Love Your Work

YESTERDAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Using Tongs
• Dusting
• Transferring
• Fabric Basket
• Mystery Bag
• Pouring
• Rough and Smooth Boards
• Graduated Blocks

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Bead Stringing
• Transferring
• Sweeping
• Mystery Bag

I listened to this great Radiolab podcast while I was out walking yesterday. The program, in which renowned author Malcolm Gladwell discusses the subject of success with Radiolab host Robert Krulwich, was both thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. (I sometimes wonder how many St. Johnians have concluded that I am certifiable upon observing me guffawing while out walking. I bet they'd be laughing, too, if I could only share my earbuds with them. Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Car Talk, Fresh Air, Radiolab and This American Life all produce some seriously funny podcasts. I'll never go back to listening to boring old music while exercising again.) Gladwell argued that while talent is good and all, what really ensures success isn't natural ability but intrinsic motivation. In other words, a person has to love what they do--pretty much to the point of fanaticism--and want to keep doing it regardless of whether it yields any kind of measurable return. Gladwell used the examples of Wayne Gretzky (who, as a two-year-old, would burst into tears whenever a hockey game he'd been watching on TV ended), The Beatles (who, before they achieved any measure of success, worked a gig in a strip club in Hamburg, Germany, playing 8-hour sets, 7 days a week, for months at a time) and Bill Gates (who, as a 15-year-old, wrote computer programs in the wee small hours of the morning instead of, you know, sleeping). If he hadn't been so passionate about computer programming (I know it's hard to fathom such an odd passion, but stay with me here) Bill Gates would have turned out to be just some smart guy from Seattle. Probably, because he is very intelligent, he'd have been a fairly wealthy and accomplished smart guy from Seattle, but there are a lot of fairly wealthy and accomplished smart guys in Seattle (not to mention around the world). He's world-famous (and fabulously wealthy, of course) because something inside him just couldn't stop programming; something intrinsic to Bill told him that computer programming was better than sleep, better than food, better than anything else imaginable. And he listened to that inner voice; more to the point, his parents and teachers allowed him to listen to that inner voice.

After I published the previous post (in which I expressed my frustration over my son refusing to do any of the new sensorial activities I'd prepared), it occurred to me that some of you may be wondering why I don't assume more of a traditional "teacher" role during our homeschooling sessions; that is to say, why I don't structure each session according to a premeditated lesson plan. In most American classrooms--from pre-K to college-level--the educator decides what the students will be taught (notice I didn't say what the students will learn), and enforces a strict schedule of lectures and/or activities pertinent to the subject matter. If the student complies with the teacher's lesson plan (sits quietly while the teacher talks, completes the corresponding activities correctly), he/she gets a gold star or an "A"--basically he/she is rewarded. If the student doesn't comply, he/she is deemed ill-behaved or unintelligent or sent to the principal's office or what have you. If the student continually refuses to comply with the teacher's expectations, punishments or parent-teacher conferences or diagnoses of ADHD (or all of the above) ensue. This method of education is entirely focused on the teacher. The student learns that it is the teacher's interests (i.e., lesson plans) that are most important; that compliance ("good behavior") is valued above curiosity, independence, initiative. Any intrinsic motivation the student may have regarding learning is slowly but surely squelched at the hands of a teacher-centric education based upon punishment and reward.

Learning is supposed to be fun, right? But how can it be when the teacher controls everything from what the student learns to how the student behaves (where to sit, when to talk, when to pee)? In Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn (an author who studied and wrote about education long before he started writing about parenting) says, "Students tend not to think as deeply, or to be as interested, if they have little to say about what they're learning or about the circumstances in which they're learning it." Call me crazy, but I don't want to raise a well-behaved child who listens quietly while the teacher talks, who completes worksheets correctly and gets "A"s on all his quizzes. I want to raise a child who is curious about the world around him, who quests after knowledge, who is intrinsically motivated to learn new things. (They're not necessarily mutually exclusive; I wouldn't mind if he ends up being well-behaved and getting "A"s, too, of course.) When we do school each day, I want him to be focused on the activities available to him, and to feel free to approach them with curiosity and independence and initiative. I do NOT want him to be focused on whether or not he's doing what I want him to do, on trying to please me.

I brought up the Radiolab podcast because it seemed salient to the undeniably unconventional way I'm educating my son. Gladwell seemed to be saying that the secret to success is the ability to be intrinsically motivated--to want to do something just because you love it, regardless of any potential external reward (praise, money, et cetera). If I want my son to be successful in school--that is to say, to be successful at learning--I need to allow him to approach it without any external motivating factors. If I'd forced him to do the sensorial activities on Tuesday, he'd have been doing them to make me happy or out of some compulsion to comply with my wishes; in other words, he'd have been externally motivated to do them. The most I can do--the most I should do--as his educator is prepare the appropriate activities, make them available to him during our homeschooling sessions and give him help and/or guidance when he needs it. Like Galileo Galilei said, "You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself."

Matching Squares

(Fabric Basket)

Postscript: We did end up doing sensorial activities yesterday and today. The fabric basket activity is basically a matching game: using fabrics of various textures (ideally all the same color), you cut two squares of each fabric and then mix them up and put them into a basket. The child has to use his sense of touch to find the matching squares. The mystery bag activity is another tactile one: you collect a variety of small everyday objects, put them on a tray and show them to the child. Then you cover them up with a dish towel, ask the child to close his eyes and put one of the objects into a bag. The child reaches into the bag and uses his sense of touch to try to figure out which object it is. (You can do this one different ways; put all the objects in the bag at the same time and/or neglect to show the child the objects on the tray before you start the activity.)

Small Everyday Objects on a Tray

(Mystery Bag)

The Reveal

(Mystery Bag)

The Crown Royal Bag in Action

(Rough and Smooth Boards)

My Son, the Mule

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Hardware Busy Board
• Using Tongs
• Transferring
• Pouring

This "Parker, Parker, Quite Contrary" phase is seriously going to drive me nutso (and I wasn't exactly working with a full set of marbles to begin with). My son asked to do school at least five times over the weekend. Guess what he said this morning when I cheerfully exclaimed, "Now it's time for school!" That's right, the dreaded "But I don't like school!" Then, precisely because I encouraged him to work with them, he refused to touch the new sensorial activities. I couldn't help feeling frustrated while watching my son in school today; it really seemed like he was slightly bored by the practical life activities he'd chosen to revisit. I'm almost tempted to try reverse psychology on him. "No, Parker, don't do the fabric activity! And don't do the sandpaper activity! Oh, and definitely don't brush your teeth and don't get dressed and don't go to sleep, either!" I mean, it worked for Mary Poppins, right? It seems to me that parenting requires either wiles (for example, sneaking some clothes on a kid who has adamantly refused to get dressed the second he's engrossed in play) or rigidity (the "you will get dressed right this minute, OR ELSE!" approach). If you haven't guessed by now, I'd much rather do some creative thinking than behave like some sort of strict schoolmarm. I'm not sure I'm ready to resort to reverse psychology, though; it seems like an awfully manipulative way to mother. So I'll just keep on being patient (and a wee bit wily), and sooner or later my son will stop impersonating a mule. (Sooner would be nice.)

In light of his current stubbornly contrary streak, I've been frequently fighting the urge to dangle a carrot in front of my son whenever I want/need him to do something (school included). It'd be so much easier to just barter with him; to offer a treat or a toy in exchange for his cooperation and acquiescence. But the long-term effects of Parker associating learning with extrinsic rewards would be devastating to my aim of engendering a "quest quotient" in him. He should want to learn because he enjoys it and because it fulfills him, not out of some desire to either please me or earn a reward. If there's one thing this homeschooling experience keeps teaching me, it's to let go of any personal agendas I have. I wanted to do sensorial activities this morning. Well, it's his education! It's like cooking for my son: I can put yummy, healthy meals in front of him everyday, but I can't force him to eat. In fact, he ingests significantly less anytime I start to sound even a little beseeching. ("Don't you want to eat just a little banana?") I'll keep dragging out our school shelves, and putting the materials in front of him. He'll eat something (sensorial) eventually.

Roll with It

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Graduated Blocks
• Mosquito Control

I was really excited about doing school today--more so than usual, I mean. In addition to having the materials for another new sensorial activity prepared and ready to present to Parker, I'd figured out a way around his resistance to being blindfolded. Yesterday, while doing the rough and smooth boards activity, I'd wanted to cover my son's eyes with a kitchen towel so that he would be forced to use his sense of touch to differentiate between the grades of sandpaper, instead of his sense of sight (annoyingly, the smoother grades were grey-ish, while the rougher grades were brown). He definitely had no desire to have a towel tied around his head--rendering him sightless--and refused to even experience the sensation of being blind, let alone attempt the activity that way. This morning I put all of the rough and smooth boards into a little sack (a purple, velvet Crown Royal sack yoinked from my husband's restaurant, to be specific). That way, I figured, Parker would still be effectively sightless, but only with regard to the sandpaper squares (which is all that really matters when it comes to this particular activity).

Well, we didn't get to put my sack idea into effect or even take a stab at the new activity today. After just a few minutes of working with the graduated blocks (experimenting to see how stable they are when stacked out of sequence--I dubbed the result "modern architecture"), our landlady/neighbor phoned to gently remind me that all the standing water left on our deck from the recent storms was going to give us millions of mosquito babies if I didn't quickly clean it up. (This is how awesome our landlady is: she didn't just call to say, "Hey, clean up that standing water!" she also volunteered to come over and help. She's very concerned about my propensity to be bitten by mosquitoes. She's given me four bottles of natural, DEET-free bug repellant in the 18 months we've lived here--which end up for the most part sitting unused in my medicine cabinet since I can't stand the smell of citronella.) Anyway, sometimes you just have to roll with it. Parker was patently overjoyed to stop school and start mopping. I, myself, couldn't muster up the same amount of enthusiasm, but I dutifully dragged my new best friend, the Shop-Vac, outside and started moving all the furniture and outdoor toys and useless crap (old litter box, empty--and now soggy!--cardboard boxes, potting soil, neglected jogging stroller) out of the way so that Katie, Parker and I could get all the muddy, leafy, buggy (have I told you about the termites that swarm during big storms?) rain water cleaned up. I'm actually really pleased with the result. Sprucing up our deck had been on my weekend to do list for over a month, but come Saturday and/or Sunday neither my husband nor I ever had any inclination to start scrubbing. Now it looks so nice, clean and pristine and neat and tidy. I'd better enjoy it while I can; it's only a matter of time before it starts getting grubby again.

FYI: I took this picture after about two hours' worth of cleaning.

Skyscrapers and Sandpaper

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Cutting
• Graduated Blocks
• Rough and Smooth Boards
• Using Tongs

I must have missed the memo about three being the new two. My son chose to skip the "terrible twos"--allowing me to slip into a naively content and unguarded state of mothering--only to dive head first into some sort of "tyrannical threes" phase. He's willful, ornery, domineering and contrary. Quite contrary--if I say up, he says down, if I say sit, he says run, if I say playground, he says beach. It's to such a degree that I'm absolutely certain that if I said, "Let's go play at the beach and then eat lots of cake and ice cream and then go to the store and buy one hundred new toy trucks for you," my son would reply, "STAY HOME!" So I wasn't exactly shocked this morning when he lay down on the couch and stated in his most crotchety voice, "I'm not doing school," after I'd pulled out our school shelves and rung our school bell. I just said, "OK, I'll do school by myself," grabbed the cutting materials and started placidly snipping away. Soon enough, Parker was sitting by my side, patiently awaiting his turn with the scissors.

I've noticed that my son tends to enjoy--and be able to apply himself more patiently and with more focus to--new activities the second or third time he works on them. Maybe this is because the newness of the materials is a distraction to him the first time he handles them, or maybe it's because he needs a school session or two to completely grasp the object of the activity, or maybe it's because I get incredibly, hyperactively excited when I'm presenting a new activity to him and he can't concentrate when his mom is acting like such a geek. Regardless, today proved no different; he had a lot more fun working with the graduated blocks today than he did yesterday, especially once he started stacking them on top of his little table, thereby creating a really tall ("taller than me, Mommy!") "skyscraper." Like my mother-in-law said, preschoolers love repetition, and Parker confirmed that fact by building and dismantling his skyscraper again and again and again (and again and again). I do still struggle with staying silent while my son is working--it was hard not to speak up when I saw him grabbing the wrong block--but obviously there is so much value in sitting back and letting him discover (and remedy!) his errors all on his own.

I introduced the rough and smooth boards activity this morning, which is designed to stimulate tactile awareness and illustrate the textural opposites of rough and smooth. The materials for this activity are three-inch squares of various grades of sandpaper, glued to pieces of cardboard. You make at least six of these "boards," jumble them up and then have your kid sort them according to feel. Parker was already familiar with the terms (rough, smooth), because I often use them to describe things he touches (and, like all little tots, he is absolutely addicted to touching anything and everything): a tree's bark or a marble or his dad's unshaven chin or the glossy cover of a magazine. He liked feeling the sandpaper squares, but he quickly realized that the grey squares were the ones that felt smooth ("flat") while the brown ones were the rough-feeling ones. Like I briefly discussed yesterday, when creating the materials for these sensorial activities, it's important to have everything appear the same except the object of the lesson (in this case, texture). In other words, the sandpaper squares should have all been the same color, shape, size (even smell and taste!); the only thing that differentiated them should have been their texture. I could not find various grades of sandpaper that were all the same color, though. My solution to this was to have my son do the activity while wearing a blindfold after he'd become acquainted with the materials. He would then have to sort the sandpaper squares by touch, not sight. Well, when I rolled up a kitchen towel and told Parker that I was going to tie it around his head so that he wouldn't be able to see anything, he did a pretty good imitation of a donkey digging in his heels. Apparently, he feels very attached to his sense of sight. When I was a little girl, I used to love to tie a bandana across my eyes and stumble around the house blind, so I was a little confused by my son's resistance. But he's never been blindfolded before and I guess the idea can sound a little unnerving if it gets sprung on you out of the blue (like when you're sitting in school with your mom, happily sorting some sandpaper squares). I didn't force it. Instead, I donned the kitchen towel and let my son watch me categorize the squares using my sense of touch. Meanwhile, he used his sense of sight to tell me whether I'd grouped the squares correctly or not.

Postscript: I put out some uncooked penne with the tongs today (usually we do the using tongs activity with cotton balls). Parker ended up putting the tongs down and eating the "crunchy pasta" only a few minutes into the activity. He had refused to eat all morning (did I tell you he's been acting contrary?), so it didn't surprise me. In fact, I switched out the cotton balls with the penne at the start of school because I figured he had to be hungry. Uncooked pasta is better than nothing.

Noah's Tower

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Graduated Blocks
• Mopping

It's seriously stormy out and we've been intermittently losing power and/or cable, so you would think that the our frustratingly fickle internet service would definitely be down for the count today. Well, you'd be wrong. I guess lightning storms and torrential rains facilitate internet connectivity, whereas the warm, sunny weather of last week hindered it. Call me crazy, but I kind of think that the hardest thing about keeping a blog should be writing the blog; connecting to the blog host and uploading posts shouldn't be so agonizing and stressful. Oh well, what doesn't kill us and all that.

We're almost two months into homeschooling now. We've spent the entire time thus far concentrating solely on practical life skills, and here's the result (a progress report, of sorts): my son seems to have increased dexterity, focus, independence, perseverance, inquisitiveness and responsibility. He does at times still struggle with the structure of school (following through with an activity, putting materials away, using materials in the manner intended), but he's three; I'd be absolutely shocked if he began to really consistently toe the line. Though the practical life materials will stay on the school shelves--available for Parker to revisit during school time--I'm going to start presenting sensorial activities to him in the coming weeks. Whereas the practical life activities were designed to help my son function in his own environment by teaching him how to handle the objects in and around our home, the sensorial activities we do will help develop and refine his five senses. This will not only enable him to use his senses fully to interact with and expand his knowledge of the world, but will also enhance his intellect and control, thereby preparing him for more advanced activities.

This morning I presented the graduated blocks activity to Parker, which is designed to develop visual and tactile perception of dimension. It also introduces ordering/sequencing. The aim is to build a tower with blocks of gradated size, starting with the largest at the bottom and ending with the smallest at the top. This activity was a favorite of Parker's both times we visited the local Montessori school, so I knew he'd have fun with it. Montessori schools use unpatterned blocks, usually all the same color. With the blocks looking exactly the same except for their size, the child can easily focus on the lesson in question--perception of dimension. When I bought graduated blocks for our homeschool (this was over two months ago), I went with the cheapest and easiest route: Melissa & Doug Wooden Animal Nesting Blocks from Amazon. Now I kind of wish I'd either sprung for the real kind (though Montessori teaching materials are awfully expensive), or spent some time (not that I have a lot to spare) making my own monochromatic blocks. It's not that the activity went poorly today; it's just that the more I homeschool, the more serious I feel about this enterprise. The perfectionist in me feels like if I'm going to homeschool, I should homeschool the "right way." And I wonder whether all those brightly colored animals distracted Parker's brain from the main purpose of the activity.

Speaking of brightly colored school supplies, I've been giving my son pages from a Kumon activity book to practice cutting in school. This partly because I bought the activity book ages ago and it has just been lying around, collecting dust (I hate waste!), and partly because I'm too lazy to draw straight lines on a piece of paper (the straight lines are meant to guide the child as he cuts). While doing a school activity, my son should be focused on the aim of the activity--in this case, cutting. The first few pages we used out of the book were minimally decorated, and Parker definitely didn't seem very distracted by the cute little animals or cars. The page he used on Thursday, however, was different. After cutting along the lines, we ended up with pieces of a paper train that the instructions told us to tape together. My son has a deep and abiding love of trains, so he was overjoyed with the fruits of his labors. I would have been happy, too, except that we had to have an impromptu 20-minute recess while Parker played with his "new train." It was pretty short-sighted of me not to save the create-a-play-toy activity for the end of school. We had literally only just begun.

Island Life

I haven't been able to blog because our internet connection has been so slow. We gave ourselves a school holiday today so that we could make our monthly trip to St. Thomas to stock up on produce, paper goods and bulk foods. (If we only bought these things on St. John, we'd blow our budget in a heartbeat.) Now we're on the yellow ferry (Parker's favorite), with a car full of seltzer and toilet paper and potato chips and frozen fruit and stuff, waiting to cast off and cross Pillsbury Sound. School resumes tomorrow morning.




Postscript: I'm blogging from my phone, using an iPhone app. The app is alright in general, but I don't like how it won't let me control things like font and spacing. Depending on whether our ISP is feeling cooperative or not, I might be blogging from my phone again tomorrow. Please pardon the appearance.

Location:Smith Bay Rd,,US Virgin Islands

Hurdles and Hassles

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Sewing Cards
• Dressing Busy Board
• Transferring
• Weaving Paper
• Cutting

This is my third attempt at blogging today. Our internet has been insanely slow for the past several days, such that blogger.com wouldn't even load the first two times I sat down to write this post. Now I'm sitting on the floor, Indian-style, with my laptop on the couch so that I can use our pathetically short ethernet cord to connect directly to the router, which sits on the window ledge behind the couch. So far bypassing the wifi is working marginally better; Safari connected to Blogger at least, though it took three minutes for the freaking "New Post" page to load. Sometimes I close my eyes and dream about the oh-so-wonderful super-fast wifi at my dad's house. What I would give to to have Safari pages load in literally the blink of an eye, to be able to watch videos on YouTube and Hulu, to download hour-long podcasts in less than five minutes! Someday, I will attain the Nirvana that is high-speed internet in my own home.

Stultifyingly slow internet wasn't the only hassle of the day. Though I really try to be patient and to keep the big picture in mind, sometimes it's hard not to focus on all the little hurdles Life throws in front of you throughout the course of any given day. This morning I wanted prepare the materials for another practical life activity my son and I had yet to try, weaving paper. (Since weaving paper involves an under-and-over action, the activity is supposed to be a good introduction to sewing. I suppose it could also serve as an introduction to making lattice tops for pies. And to making baskets or hats out of banana leaves, like people do here in the Caribbean.) You're supposed to use stiff paper, like poster board, to make the weaving materials, but I completely forgot to buy some yesterday so used construction paper instead. I was doing just fine, measuring out the 3/4" strips and using my Exacto knife to carefully cut them out, until drops of sweat started dripping down off my head onto the thin construction paper, rendering it unusable. Tarnation! I hadn't realized that wearing a sweat band is necessary if you want to do craftwork in the Caribbean.

After I finally finished preparing the weaving materials (it took awhile because I don't own a sweat band so I had to keep stopping to wipe my brow whenever I felt a sweat droplet start to roll down my face), I put together another set of school shelves. Because repetition is such an important part of learning--and centers prominently in the Montessori educational philosophy--it's important that my son have the chance to revisit any activity he chooses during each and every school session. The problem (hurdle? hassle?) is that we haven't even begun to do sensorial activities yet, and already we have too many school supplies to fit on one set of shelves. Space is obviously going to be an issue. Eventually, I'll be able to "retire" those materials that my son has outgrown, but for now he needs to have access to everything. It looks like we'll soon have to take another trip to good ol' Home Depot and buy some more shelves, though (as I've said before) our apartment is teeny-tiny, so where I will put another set of shelves is beyond me. The closet (where I store the (now two) sets of shelves when school's not in session) is full.

Parker is really digging the dressing busy board. He seems intent on figuring each component out, but in a slow and steady kind of way. On Monday, he focused on the buckle; on Tuesday, he focused on the zippers; today, he focused on the buttons. He'd attempted the buttons before and, frustrated, had quickly given up. Today, he stuck with them and eventually was able to say, "Look, Mommy! I can do buttons now!" It's really awesome to see your kid feeling proud of himself; way better than telling your kid how proud of him you are. The weaving activity wasn't a great success--Parker almost immediately got discouraged and accidentally ripped one of the strips of paper--but hopefully he'll feel like trying it again tomorrow or another day. Cutting is also a practical life activity. The aim is to try to cut long, straight lines, as close together as possible. Parker received a couple pairs of scissors this past Christmas and he LOVES using them. He has trouble holding them properly, though, and I'm not sure whether this is because his hands are too small or because he's a leftie (like his dad and his grandma before him). It's probably a combination of the two. Regardless, his solution to this problem is to have me hold the paper and then use two hands to work the scissors. I encouraged Parker to try holding the paper himself when he started cutting in school today, but he wasn't very jazzed about the idea. Oh well.

Postscript: Due to the aforementioned internet issues, I couldn't complete composing this blog before my son awoke from his nap. Therefore, I had to finish writing while my son was awake; in other words, while actively parenting. I apologize if it's seems disjointed. It's hard to complete a thought, let alone a paragraph, while interacting with a three-year-old.

The sweat stains.

Again + Again + Again = Got It!

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Dressing Busy Board
• Transferring
• Bead Stringing
• Sewing Cards

I'm definitely starting to see the value in repetition; that is to say, in not moving too fast through the Montessori preschool curriculum so as to allow my son to revisit activities over and over again. As the newness of an activity (and its materials) rubs off, Parker ceases playing with the materials and truly begins working with them. And though people often subconsciously apply a negative connotation to the word, in this context work is not onerous but both productive and satisfying (not to mention educational, of course!). Every time he practices the transferring activity, my son spills less rice. (Whereas, when he first attempted this activity, it almost seemed as though he derived a proportionate amount of joy from the quantity of rice that ended up on the tray.) This morning, after about 15 minutes of transferring rice (spilling only a few kernels), Parker took the materials back to the shelves. Just as he was about to put his favorite scoop back, he looked at the beads and said, "I want to try to scoop the ball beads." I said OK, and sat back to watch. The ball beads are round, and about half an inch in diameter. Now, smooth, hard, spherical objects have a tendency to roll around (a characteristic of which my son is quite fond), so transferring them in an open-ended scoop proved tricky. Parker stuck with it, carefully balancing as many of the beads as he could in his scoop before transferring the load to its receptacle. At first, ball beads kept dropping to the floor, skittering around and rolling under furniture, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "No more! You're making a mess!" Instead, I reminded him that if he made sure to hold the scoop over the tray, the beads would be less likely to fall overboard onto the floor. After a few minutes, though, it was a moot point because Parker had mastered the "art" of transferring ball beads using a small scoop.

I know I'm making a big deal about something not so earth-shattering--I mean, we're talking about scooping beads, right?--but that's because there's a bigger lesson in it for me. I recounted the above anecdote from school today because I think it speaks to the value of revisiting lessons, even those seemingly already learned. The way teachers in conventional schools design their curriculum, students are usually given one opportunity to learn a particular lesson; this is especially true in secondary schools (middle school and high school) and colleges. Once the lesson is taught (or lecture given), the teacher maybe assigns some relevant homework and then moves on, usually regardless of whether each and every student has really understood the object of the lesson in question. I know the pressures public school teachers are under to meet state standards, but this is not really education to me. This, to me, is akin to training a pet monkey. Just because a student can go through the motions doesn't mean he really understands what he's doing, not to mention why he's doing it. This morning, Parker used a skill he'd mastered over time (transferring rice) in a new and slightly different context (scooping beads). Maybe I'm making too much of it, but to me it was a sign that he had internalized the lesson; that he was no longer going through the motions. If I'd powered through the practical life activities and already moved us forward in the curriculum, my son wouldn't have had a chance to revisit transferring day after day after day. He'd have moved some spoonfuls of rice from one container to another, and that would have been that. Instead, he's seeking out new ways in which he can apply his transferring skills, outside of the context of rice and spoon.

I thumbed through the two books I'm using the most in this homeschooling adventure (Teaching Montessori in the Home and Teach Me to Do It Myself), and noticed a few practical life activities I'd yet to present to Parker, one of which is sewing cards. You know how I feel about sewing, but who's to say I shouldn't give my son a chance to take a stab at sewing just because I suck at it. My mom, the needlepoint aficionado, bought Parker some cute Cat in the Hat sewing cards a couple years ago, when Toddler Parker kept trying to play with (read: destroy) all of her needlepoint projects. Mom gave him the sewing cards, telling him they were his own "needlepoint." (This sort of worked. Sort of.) I pulled the cards out of the back of his toy cupboard this morning and asked Parker whether he wanted to do some "needlepointing" in school today. He did, and he enjoyed himself immensely. Can you see where he gets his sewing skills from?

Sew Satisfying

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Dressing Busy Board
• Hardware Busy Board

So, if I were you, here's what I'd probably be thinking right about now: "That is the dressing busy board she's been talking about (more like complaining about) needing to finish? That's what she needed more than a month to complete? Really?!?" And I don't blame you if you are indeed thinking something along those lines. I mean, it's a cute little busy board and all, but it's a little pathetic that it took me one-tenth of a year to create. In my defense, I refer you to my previous post about my desperate need for more hours in each day. In my further defense, there's the post preceding that one, in which I detailed the horrid illness from which I've only recently recovered. OK, so busy life and sickness aside, it's still pretty silly that I couldn't knock out the dressing busy board in a few days. Here's the cold, hard truth: the busy board took me so long to make because I am the exact opposite of a sewing phenom. It's a good thing I wasn't born in the 19th century because no one would have wanted to marry a sewing dunce like me. I would have been hard-pressed to make myself a shift to wear, let alone put together a workable wardrobe for my family. And embroidery? Forget about it. Now, my mom and my aunt are needlework fanatics. (I think a passion for needlework might be the only thing they--sisters, three years apart in age--have in common.) My aunt volunteers in a needlework shop several days a week, and my mom cannot go anywhere (and I mean anywhere--even just to the local sports bar to grab a beer and some fries) without taking along one needlepoint project or another. My mom is such a needlepoint enthusiast that she's actually convinced several of her male business colleagues (you know the type: guys you'd find sitting a few stools away from George Clooney's Up in the Air character in a random hotel bar) to pick up the hobby themselves. And not only are my mother and aunt fabulous sewers (needleworkers?), but my husband's mother and sisters are also absolutely awesome with needle and thread. By all accounts, I should be able to sew with my eyes shut. Well, not so much. I know the stitches on the dressing busy board look like I sewed them with my eyes shut, but sadly my eyes were open and even so those stitches are the best of repeated (and I mean repeated) attempts. In any case, it's done, and I'm inordinately proud of it. Making things is so much more satisfying than buying things.

Parker had been asking about his yellow board, and when it would be ready, for several weeks, so he and I were both excited when I unveiled it this morning. (OK, I didn't really unveil it. Forgive me for sometimes succumbing to dramatics.) I showed him how each component worked and also talked about why we call it a dressing busy board; I pointed out the buttons on his shirt, and the snap and zipper on his shorts. I thought the zippers and buttons on the board would be the main attraction for him--and he did at first go right for the big zipper--but he ended up mostly concentrating on the buckle and the bow. It took him at least a dozen tries, but he eventually got the hang of the buckle. Most kindergarteners still struggle with tying their shoes so I would have been shocked if he'd figured out the bow in one school session. He enjoyed struggling with it, though, regardless of the final outcome. (He started asking me about tying, and how it's done, a few months ago; he loves playing with string and ribbons and shoelaces, "tying up" his toys or stuffed animals or parents.) Unlike the hardware busy board, this one will take a while for Parker to master, which will help teach him perseverance and patience. The process of making the busy board offered me ample opportunities to practice those traits; I'm happy to pass along the fun.

Mission Accomplished

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you...

The Dressing Busy Board!

Resurrection

THIS WEEK'S ACTIVITIES:

• Transferring
• Pouring
• Using Tongs
• Bead Stringing
• Clothespins
• Bottles and Tops
• Hardware Busy Board
• Dusting
• Sweeping
• Cleaning Surfaces

Here's what you might call an anti-revelation: 24 hours per day is just not enough. Hasn't every human being, living and dead, uttered this aggravating truth at least once in their life? I can even imagine neanderthals feeling frustrated by the fact that they couldn't hunt and gather everything they needed to hunt and gather before the day was done. The crazy thing about this not-enough-hours-in-the-day syndrome from which I'm currently suffering is that I can recall periods in my life when I would cast about for ways to while away those self-same, now insufferably insufficient hours. Double feature at the cinema? Awesome, that should kill at least four hours! Brand new Tony Hillerman book? See you in 48 hours, world! Slightly dirty car? If I go slow, cleaning it should take something like three whole hours! And if all else failed, I would just lay down in bed and sleep forever and ever. Now I find myself maintaining a to do list in my head. It remains in my head because I can't really write it down--I'm constantly having to reorganize it, reprioritizing and reprioritizing and reprioritizing as the day unfolds and Life gets in the way of me actually accomplishing anything.

OK, I know what your thinking: welcome to parenthood, and stop whining already. I'm not the only one who experiences a time crunch on a daily basis. Come to think of it, I'm pretty fortunate. Sure, my husband works a TON, but it's not like I'm trying to hold down three jobs while raising four kids. I'm responsible for raising (and now educating) one kid as well as for performing my housewifely duties. But [she says in her most plaintive voice] I want to blog, too! Well, you can guess where this blog repeatedly landed on my to do list this past week. That's right, at the bottom. One of the very worst things about getting sick is that Life refuses to stop (or even slow down!) while you're under the weather, so there's always an insane amount of catching up to do once you finally make it back on your feet. Plus, we were not only recovering from illness this week, but also from the St. John Festival. Yes yes, boo hoo hoo, we had to "endure" our island's carnival celebration this past weekend. Life is so hard. I just mention it because returning to work/school after being sick is hard enough; returning after being sick and after a holiday weekend kind of knocks the wind out of your sails. OK, enough with the sob story. Wait, did I mention it's incredibly, uncomfortably hot right now? There, now I'm done with the violins.

Here's the thing: I definitely could have accomplished everything--including blogging--if I'd really wanted to. It would have just meant quite a lot of multitasking. My mom is a champion multitasker, so I know I have the skills, genetically-speaking. And I know that motherhood as a rule requires at least some degree of multitasking (fixing a broken toy while making dinner, folding laundry while playing with blocks, nursing while trimming fingernails), but it just doesn't come naturally to me. I do not have a type A personality; I'm not ambitious, I'm not an over-achiever. More importantly, I hate feeling frantic and I hate hurrying. So when my to do list looks super long, I just let stuff fall by the wayside. I'm the tortoise, and I don't really care if I win the race in the end. (Though I do care if I blog or not, so I'm going to have to remember that when I'm reprioritizing. Really, isn't blogging way more important than spotless floors and pristine toilets?)

I was thinking about multitasking (and my aversion to it) while out walking this morning, and it dawned on me that when I do multitask, it almost always detracts from my parenting skills. The minute I set out to accomplish something while I'm actively mothering (that is, while my son is awake), the probability that I will lose my patience/temper and fly off the handle increases tenfold. Whether it's cleaning the bathrooms, writing an e-mail, creating school supplies (like that darned dressing busy board) or cooking dinner, the task at hand becomes my main focus, and I'm no longer mindful of myself as a mother. I interact with my son distractedly and doing so quite often results in discordance between the two of us. This is not to say that my child can't/doesn't play by himself for periods of time throughout the day; or that I can't occupy myself, cleaning or cooking or reading or what have you, while he's doing so. The distinction is that I'm still mainly focused on being a mom during those times, so I'm not frustrated or upset when my son inevitably interrupts me and I have to stop what I'm doing. (And the interruptions are not only inevitable but incessant: whether it's that he has to go pee or he's hungry or thirsty or that he has a question about big rigs or pulleys or that he wants to simply narrate his actions to me.) When my own personal agenda supersedes my job of parenting my son, that's when my son's interruptions ogre-fy me, and calm, patient, loving mommy becomes angry, mean, yelling mommy. So, though I know plenty of people can multitask their hearts out to no ill effect, it's just not for me. And if, because of this, the house occasionally stays slightly unkempt or my mom's phone calls don't always get returned or I ignore my blog for over a week, then that's OK. I'd rather be a calm, patient underachiever than a stressed out, ogre-y overachiever.

Postscript: School went well this week. Parker's movements are becoming more refined and he seems to be able to focus on the activity at hand for longer periods of time (rather than, for instance, spilling all the beads and rolling them around the tray after only a few minutes of actual bead stringing). I did get a lot of work (read: sewing) done on the dressing busy board during his naps this past week (usually I blog while he naps), so I'll finish that this weekend and introduce it on Monday. Then we'll start sensorial activities, which should be very fun and exciting. I'll discuss these sensorial activities--and why they're part of our curriculum--more in an upcoming post.