Fishing Buddies

Homeschooling at the State Fair is in a league all its own. We covered all the essential subjects on our little mid-week field trip, including:

Foreign Languages

Biology

Ice Cream

Agriculture

Physics

The highlight of the state fair, however, was an experience that Willow has been asking after for literally YEARS:

Willow has been longing to fish.

I feel a little guilty about this, actually, since my people are all avid hobby fishermen, and as child my Papa used to introduce me to his co-workers from Dixie Cup as "my fishing buddy." Oh, I can tell you stories--the time I got a fish hook caught in the back of my head, the time that I mistook the minnow that was my bait for a fish that I'd just caught, the time that I caught the biggest fish in the entire world but Papa pretended to slip and dropped him back into the water because it was a carp and carp make terrible eating.

I haven't fished since I was a child, but it must run in one's blood, because Willow was born longing to fish, and NEVER have I taken her.

At the state fair, however, the Indiana DNR runs a stocked pond, filled with catfish and bluegill, manned by DNR volunteers, whose sole purpose is to give children the experience of fishing.

We wouldn't have missed it for the world.

I heartily approved of how child-friendly they made the experience. Instead of a fishing pole with a reel, which requires casting, the children all used fiberglass cane poles, which are vastly more user-friendly. They also used barb-less hooks, which eases the release of the fish and negates the possibility of bloody little incidents like my own childhood barbed-fishhook-in-the-scalp experience.

The volunteers, too, assisted the children at every step:

And they were just as thrilled as the girls were every time they landed a fish, for land a fish they did:

Sydney caught three fish, and although the actual fish business was the part of the process that she was least enthusiastic about, she was a trooper regardless:

Willow, however, could not have been happier about the two fish that she caught:

She was eagerly engaged in every part of the process, from baiting the hook herself to gently lowering her fish back into the water and watching it swim away again:

Will's plans for our future farm have since expanded to include our own fishing pond, also stocked with catfish and bluegill.

And in my mental checklist of the children's dreams and aspirations, I have duly noted--"Willow: Fishing. Goal achieved."

A Fair of the Arts in August

Dinosaurs!

More Dinosaurs!

New Signs!

More New Signs!

Rainbows! And Colored Pencils!

And Buttons!

And More Buttons! On My Favorite Find!

Good Company

And good times.

The next A Fair of the Arts craft fair is the second Saturday in September. Be there, or you know what you're gonna be.

Here's Our Homeschool This Week

This week-ish, we:

had lots of marble races with our newish-to-us garage sale marble maze; spent some time on PBSKids.org (Dinosaur Train, which is mathy/sciencey, is perennially popular); watched a little Cyberchase and read How Big is It? over and over and over again, and requested Hillman's other books from the library because they are GREAT; and played with building toys both familiar and novel. Sydney played a Blue's Clues computer game, pretended that she wanted to work a 500-piece puzzle with me but instead rolled around on the floor in all the pieces and griped at me whenever I stopped working on the puzzle for even a second, and decorated and cut out innumerable paper snowflakes:

Willow asked me to get Crazy Machines from the library again, so I did, and she spent some happy time immersing herself in the wonder of physics:

goofed around a little with some homemade handwriting sheets. Willow still enjoys creating signage, and Sydney wrote out greeting cards to be mailed to beloved and far away family.

continued an obsession with Magic Tree House, occasionally listening to the audiobooks for hours at a time while otherwise occupied; sampled other audiobooks and CD readers now and then; were read to and read to themselves; visited Borders and the library; and watched Martha Speaks. Willow spends the majority of her waking hours reading, alone or in company:

She finshed all the Breyer Stablemates books except for Penny, which is currently in the possession of some other small library patron; read out loud to her sister and the kittens quite often; FINALLY received the Dinosaur Cove book that she'd been waiting for from the library forever (I actually got my librarian friend to purchase more copies of these books for the library--a six-year-old shouldn't have to wait two months for a book), and read it; and received from the library and read all the rest of the Boxcar Children graphic novels.

went to the farmer's market, went on playdates, did a little shopping and a lot of chores, gardened, played on the jungle gym (I just don't look when Willow + cast dangle from the monkey bars), and helped out at the craft fair. Sydney finished up swim class, and earned her certificate this time, so when swim classes start again next summer, she will finally, FINALLY be in Level 2.

watched a few documentaries; played a little Petz (not so much this week, thank GAWD because it's annoying); held a Great Cookie Bake-Off of our own--

--dried flowers in our flower press; watched Dinosaur Train amply (Willow instructed me to mark my planner for the date and time of some sort of Dinosaur Train special episode next week); pored over some of our collection of Smithsonian handbooks--primarily the horse and butterfly handbooks, I believe); attempted to use the laminator (great lessson for the babies on dealing with frustration, that laminator) and played with, cared for, trained, and loved our sweet, sweet foster kittens:

Willow baked her loaves of exemplary French bread, and managed to goof around with our collection of beach rocks and the hose without getting her cast wet, thank goodness.

There was singing, and instrument play. There was Wee Sing.

Sydney and I colored some of an amazing set of coloring greeting cards about the American Revolution, a souvenir purchased in Boston. While doing that we discussed the American Revolution, and how people get dead and what happens to them next, and how come Sydney wasn't a baby during the American Revolution or even growing inside Momma and Momma wasn't even a baby yet, and what Sydney could possibly be doing if she wasn't even a baby yet, and my personal views on war.

picked out quilt fabric for a new I Spy quilt; created our own art and also filled in coloring pages; sewed; made patterns and designs and pictures with Colorforms; and fingerpainted in the front yard:

Willow dug out some Valentine craft kit that I bought at 90%-off who knows when and happily made a Valentine craft. Sydney took advantage of some work that I was doing on the Cricut to request a bunch of cuts, and happily made herself some paper doll mermaids out of the pieces.

And that's how we homeschooled this week!

Next week's goals:

• 
  
  coffee can ice cream
• 
  
  fireworks in the driveway
• 
  
  Indiana State Fair!

Questions Better Left Unanswered

1. How did the child with the broken leg fall behind the couch?
2. What was the child with the broken leg doing on top of the couch's back? Sitting? Standing on one leg? Standing on one leg while reaching for something up high?
3. Why did the child with the broken leg not call out for help? Clearly, there is not enough room behind the couch for a child with a broken leg. How did falling on one's back behind the couch, without hope of getting up or out unassisted, NOT constitute an emergency requiring one to screech at the top of one's lungs for Momma, and yet breaking one's pretzel, or not finding one's favorite pair of shoes, DOES constitute this kind of emergency?
4. When I walked past the living room and spied one bare foot and one casted foot sticking up from behind the couch, and I therefore walked over, climbed over the couch, and asked the child with the broken leg if I could help her up, why did the child with the broken leg act as if I was doing her a favor by hauling her 40+poundage PLUS cast up in a non-ergonomically-correct position, thus straining my back? How would she have liked to have stayed down there all afternoon, perhaps, maybe with a bag of pretzels and a Boxcar Children novel?
5. How well do you think my sanity is holding up, in company with this child with a broken leg?

The Bread Baker's Apprentices

Willow mentioned only in passing that she wanted to learn how to make bread, but it immediately struck me as such a perfect activity (math! science! hands-on!) that I made a note of it, checked out some cookbooks, and added it to the litany of activities that I suggest whenever a child wanders up to me feeling a bit lost-ish ("Should we clean your room? Should we look through the microscope? Should we play a game? Should we bake some bread?").

At the moment, Syd's a little more the girl who wants to do stuff with Momma than Will, perennially immersed in a book, is, and so it was she and I who made the house's first loaves of French bread:

We used the very clear instructions from Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!: The Ultimate Breadmaking Book for Parents and Kids (then checked out from the library, but since obtained for free from Amazon using my swagbucks, yay!), but unfortunately I didn't have any white flour on hand, and so substituted white wheat flour, and the results were merely satisfying. Of course, Sydney had a brilliant time kneading and punching and baking, so our dry loaves of rough white wheat bread were well worth the effort.

A few days later, I had bought white bread flour, Cake-approved!, AND I found Willow curled up on the couch, reading over and over the recipe for French bread, so when she declared that she wanted to bake French bread ALL by herself, with no hands-on help from the Momma, I said, "You betcha!"

And so she did:

I helped her interpret the directions, of course, and I got out the ingredients, and Will has enough experience with cooking that she knows how to level off measuring spoons and measure to the line that I show her on the measuring cup, etc. And she did do everything herself, just as she had requested. She stirred every stir and kneaded every knead and formed the loaves and poured the teakettle of boiling water in a pan at the bottom of the stove to fill the oven with steam and even put the pan with its loaves into the oven, although her father had to hold her around the middle to keep her balanced on her sound right leg.

Still, though, I'm not at all sure about how much flour she actually put in, because I'm pretty sure she lost count, and the salt spilled, and I think that the dough was more goofed off with than kneaded, per se, and that's all to explain to you that the loaves...

They were perfect. Exquisite. We took them with us to the drive-in to see Despicable Me (which Willow HATED, by the way, and cried and begged to go home until I walked her in my arms like a baby so that Sydney and Matt could finish the movie), along with some Earth Balance, and everyone agreed that, in Willow's words, "This is the best bread in the world."

Those two hands that made it are pretty perfect, too.

I Spy Four Kittens

Sydney's I Spy quilt took a LOT longer to quilt and put a mock binding on than I had anticipated. I just kept having all this parenting to do, and homeschool parenting, etc., so I have not had nearly as much hands-on just-the-Momma craft time that I'm accustomed to.

I've had a lot of Momma/baby craft time, in which Sydney sticks lots of random open safety pins into a quilt as I'm pinning it, until I run out of safety pins. I've had a lot of Momma/baby baking time, which I'll post about a little later, but just know that French bread? Yum. Chocolate cookies six different ways? YUM! Scrubbing the table and scrubbing the chairs and scrubbing the floors and washing every mixing bowl that I own four times every day for four days straight? Not so yum, but it is a hazard of the house.

And I've had a little, little bit of just-the-Momma craft time, thank goodness for Magic Tree House audiobooks, and in that little bit of just-the-Momma craft time, I finally finished quilting and putting a mock binding on Sydney's I Spy quilt, and laid it nicely and neatly out on her bed:

Two minutes in, it was already looking loved:

Of course, loved as Sydney's new I Spy quilt is, it really isn't even today's big news. Here's today's big news:

Four new foster kittens, come to stay with us until they're big and fat and ready to be adopted. We're already smitten with them:

And they seem pretty happy with us, too:

Kittens plus kiddos? I think my wild ride's going to keep going for a while.

Lofty Plans

Okay, I'm going to give you a look at my planner, but you have to promise not to laugh.

Seriously. I mean it. Do NOT laugh at me.

Okay...here goes:

Y'all! I mean it! Stop laughing!

It may be the most chaotic-looking Moleskine planner in the world, but in my own defense, this isn't my crazy-manic list of a billion appointments that HAVE to be kept and a billion things that HAVE to be done. It's mainly a crazy-manic list of possibilities, and plans, and notes to myself.

On the calendar pages, I tend to write down both appointments that have to be kept and everything that's going on at any particular day, just in case we feel like going to something. So, for instance, I kept our appointment at the orthopedic clinic for the big kid, and we went to see The Little Mermaid at the library, and I taught a cloth diaper workshop and picked up our county fair entries, but I don't think we did anything else--we didn't go to the Civil War encampment, or any of the concerts in the park, or storytime at the public library. I knew about it all if we wanted to go, but we didn't.

The list pages are a little wackier. There I keep notes of things that I MUST do--register for Strange Folk, call Pappa--and things to check into--Is the once-yearly sale at Learning Treasures happening yet? Is the registration info for Pre-College Ballet up on their web site yet?--and activities to suggest to the kids--microscope, balancing butterflies--and priorities for the next craft fair--I Spy quilts!--and grocery lists and web sites or books to check out and stuff to plan for--garage sale!--and stuff that the kids express an interest in that I ought to get on--playdates, temporary tattooes, etc.,--and chores--can the peaches, can the tomatoes, hoe the garden, harvest the basil--and post ideas for Crafting a Green World--school supply round-up?--and stuff that I happen to think about that I want to do so I write it down in case I get some time or it strikes my fancy--sprout some more seeds, sew a new camera strap, etc.

When I've done something or I decide not to do it or I didn't do it I mark it out, and I tend to flip back and forth through a month's worth of pages at any given time, if I'm trying to remember the name of the horse book that the big kid saw at the bookstore and wanted to get from the library, for instance, or if I bought the whole wheat pastry flour last week or not, etc., so it's not like I'm trying to do all that business every single week, or anything. It's mostly just that every passing fancy or little idea gets out of my head and into that book before it goes away.

See? Once I explain it, then it makes so much sense, doesn't it? Right?

Fine. It looks crazy, I know it. But, you know...

Welcome to my mind.