Horseback Riding to Music: The 2014 PALS Fun Show

One of the few things that I was legitimately sad about, when I began homeschooling, was the fact that the children would miss out on performances, and I'd miss out on attending them. As a child, I remember music pageants, Christmas performances, school plays, etc. How sad that the kids would miss out on these precious opportunities to perform for an audience!

Snort.

Yeah, the kids participate in PLENTY of shows, homeschooling or not, and Matt and I get absolutely our fair share of butt time on back-less bleachers and in dark auditoriums, watching them shine. They dance ballet, they fly on the silks, they walk the runway, they skate to music, and they ride around the arena.

This year's horseback riding show, the PALS Fun Show, was even more special and exciting for the kids than last year, as their riding instructor has just really outdone herself in making sure that the kids have an interesting and enriching curriculum. You already know how much I love the homework that she gives them (a weekly assignment to research and report on a horse breed; I also ask the kids to research and report on that breed's country of origin). This year, she also thought that the kids might enjoy performing as a mounted drill team in the Fun Show, so she choreographed a routine for them, practiced it with them for ages, and sent me home with the patterns so that the kids could practice it at home (they taped it out in our big family room and ran through it until perfect every single day).

The kids got to choose the music for their performance, and after much listening to many songs, and my realization that my kids don't really ask for or take a lot of interest in non-narrative songs (their only real favorite album is The King, the Mice, and the Cheese by Stevesongs, and that's really more of a musical), they finally settled on Blondie's "The Tide is High" and the Indigo Girls' "Get out the Map." For a while, Will was pushing for "The House of the Rising Sun," and for some reason the thought of them performing to it was super cracking me up, but I'm pleased that they eventually followed the path of the girl bands.

I really like arriving early, so that we can watch other riders perform:

I just like watching the other riders, but the kids do seem to always glean some new information or source of inspiration. For instance, the kids always ride with their horses on a long lead held by a volunteer, and another volunteer walking next to them (one of my favorite things about PALS is that it's EXTREMELY aggressive about rider safety), but as they watched other riders navigating the trail course in the arena, they noticed a kid, about Will's age, who was permitted to ride completely without walkers! GASP! They were enormously impressed, and have declared their new goal in riding to be showing their instructor that they can control their horses well enough to be permitted to ride without walkers.

Of course, I like the walkers! One lesson last term, the kids were practicing leading their horses, and Syd, walking while holding the lead right next to her horse's muzzle, tried to halt her horse but didn't brace herself so that when he didn't obey, she was pulled right off her feet. Before she could fall directly in front of her horse's front legs, however, her sidewalker snatched her up and set her back on her feet, and the lesson continued without a pause.

You'll notice the walkers in this video of their performance--one holding a loose lead in case she needs to take control of the horse, and one walking/jogging next to each child in case she needs to take control of the child. You will not, however, notice the music; although I'd been looking forward to getting a little teary while watching the kids perform to a couple of my favorite songs, I'd been very slightly bummed that this meant that I wouldn't be able to put their performance on YouTube to share with family and friends--can't play a video featuring songs that I don't have the rights to! And so although the kids were bummed that the stereo futzed during their performance and didn't play their second song (of course the kids carried right on, though, the troopers), I was actually pretty pleased--all I had to do was a little trimming, and I have a nice clip of the drill team performance, without that pesky music:

And after the performance, of course, are the judges' comments (Will has excellent posture!) and the prizes--

--and the fun times! Fun times include getting one's face painted, doing arts and crafts and coloring pages--

--hanging out with the other riders, and apparently eating one's weight in cookies, from what I witnessed with my own children, at least.

It was, indeed, a performance to make a Momma proud, and the perfect show for the kids to take part in--they worked hard, they were pleased with the results, and they've geared themselves up to work towards even bigger accomplishments.

And they have trophies! I wish that *I* still did stuff that won me trophies...

Tinkerbell and the Vampire

As the kids and I were packing on Sunday, I suddenly had a panicked thought and burst out with something like, "Oh, no! Kids, you have to go put your costumes on RIGHT NOW!"

Because if the kids are going to be in California with their grandparents for Halloween, then that's where they'll be wearing their costumes, and so if I wanted to take pictures of them in their costumes, it had to be before I packed them! Yikes!

Fortunately, the kids were excellent sports, and put on their whole Halloween costumes for me, just so I could take photos of them.

Sydney is Tinkerbell:

She created her entire costume with very little adult assistance--I showed her how to draft a dress pattern to her measurements, Matt showed her how to transfer it to fabric, I threaded elastic through the casing she sewed in the top of the dress, I helped her bend the wire of her wings, and I showed her how to glue the clear cellophane to the wire. Syd thought up the entire costume, then watched a Tinkerbell movie and paused it whenever Tinkerbell showed a new angle, so that she could sketch her design from all sides. She sewed her dress, cut out the details at the bottom hem, drew a template for the wire hanger wings to follow, then spent hours painstakingly hot gluing clear cellophane gift wrap to them.

Fortunately, because Syd can be quite hard on herself, her costume turned out just the way she wanted!

Well, except for the part about the wings making her really be able to fly. That part didn't work out at all...

Will's usually an easy girl to please about Halloween costumes. For her vampire costume, she let me wrap one of my old homemade Moby Wraps around her head as her hood. Matt bought her a black shirt and black pants from Goodwill, and although she was going to make her old standby, the plastic fork fangs, she actually received a set of fangs as a favor at a Halloween party, so she was good to go!

  

Again, this costume surprisingly doesn't confer any superpowers, either; nevertheless, leaping the chain that blocks the drive-in's driveway remains a fine pastime for young daredevils:

The kids will actually be trick-or-treating in La Jolla this year, and they've already been teased quite mightily about the treats that a swanky neighborhood like La Jolla shall surely yield--full-sized candy bars! Each kid her own pony!

For my part, my health is going to take an outstanding turn for Halloween this year, since unlike in previous years, I have not had to buy Halloween candy and then buy it again five days later because I ate it all, and in the best of all possible circumstances I will not spend all next week sneaking treats from the kids' Halloween stashes, either, because the day after Halloween they have another five-hour plane ride to get through.

Know what makes the time pass quickly during a five-hour plane ride?

Eating all your Halloween candy, I'm going to bet!

Years of Jack-o-Lanterns

Matt has teased me, since the children were very small, about my tradition every year of buying the kids a Funkin to carve, and then keeping that Funkin, with the kids' name and the date on it, for... well, forever.

"We don't have anywhere to DISPLAY three years (then four years, then five years...) of Jack-o-lanterns!" he'd point out quite reasonably. And, of course, there were also the real pumpkin Jack-o-lanterns to display, and the squash, and the lights...

Yeah, no room on that cozy porch outside our cozy house across the street from the park and a mile from downtown.

But we don't live there anymore. We live in a sprawling, oddly-shaped house outside of town, now, with lots of porches, a couple of them quite roomy. And one of those porches, it turns out, is the perfect spot to display several years' worth of Jack-o-lanterns, all in a row just like they should be:

We don't have neighbors real close, and don't expect any trick-or-treaters this year (in fact, our own trick-or-treaters are flying to California right. This. Minute!), and so this low stone wall, facing our large picture window, is the perfect place to make a Halloween display that faces its most important audience--US!

I made that Halloween bunting ages ago, and I love pulling it out every year. In fact, I may make one for every holiday, now that I see how nice it looks in front of the wall:

I was given these spider lights for free from QVC, as part of the You're Home with Jill DIY Halloween Challenge, and I really like them. They're sturdy and realistic and even though they're Halloweeny, Will has already requested that we hang them in her room after the holiday.

We're going to. Of COURSE.

And then, yes, you do get to see every single Jack-o-lantern, all in a row, just because this year I finally can!

 

Now, don't you think there's plenty of room on that wall (or the ground in front of it) for several more decades of Jack-o-lanterns?

My Latest: Halloween and Wood Burning

a round up of Jack-o-lantern projects

and one of luminaries and lanterns

and a discussion of one of our favorite tools, the wood burner

One of the things that I'll definitely be doing next week with the kids in California (Weep! Wail!) is kicking the DIY into high gear. I've got several projects that I'd like to get created and written up--black walnut ink and dye, another bookshelf makeover, a portable set-up for a wall-mounted Hot Wheels track that is super getting on my nerves, a T-shirt quilt for a baby cousin, some new dyed play silks, etc.--and I'm enthusiastic about the idea that the more of my paid writing that I get scheduled then, the more time I'll have to spend with the babies when they get home, lightly tanned, arms full of souvenirs, flush with adventures.

I'll just keep telling myself that this time next week they'll be back home with me!

Fire Station Field Trip

I know that fire station field trips sound like something for the preschool set, but I assure you that there's much about fire safety, civics, and STEM-in-action to be learned by even my advanced scholars of the fifth and third grades.

For instance, yes, we covered stop, drop, and roll, and why you shouldn't play with matches and lighters (I shared a quiet look and laugh with another mom during this portion of the presentation, as I'd previously told her how I prepped the kids to give the "correct" answers to the firefighters by explaining to them that the firefighters are much more conservative on this issue than our family is, and it's best not to upset them by telling them that your mommy lets you light matches, yes?), and what a firefighter in full gear looks like and why you shouldn't hide from them, but there was a lot more information suitable for the older kids that they are now.

We got an excellent review of emergency escape plans, a wonderful explanation of the importance practice; the firefighter carefully explained to the children that the smoke and noise of a fire are extremely disorienting, so you won't be able to navigate your home as well as you think you will, and if you're suddenly woken up, the disorientation will be even more severe. The firefighter suggested that we practice our escape plan on hands and knees, as that's how we'd move most safely in a real fire. He also suggested that we practice middle-of-the-night fire drills, because he said that many children simply won't wake up to a smoke alarm, and even more children will simply roll over, bury their heads in their pillows, and fall back asleep.

Everyone loves touring the fire trucks, of course--

Yes, Syd chose to wear her fashion show outfit on this day.

But I was also pleased that we got a look at some vehicle rescue gear, including the jaws of life (the firefighter explained that the jaws of life work using hydraulic power, and on the way home we had an excellent discussion of hydraulic and pneumatic power, and our vacation to Disney World!) and this wonderful airborne ladder:

This field trip inspired us to get our emergency evacuation plan for this new house down pat (thank goodness for our bizarre FIVE doors to the outside, our bizarre crank windows that won't have to be broken to be turned into escape routes, and a certain drive-in movie sign that makes a fabulous meet-up point), and fits right in with both levels of the Girl Scout First Aid badge, for which we're undertaking a study of medical and emergency personnel of all sorts.

I also think this trip has inspired our culinary efforts, as these firefighters are definitely getting a big basket of muffins hand-delivered after the kids return from their California vacation!

In Memory of Ballantine, a Good Kitty

Our Ballantine came to me and Matt twelve years ago as a tiny, tiny kitten, back when our local Humane Society was not the nice place that it is now, but instead bank after bank of dreary, small cages, and they'd give you tiny, flea-riddled, ill kittens just because they had a better shot with you than with them.

In fact, we adopted two kittens that day twelve years ago, but even tinier, even more flea-riddled, even more ill grey Prudence didn't survive her first night. After that, tiny Ballantine slept in our bed every night, in between our two pillows, so that I could wake up, reach a hand out, and check that she was still breathing every hour or so.

I named Ballantine after the building that houses the English department at our local university, since that's where I spent the vast majority of my time in those years. On the weekends or evenings when I had work to do in our grad student lounge in that building (they had MUCH faster internet than we did at home back then--we were still on dial-up!), Matt and I would actually bring little Ballantine with us, because we couldn't bear to be away from her for that long--she was too cute! We'd sneak her in and bring along little dishes of food and water and even a litter box, and I'd work and play with her and watch her explore.

Ballantine grew into a fine, sleek, sweet-tempered cat--

--who was good company for me when I got pregnant and suffered terribly from hyperemesis gravidarum, and near the end of my pregnancy when I was too paranoid about going into labor to leave the house alone. After Willow was born she switched much of her loyalty to Matt--what was that small, yowling, grabby thing that I always insisted on holding now?--but remained fine and sweet-tempered and good company.

When we moved house to a safer neighborhood, Matt and I, after a giant amount of angst, tentatively made the decision to let Ballantine roam outside, as she clearly so longed to do, and were happily rewarded for our risk by the fact that Ballantine never, to our knowledge, left the yard, never hunted small animals, never did more outside than make a comfy little nest for herself from which she could watch the world go by.

Still more Matt's cat than mine, Ballantine's favorite time of day was night, when Matt and I would finally lie down to watch a movie together before bed. Sensing the very second that Matt lay down, Ballantine would appear from whatever indoor nest she'd made for herself and run to the bed, leap onto it, and settle herself down onto Matt's chest, her face exactly right in his face. Matt would try to scootch her down so that he could see past her, and she'd gradually, with all the subtlety she could muster (which was not much), scootch back up until their noses touched. Matt would scootch her down, she'd scootch back up, and so the night would progress.

In the last few years, Ballantine suffered constantly from some sort of mystery rash that made her want to scratch her back and her belly until they bled. Vets had various theories, none of which panned out, and so she lived a life of constant itching and discomfort with the same even temper that she lived out her years of perfect health. Her suffering ended abruptly, unexpectedly on Wednesday morning, however; she had a delicious breakfast of dry cat food, then just fell over--seizure? stroke?--gasped a few times, and with the kids and I looking on, horrified but still totally uncomprehending, she simply died.

We laid Ballantine to rest in a fine spot in our backyard, a multiflora rosebush behind her, a Syd-made plaque at her head:

She had a happy life, she made all of our lives happier because she was a part of them, and as is the reward of all good kitties, she will be deeply missed.

How to Solve AMC 8 Problems: Year 2013, Problems 1 and 2

I have mentioned before that I don't expect my children, a third-grader and a fifth-grader, to be at all competitive in the AMC 8 exam this year, but nevertheless, the exam is actually quite accessible even to these younger students, since much of the math involved utilizes the four basic operations in ways that require only clever, logical thinking to suss out.

The exam is also a great, free opportunity for the kids to get some experience taking standardized tests, as well as to deal with specialized mathematical formatting (that dot is a multiplication sign!) and multiple choice trickery (is your answer one of the choices? It still may not be correct!).

And the AMC 8, in particular, is maliciously intent on asking its students to be very thoughtful and VERY observant as they work the problems, as you'll see in a minute.

Fortunately, all the AMC 8 past problems are available for study, and this is not only helpful when preparing for the exam, but it also makes an excellent part-time math curriculum, and the kids have been enjoying spending one day a week with me, going over a couple of problems and solutions each time. For each problem, I first have them work through the solution using a hands-on method, and then I show them the "short-cut" pencil-and-paper calculation that will also solve the problem.

Problem #1 from 2013, for instance, is obviously and easily solved using Hot Wheels. The kids actually set up 23 Hot Wheels in rows of 6, and then could easily see that they needed to add one more car to make the final row equal to the others. They counted by sixes to count the total cars, and I helped them connect this to the 6x table; you would use the 6x table to calculate how many total cars you would need, then use subtraction to calculate how many you would still need to buy.

Problem #2 from 2013 is only a little more complicated. Will glanced at the problem and immediately said, "Six!", AND was pleased to find that six is, indeed, one of the choices (see? Multiple choice trickery!), so I had her physically underline the parts of the problem that she'd used to calculate that answer, and then showed her that there were parts of the problem that she hadn't taken into account yet.

Syd drew a big fish--

--cut it in half to make two "half-pounds" of fish (it would be better to use half-pound weights as the manipulative here, but I don't have any at hand), and placed the sale price on each half:

They can both easily see, then, that a pound of fish at this price would, yes, equal six dollars, but that's the sale price, and the problem is asking for the regular price. 

Although we haven't done a lot with fractions and percentages yet, both kids know the easy ones, and so 50% wasn't a hard one for them to figure out. They simply doubled the sale price to find the regular price! 

To calculate this on paper, I pointed out to them that doubling is the same as multiplying by two, and it was a piece of cake from there. 

The kids LOVED working through these problems with me--most of this, I know, was the opportunity to play with toy cars and real money and draw fish, but nevertheless, some if it was definitely the fun of figuring out tricky math problems and discovering how to solve them. 

I love math so much precisely because of that feeling!

Pumpkins from our Next-Door-Neighbors

The family who owns the drive-in that we live next door to also owns a pumpkin patch! And when your next-door-neighbors own a pumpkin patch, well, it just wouldn't be neighborly not to stop on by one Sunday afternoon, now would it?

We are nothing if not neighborly, especially when movies and pumpkins are involved:

The Freemans open up one of their barns so that you can pet some of their animals (and yes, this is the place where a pony bit Syd ON THE FACE one year--she has much better horsemanship skills now than when she was five), and they've also got plenty of toys out for the toddlers.

Like this one!

Only I guess the toddlers aren't riding their ponies like a bucking bronco...

Part of the fun of a visit to the pumpkin patch is taking a long, long hayride around the Freemans' property, across a creek and through the woods:

Will is behind Matt, who was completely incapable of getting out of my way so that I could photograph her.

See this photo of Syd?

The guy driving the tractor for our hayride was smoking (I know, I know...), and so Syd, of COURSE, pulled a piece of hay out of the bale underneath her and pretended to smoke it while pretending to be a tractor driver. I said to her, "What are you DOING?!?"

She said brightly, "I'm smoking wheat!"

Now you say it. Say it out loud, like an eight-year-old would.

I laughed my butt off, absolutely inappropriately, then of course got her to tell me what she was doing about eight hundred more times, and each time it make me collapse into gales of inappropriate laughter all over again.

I know, I know. But to be fair, our family anti-smoking campaign clearly isn't that effective thus far, if the kid is happily pretending to smoke just like the tractor driver. Mental note to show her some photos of cancerous lungs during our human biology unit.

Our haul was two perfect Jack-o-lantern pumpkins and one perfect pie pumpkin. The Jack-o-lanterns have been kid-carved and made their debut at last weekend's housewarming party, but that pie pumpkin is going to have to wait til after all the party clean-up has been completed (crock pot liners SUCK!!!) before I settle down to prepping it.

So, like, next week? Week after? 

Thanksgiving, maybe?

Work Plans for the Week of October 20, 2014: Field Trips, Flowers, and the Sun

 

We've got one last school week all together before the kids head off to California adventures with their grandparents for a week, and it's a bustling one!

MONDAY: Right now, the kids and I are in a study lounge in the basement of the building that I used to teach in at our local university; the older kid is meant to be coloring in the chapter 2 vocabulary flash cards from Song School Spanish, while the younger kid is meant to be researching the Dartmoor for tomorrow's horseback riding class, but mostly they're getting me to look up how much bounce houses cost (a lot), and speculating where they would keep a bounce house if they bought one (the field at the bottom of the hill behind our house, although the ground might still need to be leveled some), and how much fun they would have with their own bounce house (again, a lot).

Soon, however, we'll wander up to the first floor parking garage of this building, where I'll collect several more little kids, and then we'll all wander over to the campus greenhouse, where we'll take a tour, search for flowers, identify their parts, and generally have a fabulous field trip together.

After our field trip, the kids and I will go immediately over to our weekly volunteer gig; the older kid was able to man the meat counter entirely by herself last week!

In Math Mammoth this week, the younger kid is finishing up multiplication and moving into a review of telling time; the older kid is finishing up long division and moving briefly to averaging, and then into fractions.

TUESDAY: The kids have their last rehearsal for their horse show during this day's horseback riding lessons. I also found a picture book about the Lippizaner for them to read; I don't remember if they've had this breed to research yet, but it's a great story that highlights what makes a horse breed special.

I'm not looking forward to helping the kids with their Halloween costumes, to be frank, but it's one of those things that a parent must do. The younger kid's costumes, in particular, are generally elaborate and require lots of parental help; for this year's Tinkerbell costume, I believe that I will be required to take her shopping for white yarn and the exact green fabric that she requires, and teach her how to make yarn pom-poms.

The kids will continue to work on the Junior Ranger badges that they chose last week; I do ask them to put the location of the park that they're working from on our big wall map, but I'm fine that the badge books themselves are cross-curricular--there are so many interesting, unexpected things to learn!

I realized that I haven't yet asked the children to memorize our new address, so we'll be doing that, as well as crafting our fire escape plan, under the auspices of the Girl Scout First Aid badges for Brownies and Juniors. We're going on a field trip to the fire station on Thursday, and I know the fire fighters will ask them!

WEDNESDAY: Don't tell the kids, but I am NOT signing them up for an aerial silks class this week. The rest of our calendar week will be VERY busy, and so will their trip to California next week--fun, but busy!--and so I want them to have one last completely free day to rest, recharge, and play.

THURSDAY: We've got our regular homeschool group's afternoon at a local park, and a field trip to the fire station in the morning (there will also be an ambulance there, and EMTs who will discuss first aid, also for the First Aid badges), but I am the most excited, by far, by the partial solar eclipse that clear skies will allow us to witness on this afternoon! And just two weeks after the lunar eclipse--what a treat!

A couple of units of First Language Lessons will finish off the day. The kids don't really seem to be understanding adverbs, so I'm finally thankful for how slowly this book moves.

FRIDAY: Ten Times Better has some fun, easy multiplication poems to memorize, and then I'll be going over a few more problems from the AMC 8 with the kids; I don't expect them to ace this upcoming exam, by any means, but studying for it has enabled us to discuss a lot of interesting math concepts, as well as learn that a dot is the same as a multiplication sign, what an ellipses means in math, and how to work a multiple-choice question.

After this day's spelling test, the kids will be writing sentences with their new words, again, as well as playing Spelling City. The sentence-writing turned out to be a GREAT activity last week; I had no idea that the kids would have trouble writing complete sentences! We'll be repeating this activity weekly until that whole subject-verb business is an absolute no-brainer.

The kids had their first ice skating class of the season last week, and once again had a fabulous time. This week, they'll be heading straight from there to a friend's Halloween party; since we'll be missing spending Halloween with the kids (they'll be in California with their grandparents), I'm glad that we've got *some* Halloween festivities to experience with them here before they leave.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Busiest. Weekend. EVER! The younger kid's got ballet class and Nutcracker rehearsal, both kids have the horse show performance that they've been practicing for months for, and the university is hosting its open house for the science departments, AND there's a big end-of-the-year party for 4H that afternoon. We will all sleep well that night!

On Sunday, the older kid only has chess club, but I'm sure there will be tons of frantic shopping and packing and laundering and panicking, because the next day will dawn with us on the way to the airport to send the kids to their grandparents in California.

And yes, I will spend next week weeping/working/partying/missing my babies.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

A Walk in our Woods

Our woods may technically be only three-ish acres, but they're deep and full of mystery and fabulous discoveries--

peeping into a sinkhole/former well site

--and they connect seamlessly with woods on both sides so that what's actually available for us to explore seems quite vast.

Of course, the woods are also scrubby and full of greenbriers, so whenever I hike there, I bring my favorite toy with me:

I hike our woods fairly often, as does Will, and Syd is in and out of our woods and beyond several times a day, but poor Matt suffers terribly from allergies and contact dermatitis, and so a recent chilly day, after much of the summer foliage had withered and he could comfortably cover up from head to toe, was the first time he felt comfortable exploring with us, poor guy.

But now he knows why we like it so much!

 

The kids were thrilled to show him the sink hole, and the creek, and the spot where the natural spring emerges, and the "ravine," and the tree growing out of an old tub, and the old garbage dump site (we collect old glass soda bottles and brown glass bottles there), and the random section of barbed wire fence (gotta stay on your toes in our woods!), and the "meadow" where the woods finally emerges:

In the early summer, this was filled with grass as high as the kids' heads, but a bunch of construction equipment later in the summer tamped it down while they worked on those power lines.

It's the perfect little woods--big but not too big (you'd have to work hard not to eventually run into that meadow!), full of lots of excitement and a reasonable amount of danger. Every once in a while, I realize all over again that it's ours, and I find myself with this goofy, sort of astonished smile on my face.

And yes, I'm smiling that smile right now.