I Want My Four Dollars

We ended up having another field trip yesterday. After a couple weeks of being carless (and having frequent car trouble for several weeks before that), our cupboards were decidedly bare. And I'd already used up the black ink cartridge in my new printer; not by printing scads of super fun school materials, but by printing out menu covers for my husband's restaurant. A trip to St. Thomas to do some big-box store shopping was unavoidable. So I skipped my morning walk yesterday, loaded the cooler in the car and drove down to ferry dock instead (with Parker ensconced in his car seat, of course). My shopping list was four stores long (Home Depot, OfficeMax, Kmart and Cost-U-Less, St. Thomas's Costco), and I always get a little harried when I'm hurrying to catch the ferry (for no good reason, since there's always another one arriving within a half hour), but I did remember to grab the four dollars Parker received in a birthday card from his grandparents. (My in-laws didn't just give him cash for his birthday. They sent him actual gifts, too.) Aboard the car barge, on our way to St. Thomas, I gave Parker his four dollars--he'd already declared his intent to use it to buy (toy) cars--and told him he could spend it while we were shopping, if he saw something he liked. I figured we could do some "unschooling" on St. Thomas with those four dollars. Parker and I would have to talk about money, math (what does four dollars buy?), limited resources (it doesn't buy much!) and how to conduct a financial transaction. I intended to give as little input as possible; I wanted the whole episode to instill in him a sense of independence.

Parker asked if we could go to Kmart (or, as he used to call it, the "car store") first. I guess those four dollars were burning a hole in his pocket already. The toy car aisle is all the way in the back of the store, and he fairly ran there, he was so excited. The conversation about limited resources started almost immediately; Parker kept selecting big ticket items, like Hot Wheels tracks and Cars (the Pixar movie) characters. He'd see something he liked, then ask me its price. We talked about "more" and "less"--for instance, if something cost eight dollars, I'd ask Parker whether he had enough money to buy it. "No, Mommy, I need more money for Snot Rod." He did find finally find a few toys he liked, each of which cost about four dollars (thankfully, there's no sale tax here so I didn't have to try to calculate that in), and was having trouble deciding which to buy. That's when I said, "Hey, Bubs, did you know that these Hot Wheels cars each cost only about one dollar? You have enough money to buy three of these cars." Good thing we got an early start yesterday, because that occasioned much more debating and dithering. I could definitely see the wheels turning in his little head as he tried to wrap his brain around the fact that he could use his four dollars to purchase either one single toy or three other toys. Value is such a crazy, intangible concept, is it not?

Well, in the end he decided to buy three Hot Wheels vehicles (one race car, one truck, one plane). He loves those little mass-produced toys so much that I'm sure he would have gladly spent all four of his dollars to buy just one. The fact that he could purchase three obviously elated him. We made our way to the registers and proceeded to practice waiting patiently. It always (always!) takes at least 15 minutes to get through the lines at the St. Thomas Kmart; poor Parker was ready to burst by the time it was finally his turn to pay. He conducted the transaction by himself, and was ecstatic when the saleslady gave him thirteen cents back, in addition to his new toys. It was pretty fun to watch. I wish the rest of the shopping we did yesterday had been as amusing.

In the car, on ferry, clutching his four dollars.

OK, I'm ready to go pay!

Making propellor plane sound effects.

Postscript: The North American Montessori Center's Montessori Homeschool Program is giving away one free program. I'm linking to their site here in order to try to win. I've never ever won anything in my life, but I'd sure like to win this. I mean, I'm having fun getting all crafty and creating our homeschool materials, but man would it be awesome to have the real thing to help me educate my son.

Field Trip

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Making Patterns
• The Phonetic Alphabet
• Zoology - Anteaters
• Basic Weather Phenomena

Phew. I am finally sitting down. Sometimes, Manic Mondays reduce me to incoherence. My landlady just dropped by with a birthday present for Parker (who turned 4 yesterday!), and I couldn't complete a single sentence whilst briefly conversing with her. I'm pretty sure she is now convinced I've completely lost my marbles. Oh well. She's lived in the Caribbean for over thirty years. She's used to crazy people by now.

Well, both Parker and I woke up this morning still pretty exhausted from yesterday's birthday festivities. But I had high hopes--as well as a long "to do" list--for today. You see, Jack the Traveling Mechanic came to our house on Saturday and by the time he left, late in the evening, our little green Honda was fixed! What a difference possessing a working vehicle makes! I had a lot I wanted (needed!) to do today, and I absolutely wanted to make sure schooltime happened somewhere in the midst of my chores, too. And naptime; I knew that Parker and I definitely needed naps today. And we were actually doing OK on timing at first, but then my husband called and gave me the best Valentine's Day present ever: our (bright red!) Jeep Cherokee was finally ready to come home! So, just when we were about to start school, Parker and I quickly put our shoes back on, drove our old green Honda down to the bank (mechanics down here take cash, and only cash), waited in line in order to withdraw a bunch of money, stopped at St. John Spice to buy some whole coriander seeds for the restaurant, picked up my husband and drove up to Hally's gravel lot to find our Cherokee fabulously, fantastically fixed. (KNOCK WOOD!) After we paid for the repairs, my husband drove back to work on his own in the Honda and Parker and I drove to the playground in the Cherokee. (That my husband could drive away on his own was cause for joyous celebration; he and I have been sharing a single vehicle for almost six years. It can be a little stressful: two drivers, one car.)

Now, it was almost noon by the time we'd collected the Cherokee and were driving down the hill, back towards Cruz Bay. We definitely could have dutifully returned home, done some school activities, eaten a quick lunch and then settled down for naptime. It was totally possible. Did we? No. I looked at Parker, Parker looked at me, and we drove straight to the playground. Sometimes (especially those times when you've finally gotten your car back after being stuck at home for weeks on end) a field trip is necessary. We had a grand time at the playground today. We experimented with a simple machine (a lever, aka the seesaw), we had fun with gravity (descending and ascending multiple slides), we made patterns out of leaves and rocks, we practiced the letters a, t, n and o (using sand in lieu of salt), we discussed (and then pretended to be) anteaters (digging holes in the sand to look for ants and termites to eat with our sticky tongues), we polished our social skills after meeting a nice little boy and his mother and then we had a quick chat about weather, as some storm clouds approached and we hurriedly gathered our sand trucks and said goodbye to our new friends. (The rain turned out to be fortuitous in that we had enough time after we got home to shower and snack before Parker's afternoon tumbling class.) It was so nice to get out of the house for a while. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Getting Salty

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Cutting
• Pouring
• Attribute Blocks
• Tracing
• The Phonetic Alphabet

Happy Monday. My son and I enjoyed a quiet weekend at home--well, except for the extremely fun birthday party we attended Saturday night. Our Jeep Cherokee is still away at rehab, so we stayed at the house, homeschooling in the morning and doing "snow day stuff" (those things you do when you're stuck at home) in the afternoons. For nameless reasons, I've been thinking (albeit indirectly) about Schrödinger and his notorious cat; wondering whether by "measuring"--closely observing, photographing and then blogging about--our homeschool sessions, I've been in some way influencing (negatively?) my son's learning. For the sake of sanity, I've chosen not to (try to) definitively answer the question. Instead, I decided that it'd probably be a good thing to periodically let homeschool happen away from the scientist's prying eye. This is all to say that, new computer aside, I won't be blogging everyday, about every single homeschool session. I'm pretty positive you'd get bored (and, oh so much more importantly, I'd get bored) if I did.

OK, having said that, I did put on my scientist's hat this morning. Maybe it's because he's a lefty, but Parker is still having trouble using scissors. (Despite the fact that he did, just this morning, while I was out walking and my husband was upstairs showering, climb onto the kitchen counter, grab a bag of organic quinoa out of the cupboard--the most expensive item he could have chosen, of course--use his scissors to open said bag and then pour oodles of quinoa onto his table so that he'd have a pile to push around with his miniature bulldozer.) Parker has been practicing cutting with some colorful strips of paper printed with various types of lines (straight, slanted, chevrons, curvy) which my sister-in-law (a teacher at a public Montessori school out in Colorado) sent me a while back. He hasn't really warmed to the idea that he should actually keep trying to cut along the lines; instead, he's happy just cutting the strips up willy-nilly. I've recently started reading other homeschooling moms' blogs (see my list to the right there?), and got an idea for an alternative scissor practice activity from Counting Coconuts. (You have to scroll down quite a bit to see the heart strips she made for her son. Do not get me started on how incredibly, insanely intimidating the productivity of this woman is. And she lives on an island, too! So I can't even tell myself, "Well, yeah, it's easy for her because she can go to Target and Michael's and stuff!" But she does have magnificent ideas, many of which I find motivating, so I can't help but appreciate all that she does.) The goody bag Parker received as we were leaving Saturday night's birthday party contained a sheet of little frog stickers, upon seeing which I thought, "Perfect! I will commandeer those for the new Counting Coconuts-inspired scissor activity." I cut up long strips of paper, then placed the stickers on the strips, leaving about a centimeter between each sticker. Instead of having to try to cut along a line, Parker just has to cut between the frogs. He sort of liked it. It seems as though he doesn't feel very confident about his scissor skills (notwithstanding this morning's quinoa episode).

We started work on the phonetic alphabet this morning, an activity I saved for last because it involves placing a pan of salt in front of my son--I just knew he'd be itching to get his miniature bulldozer (and other trucks) into that "sandbox" ASAP. The books tell you to introduce only two letters at a time, choosing letters that both sound different and look different. (In other words, don't present "b" and "d" at the same time.) I used an amalgam of two methods this morning, and it seemed to work well with my son, so I'll continue to do so as we slowly make our way through the alphabet. First, I presented the letter to Parker using a sandpaper letter, saying the sound of the letter and using my finger to trace the shape of the letter in the same way I would write it. I then gave him a turn with the sandpaper letter, asking him to repeat the sound of the letter, and then trace it with his finger the way I'd shown him. After he'd done that for a bit, and was reliably tracing the letter in the right direction, I slid the sandpaper letter aside and placed a cake pan--its bottom covered with table salt--in front of him. I repeated the phonetic sound of the letter, then used my finger to "write" the letter in the salt. I passed the pan to Parker, asking him to say the sound, then "write" the letter in the salt himself.

I was (understandably) both immensely excited and awfully nervous to embark on this letter endeavor today. Our homeschool thus far has been mostly fun; my son has been learning almost accidentally as he's worked with the Montessori materials I've prepared for him. Teaching him the phonetic alphabet seemed to me so much more like "real" instruction. "Will he be even remotely interested?" I asked myself. "Will I have to ceaselessly cajole him to sit down and learn his letters?" (If the answer to that first question had been no, then I'd have put the materials away and tried again in a month or so. At least, I'd like to think I'd have done that.) Well, while my son didn't exactly exude jubilance while learning the letters a and t this morning, he did act attentive and I could tell that he derived some pride from his efforts. Because Parker is left-handed, demonstrating how to trace/write the letters posed a bit of problem for me. In order to properly show him how to do it, I had to trace/write with my own left hand, and it was almost as if I was also learning how to write the letters a and t. I actually finally understood why all those ignorant educators way back when found it easier to just force left-handed children to use their right hands. It probably made teaching writing so much simpler (for the teachers, of course, not for the actual students). The only other (minor) issue I had this morning was the problem of working with salt in a tropical environment. It's just too humid here. The salt kept sticking to Parker's hands, and clumping up. But if that's the biggest hurdle we have to face while working our way through the phonetic alphabet, then I'll count myself lucky.

"I'm ready to just play now."

Parker working with his Aunt Mandi at Ross Montessori School last September.

Shaping Up

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Geometric Insets
• Matching Two-Dimensional Shapes
• Basic Land Forms
• Basic Weather Phenomena
• Ocean Animals and Their Habitat

We started today's homeschool session by tracing some shapes, which allows Parker to practice using a pencil (thereby helping prepare him for writing). I made the geometric insets out of some brightly colored foam sheets my mom sent us. Parker loved the way they looked and felt; he spent a few minutes taking the shapes out of their frames, feeling their edges, stacking them and lining them up. They ended up being all form, no function, though: the supercool foam just wasn't sturdy enough to trace around. I quickly grabbed the plastic template I'd used to make the insets--which I'd deemed not preferable as a learning tool due to its jumbled appearance--and let Parker use that instead. It worked fine, and Parker had a grand time tracing shapes. After he completed each shape, I had him draw horizontal lines, from left to right, within it (more pencil practice). (The plastic template is from a Learning Resources Attribute Block Set, a very neat and versatile product I look forward to doing more with soon.)

Oops, too flimsy. (The pencil kept slipping under the foam.)

Ah, much better.

After tracing, we moved on to matching two-dimensional shapes. In this activity, the child matches gradated circles (or triangles or squares) to corresponding holes/outlines. I painstakingly prepared the materials for this activity yesterday morning, and I have to reveal that my husband laughed when saw the raggedy, misshapen result. In my defense, I could locate only one compass here on island--a cheap, plastic, ineffectual one. I did my best, but even I had to admit that my efforts didn't amount to much. I needn't have worried, for two reasons: Parker didn't seem to notice any of the apparent defects and he took all of thirty seconds to complete the "white puzzle" (as he called it). This activity must not pose much of a challenge to Parker, so its (imperfect) materials will most likely be retired fairly quickly. Since he did complete the purported activity with such ease this morning, I had to brainstorm up some alternative things to do with the gradated circles. We stacked them from biggest to smallest, then smallest to biggest, then lined them up from biggest to smallest. And then we put them away, because after awhile it's hard for a little boy to resist the urge to turn circular objects into wheels. Or frisbees.

Hmm, I don't think this is quite right.

All done.

While we were in California last October, I spent a couple hours perusing the aisles of Morrison School Supplies. I, of course, wanted to buy at least half of what I found there; if only homeschool supplies were government-subsidized! I allowed myself a (crammed) basketful of educational materials, which I'm slowly but surely presenting to Parker. The Learning Resources Attribute Block Set was in that basket, and so were two sets of Creative Teaching Press photo cards (Our Earth and Understanding Weather). We studied the photo card sets for the first time today. Though (or because?) our own weather can get to be pretty boring (85 and sunny, day after day, for days on end, ho hum), Parker loves talking about snow and rain, wind and fog. He'll announce that it's "freezing cold" outside, and tell me it's time to (pretend to) put on our hats, coats and mittens. So he definitely liked looking at the weather photo set. And we've also been talking about different ecosystems; of course the one in which we live, but also forests, deserts, and the like. The earth forms photo set helped further our previous discussions.

The Ohio inspiration.

In anticipation of our arrival in Ohio last September, my mother-in-law had put the materials for various Montessori activities out on her pink shelves for Parker to work with throughout our stay. He particularly liked the farm animal habitat activity. Using some pieces of felt, miniature farm animals and popsicle sticks, he made a farm, complete with pens for the animals. He had a ball opening the pens to let the animals out so they could drink from the pond and taking the animals out to pasture. Watching him work, I made a mental note to pick up some felt before we returned home. In addition to the farm habitat, I've made a forest animal habitat and an ocean animal habitat. The ocean animal habitat consists of sand, shallow water, coral reefs and deep water. While Parker plays with the assorted sea animals, we talk about who lives where, what they eat and how they defend themselves. Sometimes the ocean animals decide they need to go swim in some real water (read: the bathtub).

Ocean animals at play.

Walking Down the Street

Well, we found out last night that it wasn't the thermostat that was causing our Jeep Cherokee to overheat; it was the head gasket (I think?). Now, even though I religiously listen to Car Talk, I really don't know much about automobiles. Apparently, a broken head gasket is a Really Big Deal, and means pretty much the same thing as a broken engine. This, in turn, means that we will be vehicle-less for at least a week while the mechanics rebuild the top half of our Cherokee's engine. Hooray. So this morning, instead of doing a good hour or two of homeschooling and then zipping down the hill to pay rent and pick up some groceries before lunch, my son and I put on our walking shoes and embarked on a fun-, sweat- and errand-laden peregrination through our neighborhood.

Living on a small island is much akin to living in a small town: we were constantly stopping to socialize as we made our way through Cruz Bay. From the woman who owns the bakery (breakfast was our first priority this morning) to the two lovely librarians (our library books were of course due today) to the man who sells us our internet service (the internet was inexplicably down this morning) to the hardware store owners (suddenly Parker is fascinated by hooks, especially when attached to a string, so we stopped to get him one, which I tied to a piece of thread) to the Mail Center employees to the woman at the smoothie stand to the grocery clerk to the assorted friends and acquaintances we kept running into (thankfully not literally), my son had ample opportunity to practice his social skills today. To continue with the theme, we ate dinner at my husband's restaurant earlier this evening after returning my husband's partner's car, which I'd been able to borrow this afternoon to shop for enough food and water to hopefully last us until our Cherokee is fixed. (Have I mentioned that we live uphill from downtown? Carrying sacks of groceries, jugs of water and a 42-pound kid up the insanely steep hill atop which sits our island home is high on my list of activities to avoid.) Parker sat at the bar, ate his fish and fries and chatted with his favorite lady friend (blonde and gorgeous, naturally), several of the customers, the bartender and wait staff. My son and I will be fairly isolated--stuck without wheels at home--for a while starting tomorrow, so I figured a day of running around, out and about, would be good, for both of us.

Postscript: This repair on our Cherokee is going to cost us an arm and a leg. While we have our wallet figuratively open, I thought, "Hey, why not spend another arm or so on a printer?" Reading about all the homeschool materials I'll be needing to prepare in the coming months, I'd been realizing that a home printer would be incredibly handy to have. So I ordered one today. Of course, my husband-the-techie made me get a much fancier one than I'd at first selected ("But with this one we'll be able to print from our phones!"), but that's OK. I'll have fun watching him nearly levitate with glee the first time he presses "Print" on his iPhone.

The library books we borrowed today.

Parker's hook (which he's been merrily using to raise and lower a countless number of household items).

Best Laid Plans

Cruz Bay Playground, Post-Earl

My son and I leave tomorrow, and we won't return to our little island home until the end of October. Imagining our homeschooling materials sitting neglected on their shelves in Parker's closet, gathering dust in our absence, I was determined to do as much homeschooling with my son as possible prior to our departure. I knew I'd miss our Montessori mornings, and I was pretty sure Parker was going to, too, regardless of the occasional "But I don't like school!" utterances. Well, best laid plans, and all that. Mother Nature decided to give us a practical life lesson all her own in the form of Hurricane Earl. We spent most of Sunday getting ready for Earl, all of Monday hunkered down and the majority of yesterday cleaning up after Earl (category 4 hurricanes leave behind quite a LOT of debris). This morning I was busy doing loads (upon loads upon loads) of laundry (our bed sheets were disgusting--you get really sweaty sleeping with no electricity and your house all shuttered up), and this afternoon I'll be packing, so our school stuff has already acquired a thin coat of dust and we haven't even left yet.

Not being able to do school aside, we were incredibly fortunate this week. We were without power for about 36 hours (an amazingly small amount of time--go WAPA!) and we were greeted with a big ol' mess on our deck when we opened up our hurricane doors yesterday morning. (And I wasn't actually upset about the mess! I'd just spent 24 hours stuck inside, and we couldn't leave the house once Earl had passed because there was a curfew in effect--not to mention most roads were impassable--so I took one look at the muddy, leafy pond that our deck had become and attacked all that debris with the vigor of one who has been sitting around, twiddling her thumbs, for hours and hours.) If all you have to complain about after a category 4 hurricane is a brief power outage and a muddy mess, then count yourself lucky. I went out walking this morning and saw dozens of downed power lines, huge trees uprooted and beautiful sailboats sadly washed up on shore. I came home humbled by the devastation I'd witnessed. Count us lucky, indeed.

Tomorrow we leave for Ohio, the first leg of our trip. We're actually flying into Detroit (cheaper airfare that way), and my in-laws plan on taking Parker and me to the Detroit Zoo after they pick us up, before the two-hour drive to Milan, Ohio. I'm sure my son and I will be doing some sensorial and language activities while we're in transit, as well as some "unschooling" at the zoo, and I'm sure I'll be blogging about it all soon.

Sailboats Washed Up

(from St. John Source)

Practical Life Activity: Helping with the Clean Up

Fun with Mops during Earl

Home vs. Un

At the Library

Well, this morning resembled most other Monday mornings for us. Parker and I were both excited to do school (he pulled out the shelves himself almost immediately after I came home from my walk), but we had a laundry list of errands to do before we could start our school day (DMV, library, hardware store, cable bill payment, mail center). However, instead of hurrying through our errands (is it even possible to rush through the DMV?) in an attempt to squeeze in some school before naptime, I slowed down and looked around for learning opportunities while we were out and about. I wrote earlier about how I'm just starting to accept the (somewhat ego-deflating) fact that my son learns just as much outside of school as he does during our homeschooling sessions. (So much for my dreams of becoming a homeschool teacher extraordinaire!) This is especially true when I make a concerted effort to teach him about things throughout the course of the day. For example, on one of our many recent trips to the DMV, I saw a paperclip lying on the ground; I picked it up, told Parker what it was and showed him how it worked. I compared it to the staple that was holding my sheaf of DMV paperwork together and had Parker practice using the paperclip. (Sure, the paperclip was technically trash--who knows how many people had stepped on it already--but we were waiting in line at the DMV. What else were we going to do?) This morning, on our final (huzzah!) trip to the DMV, Parker crawled under my chair and told me he was a baby chinchilla growing inside an egg and that I was sitting on top of him to keep him warm until he hatched. This started a conversation about chinchillas and, inevitably, a debate (OK, argument) about how baby chinchillas are born.

Before I started this homeschooling adventure, I'd thought that choosing to keep one's child out of formal school-like institutions in favor of educating him in the home was as extreme as a parent could get with regard to her offspring's education. Silly me, there's no such thing as "the most extreme" in this country. Apparently, some people consider homeschooling to be too rigid and choose to "unschool" instead. Unschooling is an educational philosophy created in the 1970s that is focused on letting children learn through "natural life experiences" rather than through a traditional school curriculum. Now, I wouldn't say that our homeschool's Montessori-inspired syllabus resembles a "traditional school curriculum" by any means, but I do have to admit (as I did a couple posts ago) that the structure of our homeschool seems to sometimes chafe my son's sensibilities. In light of this (also because I'm just naturally incredibly curious), I've read a bit about unschooling, and I've found it inspiring. I'm not going to quit the Montessori method or anything, but I do find it both exciting and freeing to view the world at large as an (amazingly complex and stimulating!) extension of our little homeschool.

It wasn't like I was an automatron mom before I discovered this thing called unschooling. Anyone who has a small child knows that parenting pretty much equals teaching, particularly during the first few years of life. But I can't say I was always seeking out teaching opportunities, and I can say that, since we started homeschooling, I've often felt harried as I've tried to zip through chores and errands so that my son and I can do school most every morning. Well, this morning I had unschooling in mind. I didn't hurry and, though we didn't do any of our homeschool activities, my son discussed anatomy, zoology and pest control with me, practiced tracing uppercase letters and observed commerce in action. And, since we weren't trying to hurry home to do school, we were able to enjoy a pleasant lunch together at our local bakery. (And I was CALM the whole time!)

Postscript: The library had some leftover workbooks lying about on a table by the checkout counter today. Parker spontaneously opened one up, asked to borrow a crayon and started tracing some letters. Also (as I mentioned in a previous post), he's been very interested in his body and how it works. Since he has absolutely loved his two Usborne "Flip Flap" books about (respectively) farms and airports, I purchased the Usborne "See Inside Your Body" flap book for him, even though it's technically for ages 8 and up. He gets very intent when we read it. So far, he likes the sections about the respiratory system and the digestive system best. This morning, as he was drinking some water, Parker said, "And you know, Mommy, when I drink water it slides down my throat into my bladder and then I pee it out." I smiled and replied, "Well, I'm pretty sure the water goes into your tummy first." There was a brief pause and then Parker pedantically responded, "No, Mommy, not my tummy. My stomach."

Lunch

Gratuitous Picture

(Island Animal Life)

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.

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.

The Rigors of Routine

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Cleaning Surfaces
• Using Tongs
• Transferring
• Sweeping
• Dusting
• Hardware Busy Board
• Using Tongs

It's pretty crazy how the bar just rises and rises and rises when it comes to parenting. I don't know if I'm alone in doing this, but I tend to conduct a mental tally at the end of each day; a sort of "How was my mothering?" reckoning. When my son was an infant, I gave myself a hearty pat on the back at night if he'd nursed, napped and pooped, and a bonus pat if there'd been minimal crying involved. Pretty soon, though, that wasn't enough; I was supposed to give him bouts of tummy time during the day, too. Then, my baby was supposed to be rolling over on a daily basis, then grabbing toys, then sitting up, then crawling, then starting to talk, then walking, then feeding himself... And was I reading books to him everyday, and was I helping him learn his colors and shapes everyday? Was he counting yet? What about socialization? Had I been giving him the opportunity to interact with other children on a daily basis? And making sure he got some exercise on a daily basis? And was he out of diapers yet? And of course I must remember that I'm supposed to be teaching him to mind his manners, to play nice, to not scream and to definitely not throw tantrums, too! Everyday! Was I keeping up? Am I keeping up? PHEW! And my son is only three. Group sports and household chores and after-school jobs and college applications and all that sort of stuff haven't been thrown into the mix. Yet.

I bring this up because my son and I didn't do any school yesterday, and I found myself wracked with guilt about it. It doesn't matter that we had a pretty good, full day otherwise--three square meals mostly consumed, errands run around town, adequate afternoon nap, evening trip to the playground, bath taken, teeth brushed, books read, general happiness, no tantrums. And we accomplished all that despite both of us being pretty sleep-deprived! (Not only had the cat's nocturnal escapades been particularly noisy, but apparently the drunken tourists staying in the vacation rental next door are under the impression that in the Caribbean it's OK to be raucously loud all night long.) But none of it mattered because, in my mind, we skipped school for no good reason (and by "good" I mean tangible, like having a playdate to attend). Three weeks ago, before I started on this homeschooling adventure, I would have considered a day like yesterday a smashing success. Instead, I ended up berating myself because I hadn't forced school to happen. (I did try, but Parker kept saying he was tired, and I was tired, too. So we went to the market and shopped for groceries and took turns pushing the cart and weighed various items on the produce scale.)

The thing is, though, that one of the great benefits of (and arguments for) homeschooling--especially with regard to young children--is that you and your kid(s) don't have to be slaves to routine. Looking back on my own childhood, I can recall plenty of rough mornings with my parents and sisters, struggling to get to work/school on time on the heels of a restless night. Some mornings you're sick, or your kid is, or neither of you slept well, or you both woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or whatever. The point is, some mornings can be rougher than others. Rushing small children in the aim to get them ready and out the door on time poses enough of a challenge as it is. Add in illness and/or grumpiness and your day is almost definitely off to a sorrowfully stressful start. Is sticking to the schedule worth it when it ends up engendering stress and unhappiness (and sometimes even anger and upset)? Obviously, kids need to learn about responsibility, about reliability. We can't just take "personal health" days whenever we want to, and our children should come to understand that. But my son is three. Should I really have disregarded our mutual feelings of fatigue just to do some school, just because "that's what we do?" Parker observes his dad go to work almost everyday, he's with me everyday as I do chores and run errands, there are already nonnegotiable parts of the day, everyday (napping, picking up, bathing, brushing teeth); he's undoubtedly learning about responsibility. The choice--nay, privilege--to homeschool offers the opportunity to make sure my son also learns about prioritizing, about sometimes placing health and happiness above the rigors of routine.