Luckybeans

It's That Time of Year

As in, the last few weeks of term, and Simon is about to start traveling in earnest. I can't predict how often I will be able to check in with this space-- it is likely to be spotty at best until mid-June. Thanks for hanging in there.

Before I disappear beneath a pile of papers and projects, a recap of Asher's field trip:

We went to a local managed forest where the Tree Guy gave us a guided tour through different habitats, areas, etc. I have always been skeptical of logging practices (at best), so this tour helped me to feel a bit more reassured. This is a family owned company who want to be in this for the long term, so they need to maintain a sustainable approach in order to profit economically. While there were areas of clear cut, there were also protected areas and a degree of education and awareness regarding watersheds, habitat protection, etc that I appreciated. I especially noticed how much planting and managing techniques differed between plantings from even thirty years ago and those from the last few years. A lot of improvement, which is hopeful. 

Asher and his friend in the trees.

Can you identify these trees?

Oxalis, mossy trunks, a bumblebee in the salal, wet thimbleberry flowers.

Beautiful paths and canopy.

Mushrooms, newt, false solomon's seal, wild iris, snails.

Learning about animals tracks, wood beetles and how to identify mosses.

The day itself involved lots of running after hoards of children through beautiful forests with a very knowledgable guide and capable teacher. It was pretty great, actually. We had loads of fun, learned a lot and found oodles of newts. All we could ask for.

I also learned that we can show up at the office and get a permit to hike on these trails on our own. Guess where we'll be this summer...

Real Oregonians

Simon and Asher made a covered wagon. A real one, with all of the authentic parts, including tongues and axels and drawstrings (which are not tied in the photos, which explains why the cover does not appear tidy-- my fault, not the design) and other things I don't know about. It is packed with blankets, pots, bags of flour and coffee and beans, rope, tools and even a butterchurn.They are ready for anything, I tell you.

And in case you spotted the Nike swoosh on the upcycled wagon cover-- well, Nike is legit Oregonian, too. 

We have arrived.

Keeping Up with the Sickies

It is an interesting thing to be responsible for sick children in the midst of it all. The outside world doesn't grind to a halt just because someone else needs you right now. Papers must be written, analysis run, labs completed, books read, lectures attended. Floors must be swept, dishes cleaned, laundry washed, food prepared, seeds watered. Paperwork must be completed, bills paid, ballots signed and delivered, permission slips checked off, phone calls and emails returned. And on top of it all, Simon is on another coast (at least on the same continent, though) which means I must juggle it all on my lonesome.

I should be a jibbering wreck. I really should be.

Do you sense the "but" coming?

Here it comes:

I am not. It has been a blessing. No, not the vomit bowls and yucky tissues flung far and wide and the trips to the doctor who could not identify what the heck that rash was, no sirreee. Not those parts. The slowing down and taking time to be with people who need me because I love them and they are my people parts. 

I ate later breakfasts and turned in work that was less than perfect, but perfectly satisfactory. I read lots of Calvin and Hobbes and Asterix and Elsa Beskow. I watched someone play Oregon Trail and far too many episodes of Kipper and the Muppet Show.

I hung laundry out to dry with Bella, and sat on the grass beside her while she read.

I had Asher help water those seeds and we took the time to savor the garden.

I spent a long time watching him kick a soccer ball around, his stream of chatter completely uninterrupted the entire time (seriously-- look how often his mouth is open; it's because he is TALKING).

Tomorrow we are down to one (significantly less) sick boy at home and everyone else back at school. But come Friday, they will all have the day off, and i am looking forward to it. I refuse to be concerned by such trivialities as midterm exams and writing revisions. I have far more important things to attend to.

I also want to express my gratitude to everyone who left comments on this post. It is so encouraging and delightful to hear from you. I wish I had the time to send replies to each and every one of you as you surely deserve, but I just can't right now. So I simply say, thank you.

 

Odds and Ends from Here and There

Alright. This is the last one of the bits and bobs and then we are all nicely documented and caught up just in time to disappear again. Isn't that just how it goes? These are mostly from last week, and of nothing in particular. Just snippets of days to remember.

Asher's toys, Simon working on a bookshelf, squishing Asher, Asher and Bella playing their new game, and me working on finals.

I know I shared this on Facebook, but the other day, after I'd said prayers with Asher, he quietly asked, "Mom, is it possible to say prayers for anyone who might need it, even if we don't know who they are?" I still tear up thinking about his soft voice in the darkened room. The earnest sincerity and unself-consciousness of it. It has also reminded me to really think about what I do as a parent. How my job is not to teach my children things, but to provide them with the tools and environment that enables them to become the shining people they intrisically are and yearn to be. Because I couldn't teach Asher to pray like that. So humbling, in the very best of ways.

And since I'm on a parenting/ my kids are awesome kick anyway, there is also this: Ai Ana will complete her first Fast this evening. For nineteen days, she has not eaten or drunk from sunrise to sundown. She has handled it all with a grace and ease I find astounding. She is now at the point where she can accomplish things which I cannot (ie-lasting for more than three hours without crumpling into a pathetic ball of exceedingly cranky misery). Sometimes the older I get, the less certain I feel that I understand much of anything at all. I'm just lucky I get to come along for the ride.

 

Did I Tell You?

DId I tell you that one sunny day, no one else wanted to go out and play, but Asher and I did?

Did I tell you of how we ran in and out of an old stone chimney and took photos whilst flying off the end of the teeter-totter and flying on the swing?

Did I tell you of how we climbed on trees and in them and around them?

Did I tell you of finding centipedes under rocks and minnows and pagodas and a stream that someone walked in with his shoes still on?

Did I tell you how the stream ran into the river, or how the river swept over the roots and rocks, dancing, sparkling in the sunlgiht with its own bright song?

Did I tell you of the blue bend in the water and dropping stones from the bridge with a great splash?

We had a grand time, did boy and I.

One on One

Our lives these days are busy. We all have work and school, Baha'i activities, chores and unforeseen demands. The days are short, and time seems compressed in that funny winter way I am learning to anticipate. Finding the individual time for my children has taken a bit of creaitivity. Bella and Asher both like to help in the kitchen, so we often get a few minutes there. Asher's bedtime is earlier than the girls, which guarantees him a chat on his way to sleep, and the girls get theirs later. Ana likes to come with me on errands, and Bella likes to settle next to me whenever I have a project underway. None of this is planned, but it has emerged with time and a bit of awareness.

One of my favorite ways to spend time with Asher is on afternoon walks. Some days he comes home all out of sorts, or fogged up and mentally rumpled. Throwing on our coats and boots, we go for a walk together, letting the wind blow the wrinkles of the day smooth.

 These are such special times for the two of us, stumping along and searching for treasure or something new to explore. Sometimes almost no words pass between us, other times he is a font of ceaseless chatter. We usually walk the same route, circling back home in about an hour, fresh and full and connected again.

Oh My Golly Gosh

What a week this is turning out to be! We have certainly covered the good, the bad and the ugly quite throroughly.

I had my last visit to the doctor for a good while (I hope), but Ana caught a virus that laid her flat and then Asher caught a stomach virus. He woke me up at 2am, having vomited copiously all over his bed, the carpet, the bathroom... I have never missed Africa and her tiled floors so much as I did at 3am this morning.

Asher is now lying in bed, resting, sleeping, reading and learning how to sip gingerale veeerrrryyyy ssslloowwwwwwlly indeed. This, and apple juice gelatin cubes, is all he's managed to keep down. Poor boy. At least he is no longer panicking and saying he thinks he is going to die.

We have also begun a bit of preparation for Ayyam'i'Ha. We baked pepernoten, haji badam and pecan Mexican wedding cakes (I think the last estimate was around 350 cookies in the house). We put a hyacinth in the family room, sent out parcels and hung up the bird banner. There has been a lot of hiding behind closed doors to work on things. It is that time of year!

Ana's birthday came and went, and was a lovely day. Simon had flowers delivered. Bella made her a prayer book. Asher wrote her a poem. We went out for ice cream, and she got to talk to her daddy (all the way from Juba), her grandparents, and two sets of aunties and uncles.

I finally finished my midterm exams and papers, and caught up on everything I have missed recently. And Simon sent me flowers. That was unexpected, and lovely, and I have learned to appreciate the orange ones, too.

Now if only we could just get healthy, all at once! The sun is shining, the first daffodils are peeping out, and I even spied a solitary crocus on our lawn.

 

 

 

 

Sick Ones

Asher and Bella were both home sick today. My poor kidlets. They spent all day snuggled up in their pajamas, mostly in front of the fire. They read so much I had to do a library run this afternoon to keep them occupied tomorrow while Simon tries to work and I am in class. There is a lot of playing on the iPad, eating clementines, sipping tea and getting dosed with elderberry syrup (which i ought to have done earlier).

I always feel so conflicted when I have to go to class and they are home sick. I know they are perfectly content and cared for, but part of me still wants to be sitting on the end of a bed or couch with them, feeling foreheads and pushing liquids, and undoubtedly making a nuisance of myself in that comfrotable way mothers do.

It is just one day. And when I come blowing in at three tomorrow, they will look up at me blinking, wondering why I am spinning in so wildly from wherever it is I have gone, and why on earth I brought them a primrose plant.

Numbers at Nine, Part Four

Once Asher regained his fluidity and felt comfortable exploring numbers and what they represented, we moved on to two other basic concepts: grouping (or subtraction and addition) and multiplication (with division). Both of these processes really contain the aspects of their counterpart within them (as in addition and subtraction) so seperating the functions did not make sense to me. 

Asher already has a good sense of writing out numbers, including place values and what they represent (at least as far as ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands and hundred thousands), so we did not review this. He was not very fast at regrouping, and to be efficient and comfortable with mental arithmatic, this is a necessary skill. I find using mathematically accurate manipulatives to be most helpful in practising this. I bought ours here for $35, and I would not try to teach math without them. They have been in use since they arrived four years ago.

I started him with ten units (single cubes). He played with them for a while, dividing them and handling them. Then I took all ten of them in my hands and hid them. I opened one hand and he had to tell me how many cubes were in each hand (3 out, 7 in; 5 out, 5 in, etc). If he shouted the numbers faster than I did, he won a token (a luckybean). Once he collected ten tokens, he won a square of dark chocolate. We only played this game for three days, and he mastered groupings up to ten.

We are now practicing groupings up to one hundred. I use nine rods of ten and then ten cubes. Now I divide them up under two cloths, and the game continues. Next week, we will likely be ready for numbers up to one thousand. 

As Asher was handling the cubes, he started building with them. This led to a natural exploration of squaring and cubing numbers. When he held a single cube, it led him to think about dimesions. All of this easily transitioned into discussing multiples and divisions. 

Again, the rods, squares and cube provided an easy visual for multiplication. But here is where you can get really tricky! A huge variety of resources and games exist for exploring and practicing multiplication tables. RIght now, we are still exploring and conceptualizing, not memorizing, so here are the materials I am using:

1. A Waldorf style math board (base ten). Asher and I hammered ten nails into a scrap of plywood in a circle, drew the numbers on in Sharpie, and found a scrap of yarn to do this. There is a good video illustrating how to use this tool here. However, I had one major issue with it as it does not explain why you can reverse the direction when doing the complimentary times table. Asher and I discussed this on our own, though, and then it all made sense to him. 

2. We did some skip counting (ie-- counting by twos, eights, etc). However, I find this more helpful at the memorization, not conceptualization, stage as it is very easy for Asher to forget that multiplying and dividing also represent groups of things (as in 2x4 means two groups of four). 

3. We have all of these multi-pies from the toymaker printed out. (Image from thetoymaker.com). They are fabulous! They show the numbers' relations to one another in groupings, so they can be used to both mulitply and divide. Plus they are pretty and free.

As we move into memorization, I am sure I will add more tips and tricks here. One thing I do try and do is to recite any math facts both backwards and forwards, and in compliments (learn both multiplication and division at the same time so that 3x7 is 21, and 21 divided by 3 is 7, etc).

Little Bits

Just a few things we did around the house last week that were fun.

Ana made a model of a dna strand complete with phosphorous and start and stop codons.

She and Asher also made bouncy balls..

...and fake snow (and Asher made his hedgehog a cardboard and duct tape house).

Nothing earth shattering. Except perhaps the sunlight in those photos.