I know that zoo photos are really only interesting to the person who took them, but oh, well--here are a bunch of photos of our recent trip to the Indianapolis Zoo!
On the drive home, the kids sat in the backseat (just a few more weeks of backseat living for my almost teenager!) and discussed their plans for the future. Syd attested that although she really wanted to work with dolphins when she grew up, being a zookeeper would be a good career, too, and Willow agreed that although she really wanted to be a marine biologist, zookeeper would be an acceptable backup career for her, as well.
Last week was not a successful week, schoolwork-wise. For a variety of reasons, the kids got very little done. They did keep up well with their math, and Will kept up with grammar, but I have to create and enforce a different system for finished work this week, because both kids have begun to simply set their finished work next to their work areas, instead of bringing it to me. If I don't see it, I don't mark it, and they blithely move on the next day, and if they've made errors, those are compiled the further they advance, sigh. Will, in particular, is not going to be pleased that she somehow forgot what a linking verb is between Lessons 11 and 12, and Syd refuses to understand that drawing her angles on a separate page, and then "losing" that page before I had a chance to see it, has the same result as not drawing the angles at all--she's doing it again today!
Regardless, the week as a whole was full and happy. The kids spent loads of time preparing for a Girl Scout meeting that was an outdoor cookout feast--
--Will has been working with Luna several times a day on their homework from obedience school--
--we spent a full day at the Children's Museum, volunteering and playing, the kids spent another full day at their wilderness class, and then we spent the weekend visiting family in Michigan.
Yesterday we took lots of naps.
Because of that, you'll find the annotations for most of this week's assignments in last week's post, where they were first assigned. And honestly, we may not be much more productive this weekend--summer activities, such as this afternoon's trip to the public pool and tomorrow's all-day trip to the zoo, are peppered throughout the coming days, but heck. Why homeschool if it's not so we can go to the pool with friends, and spend the whole day at the zoo just because we want to?
Memory work for the week consists of the first eleven lines of Beowulf recited in Anglo-Saxon, standard conversions, and Greek vocabulary. Books of the Day include some sneaky selections from the kids' MENSA reading lists, a biography of Juliette Gordon Low, a leftover book on the Celts, and the rest of the One Crazy Summer trilogy for Will. Other daily work includes creative writing for Syd and cursive copywork for Will, typing practicing on Typing.com and progress on their MENSA reading lists for both, Wordly Wise 7 for Will and a word ladder for Syd, a Greek language lesson or review and a Hoffman Academy keyboard lesson or practice for both, and SAT prep on Khan Academy for Will.
And here's the rest of our week! TUESDAY: At least hiding their work from me until I find it while tidying over the weekend lets me give them exact assignments for Math Mammoth and Analytical Grammar this week--usually the kids just correct the latest lesson and complete the next lesson. Notice that for each of these, I've also instructed them to give their work directly to an adult to mark. They put their completed assignments in the face of an adult, or their work plans for the day aren't complete--mwa-ha-ha!
Most of the rest of this day's work is reassigned from last week, although Will has some extra time to work on a Girl Scout badge, and Syd has big plans to run a bake stand in our driveway before the drive-in movies this weekend (it's kind of genius, because almost every car headed to the drive-in will have to drive by her bake stand first, and if it's a nice weekend for an outdoor movie, traffic will be stalled, meaning that every car will have plenty of time to just sit there and look at her mouth-watering treats), so she'll be working on that every school day this week, in preparation for her Friday debut.
WEDNESDAY: Day at the zoo! If there's one thing that you can guarantee about my kids, it's that they're game for any and every trip to any and every zoo and aquarium that you offer them. We're going to have a wonderful time.
THURSDAY: The only new assignment on this day is more work on Girl Scout badges--with so much make-up work to do this week, we're not really able to progress in most of our units, so Girl Scouts is filling the few gaps in the school week. Good thing there's ALWAYS something to do in Girl Scouts!
FRIDAY: Since our only Medieval history assignment last week was our field trip to look at Medieval manuscripts in the Lilly Library--which was AMAZING, by the way!--we actually are free to move on in our Medieval history unit this week. I didn't spend a ton of time looking up enrichment activities or projects for this week's chapter in Story of the World v. 2, but at least the kids can get it read and get the quiz and mapwork done, and I'll have a chance for more research this week.
One of the few flaws in our Story of the World spine is its lack of dates in the text. The author doesn't want the kids focusing on memorizing dates at the expense of understanding the events and their context, but it's just one more thing that I have to add to the curriculum to better suit my older children. I'll be printing one nice copy of this timeline, and for use in a binder or as a pull-out, and the kids can help me order and construct it and then add timeline figures for what we've already studied this semester. It's no basement timeline, but I'm hoping that it will be a suitable replacement.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY: No three-day weekend this weekend! Luna has obedience school, but thankfully that's our only scheduled activity, because summer extracurriculars begin next week.
And we'll have a five-day school week for a change!
We really like volunteering at the Children's Museum. It fits our varied skill sets and energies well, and I've been profoundly changed by the simple environment of respect and empowerment shared with even the youngest of us that exists there. Even the youngest of us is spoken to and with respectfully, as equals. Even the youngest of us is given big responsibilities, and empowered to fulfill them. And on this particular day, the not-quite-youngest of us was enlisted with a very big responsibility, and empowered to fulfill it all on her own.
Look at my big kid, running all by herself a tabletop activity at the world's largest children's museum:
She was completely in charge of this tabletop demonstration of centrifugal force. There are three settings on that Hot Wheels track, by means of which children could experiment with force and acceleration and evaluate how they affected the Hot Wheels car's ability to loop the loop.
When asked later, she claims that her main takeaway is that 55% of children, when presented with a button that you're obviously meant to push, attempted to pull it instead. I, however, sneaked many looks at her as she led everyone from toddlers to teens older than she through the activity, and just between us, I'll tell you that she took away a lot more than that. This kid is confident, and knowledgeable, and funny, gentler with those younger and smaller than she, unabashed when speaking to those older and bigger. She's growing up just the way I'd hoped she would.
Syd and I ran a less exciting table, charged with interesting and engaging children in the concept of the inclined plane, and a comparison of linear motion with rotational motion on that plane. The opening concept is kind of a yawner: you've got two inclined Hot Wheels tracks set up, and a couple of stacked Duplo bricks and a Hot Wheels car to test them on. Kid comes up, you ask Kid if Kid wants to play a game, Kid says yes because duh, you tell Kid you're going to race and Kid can choose to be the block or the car, Kid chooses, you race, you extrapolate on potential energy, linear motion vs. rotational motion, friction, etc.
After a couple of iterations, Syd and I found ways to make this game more fun, though, and more leveled, because leveling tabletop activities is very important when you've got an audience of anyone and everyone. Block vs. Car is pretty great for preschoolers and kindy types, but for younger preschoolers and toddlers, a much better game goes something like, "Can you make the car go down the ramp? Wow! Can you make the block go down the ramp? Ooh, I saw you had to do something different to make the block go down!" and then just let them tool around with cars and blocks and ramps until they're done or their parents drag them away.
For older kids, and especially for school groups, you play out Block vs. Car, getting the rest of the kids to be the judges if there's a ton of them crowded around your table, but then you start to add on challenges. Round #2 allows the kid in charge of Block to do anything she wants, short of injuring competitors or bystanders, to give Block the advantage. Car can't do anything differently. The kid will usually change the angle of Block's track, or push Block to get it to move faster. One kid, who I flat-out told is a genius, also flipped Block over so that only the pegs were touching the track, not the flat side. When Block wins, you ask the kid what she did differently and talk about why that worked. Switch players if you can, and Round #3 can either be a no-holds-barred race in which both Car and Block can try to get their pieces to win, or you can do another round of Block only, but Block has to do something different from what was done last time. If you change the rules slightly for every round, even teenagers will excitedly play round after round after round. It was pretty amusing to be a part of.
I completely forgot to take photos of our table, but here's, like, two seconds of us goofing around when we were between visitors:
I often joke with the kids that wherever we are, I'm the nerdiest one in the room, so they are always extra thrilled when they see that I've found a nerdy soulmate. As we were packing up our activities, we were discussing Hot Wheels with the museum staffer who was in charge of us. I mentioned that when I was my kids' age, my prize possession was a Hot Wheels recreation of the General Lee. He then told me that in his friend's latest Loot Crate, she'd gotten a Hot Wheels recreation of the '67 Impala from Supernatural. I was all, "I LOOOOVE Supernatural!," and he was all, "Oh, really? Do you want to see pics of my Supernatural cosplay?"
I may have asked him to be my best friend. Also, yes, of COURSE I wanted to see pics of his Supernatural cosplay! The kids looked on with benign bemusement as the staffer and I discussed conventions and cosplay and how you can't spray paint foam when making your costume weapons, because the foam will melt, and also people who obsess over avoiding anachronisms in their cosplay are fine, UNTIL they begin to nitpick your cosplay, which isn't meant to be bound to one specific scene from one specific genre, ugh.
The kids don't always want to hang out at the museum the way they used to when they were small, but on this day, they seemed determined to embody the idea that since they'd just Worked Hard, it was time for them to Play Hard, and they spent the whole dang rest of the day there, playing like toddlers.
Don't believe me? Here they are in the Ice Cream Shoppe, last visited with this much enthusiasm when they were six and eight:
Here is Syd's Smilosaurus:
And here is Will in the gift shop:
We have a friend who works there, and after I complained to her that "ugh, these kids always have to look at every single thing every single time we come!" she was all, "Well, of course! Ooh, come look at the new stuff we got in!" And there were friends in the Paleo Lab window to chat with, and the kids just had to go to the program on hadrosaurs--
--and if we're down in Dinosphere we might as well see everything else, too--
--and of course we had to go to the racing exhibit, because it IS Indy 500 week and we ARE in Indianapolis--
--but I think everyone had the most fun visiting the newest exhibit, themed around the circus.
My sore arms attest that the Roman ladder is great for the biceps.
We have lately been obsessed with Philippe Petit, from both The Man Who Walked Between the Towers and Man on Wire. I think I'm going to spring for a beginner's slackline kit, although Syd would prefer to start straightaway with a tightrope, but we were all pretty excited to see this baby tightrope:
And if you've ever been to the Children's Museum, you know that you obviously can't get away without riding the carousel:
Our volunteer badges let us ride for free, and on this day the children took full advantage of that. I sat on a bench by the domino table and read several chapters of my book, looking up every now and then to watch my two race to choose their favorite steeds, happily ride away, then exit at the end and race around to the beginning to do the same thing over and over and over again. I'd look up to find them mid-ride, their heads bent together in discussion, or at the beginning of the ride, jostling between each other to see who could get to the stag first. I swear, they were having a better time than most of the toddlers.
I love this about the Children's Museum, or homeschooling, or maybe simply my kids. They're both mature and immature, in control and absolutely silly, working hard and playing hard. They feel capable of giving their best to an often wearying, often tedious job for two full hours, and they feel able to spend the next three goofing off and having fun, occasionally side-by-side with a small child they'd been instructing just that morning. How many other kids their ages do you know who can genuinely be themselves in that way, who can let all of the facets of who they are shine in one setting, with the same people?
Heck, how many adults do you know who can do that?
There are so many amazing opportunities for kids these days. When they were little and I wanted to give them a diversity of experiences, I enrolled them in gymnastics, softball, aerial silks, ballet, horseback riding, Spanish playgroup, day camp at the science museum--anything to expose them to a variety of possibilities so that they could see what they enjoyed.
Now that they're older, the opportunities are just as diverse--they can audition to perform in an actual ballet, or a community theater production, or a real fashion show. I can enroll them in firefighter training for a day, and teen police academy. They can take summer science classes at our local university, and robotics classes at the local community college. They can take online classes from a university in New Zealand. There are writing circles. Chaperoned trips to big cities and even other countries. Whatever a kid is enthusiastic about, we try to make happen. Whatever she's not necessarily enthusiastic about, I encourage her to try out.
A day as a Senate page at the Indiana Statehouse was an opportunity that Will was VERY enthusiastic about. Politics and government have always been interests of hers (the Inside Government Junior badge was the first Girl Scout badge that Will completed independently, whereas I had to flat-out make Syd do it), and it's sometimes a challenge to find her enrichment activities in those areas...
Anyway, yes, what was I saying? Girl Scouts! Girl Scouts have the BEST enrichment for politics and government! There's that Inside Government badge, and then the I Promised a Girl Scout I Would Vote patch that the kids worked so hard on in the fall, and opportunities to connect with global issues while earning the World Thinking Day and Global Awareness badges, and opportunities like this one, to serve as a senate page for a day. Of course, the page program is open to all kids of a certain age, but if you apply through the Girl Scouts, then you serve on a Girl Scout day, which means that all the other pages?
Girls, as far as the eye can see!
Syd and I had plans to have a special day to ourselves in Indianapolis, but first I wanted to tag along on the morning tour of the Indiana Statehouse. It had been a few years since we've toured it, so I wanted to refresh Syd's memory... and mine:
Syd sneaked up there with the big girls.
My favorite part was visiting the House and Senate chambers. Will was still pretending that her mother was not, in fact, present (hey, I was NOT the only mom tagging along! I was also not the only mom being flat-out ignored by her Senate page), but Syd, at least, hung out with me:
Unfortunately, the tour segued into the pages' first activity in the Senate chambers, so poor Syd was trapped without even an audiobook to entertain her while all the pages spent a solid hour brainstorming and creating a bill in committees, then proposing it for amendments and voting:
Although some of the committees proposed silly bills (my own daughter's committee proposed a bill that would allow pets to hold public office as figureheads. When I asked my child WHY they had suggested such a thing, she informed me that there is a cat mayor in Alaska. I googled it. There is. His name is Mayor Stubbs), the winning proposal, that all the pages then happily spent ages debating and proposing amendments to and then voting on, was a bill that menstrual products be sold tax-free.
Imagine THAT being proposed on a page day that wasn't all girls!
The kids had so many interesting things to say about this. One kid objected, on the grounds that if there was no sales tax on menstrual products, the manufacturers would just raise the prices because people were already used to spending that much. Another kid wanted to know how much money that sales tax brought in, and what the state would have to cut with its loss. Another kid wanted to amend the bill to say that menstrual products would be offered for free in public building bathrooms, including public schools and the Statehouse. It was a fabulous debate, with kids bringing up income inequality and fair access and the environmental impact of disposable menstrual products. None of them dismissed the idea outright, because all of them, ages 12 and up, knew, at least in theory, the physical and emotional and economic costs of menstruation, and I bet they all know, by now, as well, those same costs of being female.
Imagine that being debated on a day that wasn't all girls.
While I was watching this play out with stars in my eyes, my entire life's experience as female passing before my eyes and being contrasted to the experience of these kids, my younger daughter was lying prone on a bench next to me, bored out of her skull, hopeless despair in her eyes. At one point, thankfully, a gentleman from the office area outside the Senate chambers came in and engaged her in conversation. He gave her a pin, quizzed her on Indiana's state history (in Indiana, kids study Indiana history in the 5th grade, and this is apparently license for every public official and anyone in education to quiz any 5th grader they encounter about Indiana history. You've been warned), and then gave her a pin that she cherished and bragged about and showed off for the entire day:
She can now tell you what all of those stars stand for, so there you go. Indiana history!
After the debate, I managed to force Will to acknowledge that I was her mother just long enough to take this photo--
--and then the three of us had lunchtime free to eat and explore downtown:
Behind her is the Statehouse!
Afterwards, we dropped Will off for her afternoon Senate session--with the real, live Senators!--and poor Syd finally got the special time that she'd been promised. We painted that downtown red!
We did all of Syd's favorite things:
climbing on the limestone boulders by the canal
chasing leaves
looking at stuff
visiting the Indiana State Museum--museum admission was too expensive for me, but we saw an IMAX, and hallelujah, they had this activity in the lobby, and Syd fortunately thought that it was the best thing ever
trying to entice the ducks and geese that swim in the canal
There we go. Syd got her special time, and we picked up an exhilarated, inspired Will up after a busy afternoon with the Senate. And I drove two exhausted children home through rush hour traffic, put on my jammies, and pretty much read in bed for the rest of the evening.
