. Just the sun’s hurting my eyes!” Kyle got up and sat at the edge. A few names later, Kyle announced that he had “to go pee,” and the instructor pointed the way. He was struggling to get the storage room door open when the instructor called to him, “Kyle! What are you doing?”
“I have to pee.”
“The bathroom is in the locker room.”

Then came the evaluation: Neither Kyle nor Ty could swim from one end of the pool to the other, so the instructor asked them to blow bubbles under water. When the class divided into groups based on swimming skill level, Ty and Kyle were in their own group with the same instructor.

With the help of a blue float board, the boys practiced their kicks with straight arms, and they traveled a few feet in the water that way. Ty was instructed to float in a star shape (with straight arms and legs), head down, and blow bubbles. At first, he was scared, but after the second time, he hid his fear. Kyle also floated in the star shape but was only a little scared.

At the end of the lesson, Ty asked the instructor her name. She said, “Miss Dee.” Both boys thanked her and went to change in the locker room.

Kyle isn’t much of an active child. He prefers to lay on the couch in the fetal position with his thumb in his mouth, eyes wide open, thinking about Heaven-only-knows. Every once in a while, he’ll let out a chuckle or get up quickly and run to Dad or me and ask a question. If he does that, it’s a really deep, life altering question such as, “How do the astronauts get to the Moon?” or “When the dinosaurs died, why did the other animals not?” It comes as a surprise usually because he changes gears rapidly, from lazily lounging on the couch to springing up and asking his question with such intensity and haste that his voice rises as high as his eyebrows!

This morning, Dad left to run some errands, and the children completed their laundry chores. Kyle took his favored spot on the couch and coiled into position. I tinkered with my sewing project in the den with the doors open. After a few minutes, I heard Kyle’s feet shuffling across the rug. Actually, his pants’ legs were making the shuffle sound because he wears them so low. I stopped moving scissors and pattern tissue across my desk to hear his mumbling:

“Takes the puck… passes to Yzerman… Federov…”

I take a peek into the living room and see Kyle’s handling the hockey stick, gliding it along the rug. His hair is long, to his waist, covers his face as he looks down to the end of the hockey stick.

“Hull… takes the puck… Chelios… to Federov…”

We make eye contact. He stops. I pretend to stare as he continues to look at me but moves toward the couch.

“Mommy, why are you staring?”
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking of something.” I go back to my tinkering at the sewing table. He returns to his game. After a few minutes, I hear his mumbling again:

“Yzerman takes the puck. To Chelios. He shoots! HE SCORES!”

From the corner of my eye, I see that Kyle has his stick above his head. He picks up his heels and “skates” like Mike Eruzione did when he scored the winning goal against the Soviets during the Olympic games in 1980.

I try my darndest to be nonchalant when we make eye contact again. He puts down his stick and runs into his bedroom where he and Ty have their own hockey game, leaving me to my own giggles for the next few minutes.

We are almost through with the first nine weeks of our school year. For lack of time and laziness in creativity, I’m listing their accomplishments as yet.

Math~
Ty: Adds and subtracts, with regrouping, four-digit numbers, including money.
Kyle: writes numbers to 150, adds and subtracts using a number line, adds and subtracts without a number line (mental math) to sums of 12.

English~
Ty: Reads “The Magic Treehouse” books, spells second grade high frequency words
Kyle: reads “Frog and Toad,” spells Dolch words

History~
Both children read and listen to stories about Norse gods, English and Irish legends, and the Old Testament.

Life Science~
Ty: Notes the differences between invertebrates and chordates, the differences between the five chordate orders, hypothesizes on special features’ functions (whiskers, beaks, shells)
Kyle: Differentiates between living and non-living things, plants and animals, names parts of a tree and knows their functions

German~
Both children count, recite the alphabet, name body parts, months, days of the week, family members by relationship, and rooms in the house
Ty: writes
Kyle: listens and recites

Art~
Both children work on line compositions and projects on positive and negative shapes.

Handwork~
Ty: knits rows of 12 stitches.

Penmanship~
Ty: practices lower case letters, Dolch words, proper nouns in history
Kyle: practices capital letters, Dolch words

Piano~
Ty: plays harmonies, triads, staccato, and dotted quarter notes in C, F, and G Majors
Kyle: plays Middle C position melodies

Everyday, we journal, study mathematics, English, and German. The boys alternate days to practice piano or do their penmanship assignments. Each fortnight, we study a new Block subject (Art, Science, Handwork, Legends).

As we were pulling up to the shelter at the beginning of the two trails, we told the children that there was going to be a lot of wildlife and to stay close to Mommy and Daddy. Ty was in the middle row of the seats in the van and playing with Talon when we made the announcement. He made Talon smile and laughed himself. Kyle was sitting in the front seat, heard the laughter and said, “Oh, I hear monkeys!”

Friday night, the babies kept waking up every 45 minutes. Talon didn’t want to sleep. She only slept when I nursed her on the couch. When I went to put her down in her crib, she cried. I went to lay in my bed with her and let her nurse there but couldn’t sleep because I had to keep a hold of her because she could fall over to the edge. (We don’t have a co-sleeper net because Taylor sleeps on an improvised bed on the floor). Well, finally, around four in the morning, Talon fell into a deep sleep and allowed herself to sleep in the crib.

Our plans were to wake up early, have breakfast early, and be ready to go to the parade half-past eight. But I didn’t wake until seven, and we were rushing to make breakfast, change the babies, and get ready. In spite of waking half an hour late, we were ready to go five minutes after we had originally planned.

We piled into the van and rode a mile (yes, just a mile) to the corner where we park the van every year for the parade. This year’s parade didn’t top the previous years’. It could have been better and more organized. Not that I’m volunteering or anything. I think, however, one of these years, we’ll make our own float.

Our children collected candy that was thrown by the parade’s participants. It landed on the street, close to their feet, and the children gave it to us — GAVE it to us. Afterward, we walked to the park where, upon arriving, we saw the bounce house. Dad said, “We are not going in that thing.” No problem on my side; the fewer square yards to get lost, the better. I sat on a bench with the babies while Dad watched the three older children. We didn’t take our radios. After about twenty minutes, we lost one.

Taylor was jumping in the bounce house when I found her. She took a three and a half hour time-out in her room when we got home. Actually, she napped.

We went home to see the F-16 fly-over from our front yard. There were four F-16s from the Air Base down south. A few minutes later, we saw a pair of WWII era bombers that were flying higher and probably  coming from the airport on the west side of town.

For lunch, Dad grilled hot dogs, which we topped with cold, delicious sauerkraut. We spent the afternoon pondering and talking about the men who signed their lives for independence and concluded that wishing a “Happy 4th” had different connotations than wishing a “Happy Independence Day” and that the former is wrong while the latter is correct. For dinner, Dad cooked up cheese burgers, and we had them with baked beans and husk-roasted corn.

Around 8:30pm, the fireworks started at Black Point Marina, where we saw them from our front yard. We didn’t go outside until everyone had finished eating dinner, so it was half an hour into the display.

We came back inside to eat watermelon slices, but the fireworks kept calling us out. We stood out there for another fifteen minutes, and the air started getting thick with smoke (the Ridge Rats also do their neighborhood redneck fireworks display).

As we were coming inside, Kyle told me that his tooth was bothering him. I wiggled it and noticed that it was way more, uh, wiggly than it was even hours before. The corn must have done its part in wiggling the tooth. While I was in the shower, Dad came in to tell me that Kyle got tired of his tooth and pulled it out.

Pulled it OUT! We told Kyle that the Tooth Fairy would visit him not that night but the next night because she was watching the fireworks. (The Tooth Fairy doesn’t leave coins or cash; she leaves toys).

It was a lovely Day of Independence.

Kyle turned five about ten days ago. We started the day with happy birthday wishes and the opening of presents. He got a James train (from Thomas and Friends) and a Spiderman book. After breakfast, we went to the park to continue our Fifth Birthday Tradition. We walked the nature trail and bumped into a man who was photographing some migratory birds. We tried to keep quiet so as not to chase the birds away. Down the canal, we saw a duck and her three ducklings, various water birds, jumping fish, and a gazillion tadpoles. As we walked toward the building that houses a few of the native species, we saw the photographer again. It’s ironic that we are all quiet until it’s time to really be quiet. We walked into the building and learned about the animals that we saw in the canal and nature trail. I learned that we live in the only “pine rockland” on Earth. That’s awesome.

We walked to the playground after using the restrooms and drinking water. I placed the babies in the shade of an oak tree to sit. The children ran toward the slide. There was a little boy who looked to be about two years old who was with his nanny. Ty said, “Good morning!” and Kyle and Taylor followed suit. The nanny replied, “No English.” Nice. Quickly, the Sleppy children organized a game of tag. Twenty minutes later, we drank more water and walked to the van and went home.

In the evening, Grandma came over with gifts. After dinner, we sang “Happy Birthday” to Kyle and ate the “hand” cake that is part of the Fifth Birthday Tradition. Kyle got armor, a shield, a helm, a sword, and a scabbard.

That Saturday, we had a little party. We invited the regular crowd: Bonnie, Karina, Natalie (who was born 15 months ago), Mike, and Skyler. We had a good time, drank beer, ate finger foods, sang “Happy Birthday,” ate cake, played with party friends, talked, and had a good conversation that afternoon. Dad and his buddy Mike watched the space shuttle landing on the NASA website. Jo, Mike’s wife, showed up with her mom toward the end of the party. The men went outside to play with the children. The women stayed indoors to chat. Jo and Bonnie have been friends for three decades, so I was listening to them talking about old friends that they found on facebook.

We heard some shrieking from the backyard. Jo, who acts really concerned about her only son, stood up in worry. I stated that it sounded like laughing, and the dads were out there, too. I wasn’t worried. A while later, we saw Skyler coming into the house, crying. He didn’t look at any of us. He just walked really fast toward the front door and left.

And left. He’s six.

His really concerned mom ran out to chase him. The rest of us ladies continued out conversation because this is normal behavior. Really, it is. After a minute or two, Jo came back in the house looking angry. “What happened?” we asked.

“Skyler said that he got kicked in the nuts harder than he kicked someone else in the nuts.”

(Now, I’ve never been kicked in the gonads because they are tucked away, deep inside my torso. But I’ve seen my brothers and their friends having been kicked, and they don’t get up and run out of the house. They lie and roll on their backs. I’m just sayin’.)

She started yelling at her husband in my living room. I couldn’t understand why she was yelling at him; she ought to have been yelling at her son for kicking. But her reasoning is that the kid’s father was out there, and he should have been protecting his son.

Skyler’s victim walked in. “I asked him to stop kicking me. He did it several times. Mike was there and didn’t say a thing.”

Jo’s mom was appalled. “You shouldn’t be kicking people.” This was not directed to Skyler but to Skyler’s victim. This comment got her ticket out of our house.

So everybody left. Bonnie stayed because her kids didn’t do anything wrong. She, Dad, and I debated about how to have handled the situation better. Dad and I agreed that it’s okay to kick someone when that person is kicking you and that boys have a lesson to learn when it comes to respecting other people’s nuts. She didn’t agree but did acknowledge that she doesn’t have her gonads on the outside and doesn’t know what it feels like to have them kicked.

Ah, well. Happy Birthday, Kyle! We’ll put up the picture of your “hand” cake as soon as we upgrade from dial-up. And thank you for NOT covering your ears and screaming while we sang you “Happy Birthday.”

On Saturday, Ty and I made clay from salt, cornstarch, water, and food coloring. Kyle and Taylor joined us at the table, and we sculpted people, a giraffe, a rainbow, several rocks, and lots of little worms.

Taylor showed me just how messy she can get with the freshly colored clay – which isn’t too messy after all. Behind her is the art that we have been working on all week.

This is Ty’s creation. It looks to me like people sitting around a campfire with a dog. The artist agrees with the notion that they are people, but he claims that the center piece is a rainbow and not a campfire. And the dog is really a giraffe.

It was a good Saturday. The television stayed off the whole day. Things were relatively quiet. We colored and made crafts like these. When we weren’t coloring, the boys were playing with their cars, Taylor with her kitchen, and the babies with each other. I continued my work with a quilt. Dad prepared the next week’s dinners.