It was day two of returning to schoolwork. I feel embarrassed talking about "returning to schoolwork" because I really wish that schoolwork wasn't something we did. I wish it was just a part of life, and not something we would take a break from or anything. Yet, in many ways, we needed this break, and in another way, we need to return to it. What we took a break from was me directing the kids activities as much. We needed that. I was in a bad place. But at the same time, without me directing more, they tend to get really stuck in ruts. One voice inside me argues "but maybe those ruts are where they need to be?" That is countered by how destructive the ruts end up being. The kids spend way to much time begging me to play but without us actually able to get playing, and they fight way too much. It just... its not nice.
The thing is, on good days, the schoolwork does flow out of being schoolwork and into just being life. We do some math and some reading and writing. We read some history, and I find something for them to do as a science experiment. Sometimes things go well, sometimes they flop. On a good day, I don't end up finishing my planned activities, because the kids end up suggesting even better things. Today Merritt had better ideas for science than I had, so we went with his plan. On good days my stuff can be the push that gets the playful adventures going.
Yesterday and today have been very good. Alex has been determined to do schoolwork just like his older brother, so I end up setting him on one math task (like stacking blocks on number cards to match the numbers) while I play a math game with Merritt. Then I put Merritt on a math task while I play a math game with Alex. When Merritt is doing writing practice, Alex wants to too. He'll get out a sheet of paper and a pencil and go "what's my words?" And so I've given him words to practice - mainly ones with the letters s, a, m, t, b, and today I introduced e.
My main goal for Merritt right now it to try to get him to realize how capable he is at everything. I'm giving him really easy math worksheets because I want to get him into the habit where he feels confident doing math worksheets. I want to encourage a sort of "bring it on" attitude about them. And with games we're going to slowly work through the multiplication table. I'm going to stick to multiples of three this week and then slowly work our way up. With writing, I just want him to realize he can do it. With reading, I want to teach him more of the rules for figuring out what sounds are what but also just give him more practice to develop fluency. I think I want to introduce simple puzzles and games and try to encourage him to find new ideas and solutions to things.
With Alex: I'll slowly introduce him to the letters, using the method in All About Spelling. He wants to write, but he also wants to hold his pencil in a fist still. Is that okay or should I fight with him on that? Or discourage writing? Or? With math, we're working on getting a sense of the numbers one to ten, but probably soon I'll also introduce him to the idea of one ten, two tens, etc. I also want to encourage practice cutting things. And Alex wants a lot of special attention right now. He wants to be held lots, and told how much I love him, and he wants me to make crafts with just him. So I'll try to do that as much as possible. He's into nursery rhymes too, and songs, and little games.
All my computer time this week has been sucked up reading election news. I'll resist posting a bunch of stuff here, just a link to http://compellingcomics.justsomegu…. If anyone on my list is debating voting Conservative, I'd love to know why. (I can understand liking some of his policies, though I personally don't like many of them. But how does one support a candidate that has been so dismissive of democracy? Stephen Harper altered the way in which the press has access to him, and has restricted information. He makes scientists answer to politicians before they can speak out. He has been found in contempt of Parliament. He's constantly saying that this election is unnecessary despite the fact that he was provoking it by submitting a budget that he knew none of the other parties could possibly support. He's refusing to answer more than five questions a day. He's encouraging conservative candidates to not show up at debates. People have to register ahead of time to attend any of his public events and people are being thrown out of the events for things on their facebook pages? And one of the campaign operatives attempted to grab a ballot box at a university special ballot initiative. Now there's a question of whether or not his party spent money illegally in putting so many millions of dollars that was supposed to go to the G8 event into unrelated projects in a conservative riding. But... he tells us this is an unnecessary election and despite his holding only a minority of seats he should be able to run the country as though he had a majority? Then there's the old question of organizations that do government funded work - like organizations that help new refugees - being told that they'll be defunded if they speak up against a bad bill his government proposed, and at the same time some of the conservative party sending press released about all different ethnic organizations that they claim supported their bill - ethnic organizations that are apparently so small they have neither a webpage, a mailing address or anything else to identify where they exist. Or the fact that his science minister refused ever to answer whether or not he believed in evolution, because that would be answering a question about his religious beliefs and he doesn't feel he should have to answer questions about his religious beliefs. That's not a religious question people! It's a question of whether a SCIENCE minister believes in one of the major tenants of BIOLOGY.) Okay... I wasn't going to write about the election... but my head was going to explode if I didn't. Who knows, my head might still explode.
Merritt is asking for lunch, so I have to go in a few minutes but I'll try to type fast. Life is fun. I'm busy these days both with my kids and with election related things.
I've been reading about Ancient Greek religion and discussing things about it with Merritt. I'm trying to encourage him to look at it with a sense of wonder and awe. Try to imagine the world as they saw it. Try to see the benefit of the gods as they were to the people involved, rather than view it with the cold scientific skepticism that at six he is already well trained in. There are so many good conversations to be had with him, and so much to learn myself. I'm realizing how little I know about the ancient world. I know bits and pieces but I don't know how they fit together. It is so tempting to study the history of Israel seperate from the history of Egypt, seperate from the history of Greece, seperate from the history of Rome, and really, I want to know how they all fit together. I want to read about Roman and Egyptian religions sometime, because I want to have more of a sense of what religious world Christianity was born out of.
Yesterday I had a "like mother like son" moment at the library. We were there for a story-time with the homeschool group and at some point the story-teller brought out some hearts made of construction paper. Each heart had two colors, a big heart and then a little heart glued to the middle. She was using them to illustrate a song she was going to sing, but the moment she brought them out I became obsessed with the patterning of the colors. When she went to put them away, Merritt called for her to wait a second he wanted to show her something, and guess what, he was analzying the color patterns just as I was.
This week has gone good, schoolwise. We didn't do everything I wanted to, but that was fine. Discussing Gandhi went really, really well. Partly it was because the book we were reading from had the right amount of little stories to illustrate the bigger themes. Partly it was because the topic fits well with other things Merritt already knows about. We could connect the topic of Gandhi's spinning and weaving with what Merritt already knows about colonialism and industrialization. Also, the topic of injustices and struggles for freedom always interests Merritt.
Merritt has requested that next week we study pirates, and the week after dinosaurs, and then Midieval times. That's fine. I've spent some time now getting ready for the Pirates topic. Merritt has long ago had me read him every child's pirate book in our library and the general fluff annoys me so this week I'm getting ready to play games acting out the details of specific eras of piracy. Day one will be the ancient Romans and I have a book with a black and white picture I'll photocopy for him to color of a young Julius Caesar being captured by pirates, and we'll reenact that story. I'm hoping then to use that to discuss how piracy threatened the bread aspect of the "bread and circuses" used to control Rome. Day two is going to be the Barbury & Maltese pirates and we'll discuss the slavery of that era and the way piracy was instituted then and how it affected trade routes. Then I'm not sure if we'll have seperate days on the early and late Carribean pirates or if we'll combine those topics on one day, comparing the blurry boundary between privateers working for the military and the advent of relatively democratic pirates that rejected belonging to any particular nationality. But a history of piracy is actually a wonderful way to review a lot of other world history and I love that Merritt's historical knowledge is such that I think I have a good chance of him understanding some of this. I still have to figure out how to simplify some of the issues though.
About half way through this next week I'll have to start preparing some notes for the dinosaur topic. I'd like to do something comparing the changes in dinosaurs after the continents split apart but I'm having trouble finding resources for that. Still I haven't looked much yet.
I'm also going to continue teaching things from a book I found online called "Playdough economics" about how to teach economic concepts using playdough. I think some of the lessons are better suited to lego, so we'll use lego instead for some, but it is great to have a collection of economic ideas to explain to him. Mainly it is explaining concepts and the more concepts he understands and uses the more fun life is. As he was going to bed last night we were discussing the opportunity costs of playing one computer game verse another.
I didn't think I had much planning to do about the garden, but I'm finding myself thinking of things anyway. I want to move some of my perennials around, so the decorative ones can be outside the food garden (read: in the polluted soil). I also wonder about the mint. Somewhere I heard that peppermint needs new soil every few years because of how much it grows, and I'm wondering if I need to seperate and replant it, but at the same time I'm worried that would just make it more weedy and taking up way too much room. I wouldn't mind doing it if I could get it fully out of where it is now, but I don't want two big patches of it. Maybe I'll just dump another bag of manure on it and hope that feeds it.
I found a bag of frozen basil in my fridge today. The smell is so wonderful. I can't wait to cook some up in an omlette tomorrow.
I was reading from the book Empires of Food, and there's a section that mentions oranges. The line that hit me was: "In 2004, orange groves covered 3.6 million hectares. If every country in the world drank as much orange juice as, say, Germany, we'd need 32 million hectares." (164). Wow. Orange juice is an unnecessary item, with little nutritional value. It is one we don't buy much here. (We buy about two jars of concentrate a year to use in making cream-cheese icing for cakes.) But the thought that really, it is those extra items that take land away from better use... clearing land for orange plantations (like most plantations) is ecologically unsound. when I think of how abundantly and wastefully some people consume fruit juices. I'm not thinking that people should never drink them, but we should do so reverendly, aware of the luxury of it.
You know the whole "clean your plate, there's starving children who would like it" never made sense to me because of course my left-overs weren't going to them. Yet when I think about the worldwide trade in food, there is some truth in it. Many places plant foods to sell to wealthier countries and themselves starve. There is the argument that if we don't buy their foods then the prices go lower and they lose out even more, and after all, they choose to sell the stuff, right? But that is faulty on two parts: one, it ignores the land grabs and the fact that much of the food is grown on corporate land already stolen (or, umm, bought) from the people and they don't have the choice of growing food on it. Two, it ignores the fact that the countries are busy paying off national debts to our countries, and thus they need our money to pay us. They can't just stop growing commodities and grow their own food.
Food justice makes sense.
1)a) Organic food avoids a lot of pollution. b) Buying local means accepting the ecological costs of our food. If watersheds are depleted, we deplete our own, not someone elses. If soil is eroded, it is our own, not someone elses. If water is polluted, it is our own, not someone elses. And we have more incentives to fix the problems. c) Buying fair trade means that when we have to buy international foods, we do so knowing that the farmer benefits and the money isn't all lost in the pockets of multinational corporations.
2) By reducing our food footprint (the amount of land and/or water that goes into producing our food) we leave more for other people. This is important. What little natural land is left in this world is being destroyed.
3) By keeping our food choices moderate we can buy good quality food without spending too much. We give up luxuries but we can buy all organic locally produced grains, beans, meat, vegetables and eggs. We get the best quality food without overspending. The costs is few luxuries. But then we know that we are paying the costs of our foods. We aren't relying on exploited labor, polluting farm practices, etc.
4) Hopefully by keeping our food choices moderate we can also use extra money towards supporting causes we believe in. As long as people are constantly struggling to be able to buy more and more luxuries... then we can't change the system and the system needs to change. We need to stop externalizing the costs of our own decisions, and we can only do that if we believe ourselves capable of doing so. If we believe it would all be way to expensive to pay the real costs of our food (and goods) then we fight against doing so. Only by reducing our desires to what we can afford to pay the true costs of, can we really start to change things.
The kids have been playing great. This morning Merritt was playing a game where he took aspects of a book and translated them into a different setting. He kept explaining parts to me and it was hilarious. In the book some talking animals are trying to get home past a poisonous fog, and he decided in his setting it was a cloud of hydrogen that circled a planet and the animals were in spaceships trying to get past, but they couldn't fly their spaceship through the hydrogen gas because their engines would ignite it.
And Merritt's talk about his story reminded me of something Alex said the other day - I don't know if I wrote this down or not. I might be repeating myself here, but Alex was pretending his bed was a spaceship and he was landing on the sun. I commented that it was pretty hot on the sun and Alex said that it was okay he had his special thermal underwear (an idea he got from his brother, who got it from the computer game Space Quest, where the thermal underwear protects a person from extreme heat). I asked what would protect his spaceship from melting in the heat and Alex looked at me and said "it has legs too." I didn't understand and repeated my question. "It has legs mom!" Alex said, "it can wear thermal underwear too." I thought it was cute.
Anyway, after Merritt finished his game I got him doing his spelling practice. The spelling practice is actually going pretty good, and Merritt has been acknowledging that reading is getting easier for him. Basically I choose a bunch of words with a couple of related spelling patterns and ask Merritt to spell them. We correct each word immediately after he writes it and it isn't a big deal if he gets it wrong, because afterall he's never tried to write the words before. He knows the words will probably have something in common with the other words and afterwards he circles the patterns in them. I adjust the lists as we go along, so today when he spelt "unless" "oonless" I added a couple more "un" words. It gives me a chance to see how he understands the sounds and letters. We're big into drawing diagrams these days, so afterwards we made a venn diagram showing the different ways we can write the vowel sounds ee (like bee) or e (like bed).
Then Merritt got into his own drawing. He started into a story of his own and at some point asked me to write down his brainstorming. He wanted a list of characters for his story, for me to write down what the setting, plot and climax of the story would be. It was funny, because it led to a discussion about how we tell time. He said the story took place in one million BC, but after talking for a minute or two it became obvious he meant a million AD, so we talked about the difference between those, and what AD origionally stood for and how people use CE instead now. He decided he should tell time by when the Green Knight was born, so he decided his story took place in one million AGK, (After Green Knight) but then he thought about it for a minute or two and decided that the Green Knight always existed, but only became what he was during the ancient Greek era, when he became a demi-god. Well, then I had to talk about how people argued about when Jesus first existed, and did he exist before his birth, as some aspect of God or not? Was he around at creation or was he created? It was so fun.
Alex was getting frusturated though, that I was helping Merritt so much. "Merritt's not the only person in the family," he said angrily. I did read and play a bit with him, but I should go do more. Except right now he's playing a variation of battleship with Merritt, and they're arguing over the rules they're making up. So as long as they are relatively happy with that, I should enjoy doing other things and not worrying about them.
One of the things I don't like about having a c-section is the idea of how much garbage and waste will be created. I dislike all the junk from hospitals. I've started taking my own little jar with me to my doctor's office because otherwise they get me to pee in a new plastic cup each time and throw it out. My doctor in Montreal didn't do that. She got everyone to take home and bring back the same little cup. Perhaps people think that is disgusting, but it really isn't a big deal. Anyway, the hospital will mean a lot of extra waste, and I dislike that. It seems stupid to worry about that when I know a lot of people would be angrier about the whole idea of having to have a c-section in the first place, but I guess I'm coming to accept having another c-section so I turn my anger to little stupider things.
One of my goals for today was to sit and write letters to Canadian Senators regarding Bill C311, The Climate Change Accountability Act. The Act passed in the house but is stalled in the Senate and several organizations are calling for letter writing campaigns. The idea is that the Conservatives aren't willing to actually vote against the Bill in the senate, because the Bill is popular. But, they don't want to pass it either, so they just keep holding it up. (http://www.trunity.net/climateresp…)
But the more I read about environmental issues, the more I think that one of the main issues is native rights. If we in Canada acknowledged the rights of Aboriginal groups to control their traditional territories (at least those they haven't given up through treaties) then we'd be held back from a lot of the environmental damage we're causing. The Lubricon Cree claim rights to a lot of the area in Northern Alberta, where the tar sands developments are happening, and they're not happy with their land being polluted. In Ontario those at the Grassy Narrows are trying to prevent logging in their territory from being resumed. Then there's the natives of Fish Lake, B.C., that are trying to prevent their sacred lake from being drained to make way for an open pit gold and copper mine. Or the natives in B.C. trying to prevent Enron from running a pipeline from the tar sands through the Great Bear Rainforest. So many environmental issues could be resolved if the political will could be developped to allow native groups to control their own lands. As I type that, I think, people might argue that if the native groups really had control, they might be bought out by the companies, and perhaps they might, but they are so much less likely to than politicians elsewhere are, since they are there drinking the water and eating the local food and thus have an insentive to keep the water and soil clean.
So I posted a few weeks ago about what my family eats in a week. Then today I was looking at http://dothemathchallenge.blogspot… which is a blog for people who are challenging themselves to live for a week on basically what is available from a food bank or from social services. I look at this, and think... wow... there's no way my family could survive on that. Or if we did, we'd be grumpy and angry all the time.
I also want to link to http://www.guardian.co.uk/business… I'm pretty disappointed in this article, since I kept hoping that as a tropical fruit somehow pineapple was grown in some wonderful conditions and still okay for a treat. Apparently the conditions are pretty bad. I think I'll probably still buy pineapple the occasional time I can get organic fairtrade pineapple and skip it the rest of the time. <sigh>
While I'm on the topic of other websites, I'd like to point out http://openparliament.ca/. I'm trying desperately to keep on top of what is being discussed at parliament. I want to know what is going on and what laws are being changed and stuff. So I'm finding this website helpful. There are some good private members bills that probably will never make it into law, but would be good if they were. I think probably they could use more publicity, and I want to try to get up the courage to start writing letters to the editor about some of them.
I really believe that there are so many changes that need to be made in the world. A lot of the changes need to be made personally. Individuals have to be willing to go without things - like cheap pineapple, coffee or chocolate - that they can only obtain through exploitive systems. But we also need some things to be changed through the government.
Sunday nights I am more prayerful than any other night of the week, and always my prayer is the same. Please, let me be a good mother to my children this next week. Let me be patient and loving. Let me help to keep them active and let me not go insane.
I write out my to-do list for the week. I plan some school work as well as possible other activities. I plan meals. I set beans out to soak and I make sure meat is defrosting in the fridge. I look at the good things - like that the house is clean, and Merritt and I had some good times together today, and I worry about the bad things - Merritt was sick most of today, and I think Alex is coming down with something too.
The last few days I have again been questioning my whole decision to keep Merritt home from school. A number of insignificant little comments have added to my doubting and I really recognize that I have no clue what I'm doing. In some ways, I wish I was unschooling. I wish I had the philosophical beliefs to support unschooling, so that I could turn everything over to Merritt and just trust him. Yet I don't believe that would work for us. I think it would be a cop-out. Something to let me off the hook, so I can just let it be Merritt's problems what he does or doesn't do. Instead I have a sense that I still need to be in charge and I still need to be responsible and yet I have no clue what I am doing.
Merritt is getting more communicative, and that helps. Today he told me that when he plays on the computer too much he feels grumpy afterwards and a bit like the people on the Axium in Wall-E, when they first start getting off their chairs. He's starting to understand why we have limits. (Which were not enforced today, for various reasons.) We've had conversations recently about playing with other kids and about why he feels the way he does when they play together, and although we have come up with no solutions, I get hopeful.
Yet... yet... I don't know. I wonder what life is supposed to be like. September is a hard time for asking those questions, because the voices all around seem to say that life is going to school and work. Am I denying my child too much? What am I offering instead? I don't think those are what life is about but I'm not good at articulating, even to myself, what I really think it is about.
Life is about learning to live with one another. Learning to live in community, in family. Life is about learning to live with the rhythms of the year. Learning to accept change. Learning to embrace the food and work that are available at any particular point of time and then accept as the year moves on. Life is about learning. It is about seeing the world over and over again in different ways. It is about understanding things at deeper and deeper levels. Math and reading are tools for exploring things. Life is about learning to do things. Developing and honing skills to become capable of shaping one's surroundings. Life is about stories and music and about the silly games that people develop when they live and interact together.
When I have too much contact with other people my focus becomes getting Merritt to "behave" in the way of being quiet and obedient and out of the way. (And in September, when I'm signing him up for group activities, I start to worry that way, with or without the contact with others.) I want to focus more on helping him to have empathy for other people and their goals. I want to encourage him to think of himself as someone who can help others, and who brings good things (stories, laughter, etc) to their lives. I want to encourage him to look for the good in others. I think I should try to get his help tomorrow in doing something special for Alex. I should also let him see me encourage Alex to do special things for him. Right now their relationship is the biggest learning opportunity for him. How can two children (and one or two adults) get along?
Please, let me be a good mother this next week. Let me be patient and caring. Let me not be too quick to anger or judgement. Let me see the good in the children and somehow help it to bloosom. Let me stay sane and not to preoccupied with my own physical discomforts.
