Fleece and Footwear

As you can see, not only do I sew the children warm fleece pants to wear during our freezing winters, but I even patch those pants with more fleece when the children wear holes in them:

So why, when the temperature is definitely below zero outside, and the kid is wearing fleece pants, a coat, and gloves, is she also wearing CROCS?!?

I swear, I have to get after both of them every single time we get in the car--"No, you may not wear Crocs!" "YES, you have to wear socks?!?" "Will, I swear, at least bring the coat WITH you in case we have car trouble or there's a fire drill at the library!"

The other night, Matt picked the kids up from the library, and asked them to meet him upstairs after they'd collected their things. Will arrived without her coat, admitted that yes, she'd left it downstairs in the children's department, and then suggested, "Let's just leave it. We can come back tomorrow and get it."

Seriously, if it was twenty degrees warmer, which would still be VERY cold, I wouldn't care. If they want to be uncomfortable, that's not my concern. I must insist, however, that the children NOT suffer from frostbite in their extremities while under my care.

So this morning, as part of getting ready to head out for math class, I reminded both children to brush their teeth and hair, walked Will around the house to find her hairbrush after she tearfully insisted that she "can't find it!" (it was in clear view on the playroom floor, next to a teaspoon and a roll of masking tape), reminded Syd again to brush her teeth and hair, reminded both children that they must wear socks and shoes, reminded them again to bring breakfast along for the car ride (Will didn't; Syd did, but handed it to me, uneaten, at the door of the classroom), and then flat-out screamed at Will in the car, sigh, as she successfully turned ten minutes of memory work into ten minutes of power struggle by mumbling her answers so quietly that I couldn't hear her, then declaring at my protests--in, I might add, a much louder volume--that THIS is her normal volume and she ALWAYS speaks just like this and she doesn't understand WHY I keep making her speak more loudly!

Of course, then, as we're climbing the stairs to their classroom, and I'm following behind Will and instructing her to please be more respectful to Mr. Phil than she was to her mother this morning (I know, I know...), I of COURSE notice that the child is, yes, wearing close-toed shoes, but no, she is not wearing socks.

Did I mention that it's eleven degrees outside?

I'm seriously considering showing her a Google Image search entitled "frostbitten toes." That's seriously where I'm at right now with this whole socks business.

Junior Civil War Historians: Pea Ridge National Military Park

How fortunate for us that two of the participating national parks required for the children to earn their Junior Civil War Historian patches were both right there on our holiday road trip!

I've long been wanting to visit Prairie Grove Battlefield, because that's where my great-great-grandfather fought (on the side of the Confederacy, sigh), but Pea Ridge National Military Park is the one that's included in the Junior Civil War Historian program, which only runs through this year, AND it's covered under our national park pass, which expires in July, so that's the one that we detoured to on our way home from Christmas with my family.

Guess we'll just have to review the Civil War and visit Prairie Grove on another trip down south!

The Battle of Pea Ridge has too much back-and-forthing for me to summarize here; suffice to say that northwest Arkansas was a tactically advantageous location to control, so the Union drove down into it, the Confederacy attempted to counter-attack, and the battle? Well, there was a whole lot of fleeing on both sides, if you ask me. A whole lot of getting lost in the woods. A whole lot of bad decision-making. Most of the bad decisions--soldiers being force-marched away from their back-up wagons with no rest and few supplies; a commander shot dead, his second-in-command choosing not to share this with the troops so that when he, too, is shot dead, the soldiers are left without a commander but they don't know this, and so hang around all day in the woods waiting for orders--were made by the Confederate side, and so they're the ones who lost the battle.

Nevertheless, the Union side made a lot of bad decisions, too. I imagine that this is a great battle to replay on the tabletop gaming circuit.

The children studiously plugged away on their Junior Ranger books, which were, I was pleased to see, very academically rigorous (especially Will's--even the Ranger had to fetch the answer key to help her with the couple of answers that she couldn't find!), although less cross-curricular than some other Junior Ranger programs that they've completed:

This display played re-enactments of the various engagements, while highlighting the location of each one on the map below. It was great.

I shouldn't let the kids write over the displays, but it's hard to enforce that rule when there are no other writing surfaces around. 

Fortunately, the car audio tour that we'd purchased also spent time discussing the area's geology and geography and flora and fauna, so we came away with a thorough introduction to Pea Ridge.

Another Trail of Tears site! This one belongs to a different forced emigration route than the one that we visited in Ft. Smith.

This is the site of a former town, one that was actually still in existence during the battle. Here in winter, with the ground covered in leaves, it's impossible to see the footprints of any structures--

--except for this one small grave:

Look at us not climbing on the cannons anymore! Yay, Us!

Here's the place where the Confederate Commander McCulloch was killed. He just kind of wandered out from those trees to check the lay of the land, and the Union soldiers who happened to be hanging around right here shot him. If his second in command McIntosh had just TOLD the soldiers what had happened, then an entire contingent wouldn't have spent the whole day just hanging around in the woods, waiting for McCulloch to magically appear again and give them orders after McIntosh, too, was killed.

Below this plateau, which looks out onto much of the battlefield, a bunch of soldiers got pinned down on the rocky cliffs and slaughtered.

Will recounts it all in great detail:

As per usual, the unlucky inhabitants of this tavern got caught up in the middle of the battle, and then had to deal with its aftermath:

We did this entire tour in the sleet, by the way. Those are the weird little shapes that you keep seeing in the photos. It was unpleasant, yes, but you know how we feel about having a place all to ourselves!

Great was the joy that the children felt when they turned in their books and earned their Junior Ranger badges for Pea Ridge, and then even greater was their joy when they also turned in their completed Underground Railroad books and also earned their Junior Civil War Historian patches!

So great was this joy, apparently, that a few days ago, when an adult asked Will how her Christmas vacation was, she replied, "Great! I earned two new Junior Ranger badges!"

There were also Christmas presents and feasting and family, of course, but Junior Ranger badges?

Nothing can compare to that.

Work Plans for the Week of January 5, 2015: Back to Work!

I'm actually hesitant about writing this full schedule of work plans for this week--the kids have spent our entire holiday break doing a half-schedule of schoolwork (Math Mammoth, First Language Lessons, a reading assignment, and a hands-on project four days a week), and then spending the rest of each entire day playing contentedly with each other. They cooperate on video games, they build Kapla block structures and Hot Wheels tracks and LEGO machines, they draw and paint and chase each other outside in the freezing weather, they spin elaborate tales and act them out with their toy animals, they play board games together and Sydney only occasionally throws a fit over the outcome... it's been a great source of joy to me, watching them this active and engaged and content with each other. I don't want to disrupt it.

All that to say that yes, I have a full schedule of work plans for the children, but no, I'm not going to shove them away from their play to complete them. I suspect that with Matt out of the house again (he was able to take the week between Christmas and New Year's off just to be with us, and it was our happiest week of the year, barring digging for dinosaurs), the kids will transition back to our regular schedule fairly readily, but as it's currently almost 9:30 am, they've haven't yet appeared from their bedroom, I promised them a half-hour of LEGO Marvel before they had to start school, AND we've got our volunteer gig to get ready for at 11-ish... we'll see.

MONDAY: I liked the system of handing the children a book to read each day (Syd's a picture book or leveled chapter book, Will's a longer non-fiction book) so well that I plan to continue it this week. The rough theme behind the reading assignments will be "diversity," to help them prep for brainstorming for an essay on that topic on Friday.

Will is in the middle of geometry in her Math Mammoth this week, with an emphasis on circles, so we'll be revisiting the mandala drawing that Syd and I did together early last month, based on a class taught by Julie Gibbons. Not only was it fun and creative, but it was great practice for using a compass and mastering radial symmetry.

The children barely got a start on their Hoffman Academy lessons before our break, so they'll be reviewing the old ones and then completing a new one, as well as doing the written work associated with it. I expect them to practice keyboard in their own time throughout the rest of the week, although I've made it my goal this semester to be more present for this.

Will's goal is to earn ALL of the Junior Girl Scout badges before she bridges to Cadette in the fall, and to that end, her short-term goal is to complete a Girl Scout badge every week. Today, I'll be asking each child to choose a badge and to plan out how they might complete it this week--I'll look over their plans and assist as necessary, whether it be taking them to buy supplies or planning an impromptu field trip or setting up something that might need to be done after this week. I only halfway expect that they'll do this badge work in their own time throughout the rest of the week; I'm prepared to shift or delete other school tasks, if necessary, to accommodate their work, because as I've mentioned MANY times before, I'm sure, I find that these Girl Scout badges are really valuable as a source of cross-curricular study and an encouragement to the kids to stretch themselves academically.

Everyone loves our weekly volunteer gig! There are a number of jobs there that the kids can take responsibility for, although sometimes they choose to read or play or taste the entire time, and that's okay, too, although I don't mark those hours on their log sheets (they're both working toward the President's Volunteer Service Award). I've been researching a couple of additional regular volunteer activities that are quite academic, as well--I'd like us to make a monthly commitment to the Paleo Prep Lab at the Children's Museum, which is excellent science enrichment, of course, and I'm in the process of signing the kids up to be pen pals with a couple of local senior citizens, for additional handwriting and composition practice.

TUESDAY: Since most of the children's extra-curricular activities haven't started, yet, this day works out to be our Free Day this week, AND the forecast calls for snow! Our Girl Scout Co-op will likely come over to play on this day--well, the kids will play, and the moms will discuss Very Important Cookie Business with me, The Cookie Manager. Girl Scout Cookie Season starts on Saturday!

WEDNESDAY: Syd's Math Mammoth this week is a review of place value in the thousands; geometry is up next for her. Will in the middle of geometry now in her Math Mammoth, with fractions up next. Both of their current units are pretty easy for them, but I expect that we'll be doing a lot of hands-on fraction activities in the near future.

Again, we didn't get much out of Song School Spanish before the break, although the kids have kept their vocabulary, and the Latin equivalents, in their heads thanks to my militant ten-minute memory work drill time during our first car ride of each day. Even counting one day every week when we simply don't drive anywhere, that's a good hour of nothing but memory work every single week. It makes a HUGE difference in easing their learning, I think.

Night of the New Magicians is the subject of this month's Magic Tree House Club. It's been our tradition, ever since Syd was so small, to listen to the audiobook of the current book on the day of the meeting. During the meeting, Ms. Roni leads the kids on a cross-curricular study of the book, and then sets up little activities and craft projects that the kids can do in their own time afterwards. My two absolutely LOVE it.

THURSDAY: We blew through a ton of First Language Lessons during our winter holiday, and that was a good thing, because the daily practice with it gave me the time that I needed to work out modifications that I could make to make the curriculum better for us--I added some depth to the poetry memorization, and figured out ways to cut out most of the silly scripted dialogue. Thank goodness!

I had considered wrapping up our endangered animals study, but in the car ride home from Indianapolis last night (we saw Marvel Universe Live, and it was freaking AWESOME!!!), Will randomly started going on and on about Hector's dolphin, one of the animals that she studied during this unit, and I realized that I can't delete a subject that gives her so much pleasure. Since Will needs more practice with visual arts, however, and Syd, who's much cooler on the subject of endangered animals, loves the visual arts, I'll be experimenting with emphasizing that manner of expression in this study. We'll see how it goes.

FRIDAY: You might notice that I'm constantly engaging the kids in whatever academic or arts competitions come along; I think they're great practice in working to a prompt, something that us free-range homeschoolers don't get an excess of, and in encouraging the study of something totally new and totally unchosen by the kid, something that us self-directed homeschoolers also don't get an excess of, and, as Will can attest with her FIFTY-DOLLAR prize from last year's essay contest, AND her FIFTY-DOLLAR gift certificate from a volunteering contest a couple of years ago, they can result in tangible rewards for the kids, which us non-grading, non-sticker-and-pencil-and-extra-recess-and-lunch-with-the-principal homeschoolers also don't get an excess of. There are actually a few contests that the kids are working on right now--an endangered species art contest, a Black History Month essay contest, and this one on human rights and diversity.

Finally, we'll be beginning on Friday a study on Georgia O'Keeffe, inspired by a temporary exhibit that we're going to see at the Indianapolis Museum of Art before the museum begins to charge admission in a few months and our visits to it become highly curtailed--BOO!!! I'd like to combine biography with hands-on art in this study, which means that I need to make a mental note to intersperse some Draw Write Now and other Drawing With Children-style practice into our days starting next week.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY:  The kids have a program on Japan on Sunday, and we'll be taking down our Christmas decorations and hopefully doing some projects with our tree before throwing it out in the yard and letting it dry out so we can burn it this summer, but the big news is that Saturday is the start of Girl Scout cookie sales! It's the kids' first year selling, AND I somehow ended up being the Cookie Manager for our little band of Juliettes, so you can understand why this is big news for us.

Also, want to buy some Girl Scout cookies? Starting on Saturday, I'll know a couple of little kids who can help you out with that...

Just a Couple of Kids Fishing with Their Grandpa

I beg your indulgence for the truly ridiculous number of photographs that is to follow, but I imagine that you're aware, by now (perhaps based on the truly ridiculous number of photographs that I took last time) that the sight of these two kids, fishing with the man whom all three of us call "Pappa," the man who helped raise me, is my favorite thing about visiting home:

Pappa reviews casting with the kids while Will holds his cane.

Pappa gave the kids these fishing rods for Christmas. They were thrilled!

Will wanted to do all the fish handling herself, so Pappa taught her how.

Every adult is always tangibly relieved when the second kid has also caught a fish. Everything else is bonus!

This kid could happily do this all day, I think.

We have homework before our summer visit back to Arkansas, as Pappa instructed me to take these girls fishing here in Indiana (mental note: must research rules, regulations, and localities for this), but he also reminded me that when we do come back, I need to bring the rods--and the minnow bucket that he's letting me borrow--back with us.

And then we'll all go fishing together again!

Junior Civil War Historians: Ft. Smith National Historic Site

Even though all the Junior Ranger badges are special, there are some that are REALLY special. Will got such a kick out of earning Yellowstone's Junior Ranger badge and Young Scientist badge because they were actually sew-on patches, and so when I learned about the Junior Civil War Historian Program, which is also a patch, and which is only a limited-time program through 2015, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I knew that the kids would like it, and that Will would love it, so I planned to make it happen for them.

The Junior Civil War Historian Program requires that the kid either earn a Junior Ranger badge from three parks participating in the program (all the parks that are participating are relevant to the Civil War, but not all parks relevant to the Civil War are participating, so you have to check before you go), or earn a Junior Ranger badge from two participating parks and complete this packet on the Underground Railroad (bring it to one of the participating parks to get it checked and signed off on when completed). I was super bummed that we'd done Gettysburg during the sesquicentennial but before we knew about Junior Rangers, but as I was checking out the parks list, trying to see if there were any two that we could hit sometime before the end of 2015, I saw that, why, yes, there ARE two parks right on our route to and from Arkansas to spend Christmas with my family, and why, my goodness, one of those parks is actually IN my hometown!

Also a major player in this story: our national parks pass that doesn't expire until July. Worth every freaking penny. Just between you and me, I don't one hundred percent know if we've actually made our money back on that purchase yet, but the fact that we go to way more national parks now than we did before we bought the pass makes it worth everything that we paid for it, and more.

On this particular trip to the Ft. Smith National Historic Site, our first of the two participating parks, I was having some major flashbacks to my eighth grade field trip to the same spot. News flash: I didn't enjoy it (adolescence=shudder), nor did I really grasp how macabre much of the site is.

Like seriously macabre. Much badness. Much blood. The site started off as a fort at the edge of "Indian" territory, to keep the peace between two Indian nations, one of which had been displaced to the area by colonial government, the other of which did not appreciate having its own land encroached on by the displaced nation. Once the colonial government decided to keep on displacing the Native Americans, including both of these nations, the fort transitioned into a supply depot for the Trail of Tears. This display--

--shows some of the crap that the Native Americans were given here, and tells the story of how they were also given rations of rotten meat while starving, their protests at the food treated with contemptuous shrugs. 

Is it even necessary to mention that I did not learn about this on my eighth grade field trip? I swear that I didn't even know that Ft. Smith was part of the Trail of Tears until I was an adult, and I lived my entire childhood next to the former "Indian Territory" of Oklahoma--

--and family lore even claims that I have Cherokee blood on my Pappa's side (I doubt that I could ever confirm this one way or another, but marriage to a Caucasian guy would surely have let a Cherokee woman avoid her forced removal...). 

Ft. Smith remained a frontier fort, and since it was evacuated by US forces after the firing on Ft. Sumter, it was easy for Confederate troops to move in. They stationed and trained there, and it was a staging area for some of the local battles, including the Battle of Prairie Grove, which my great-great-grandfather fought in, and the Battle of Pea Ridge, where we would visit a few days later. The Union retook the fort a couple of years in, and then used it as a staging and training area for themselves. 

This is the day before I learned that you're actually not supposed to climb on cannons in national parks. Oops!

Don't worry--the museum includes lots of stories of troops on both sides doing cruel things to each other there. Lots of systematic executions, lots of making captured soldiers from the other side stand on their coffins or next to their graves while preparing to be executed, etc. Sigh.

After the Civil War, Ft. Smith returned to its role as a frontier fort, and this is what we learned about in the eighth grade, particularly the history of the Hanging Judge, Judge Isaac Parker. Here's his courtroom:

The history of the US Marshals, who were kind of like a combination of bounty hunters and police officers, is big here, so the kids learned a lot about what it was like to hunt down criminals in the Wild West:

That photo on the left is of a gang of criminal teenagers who were executed for gang rape. Nice, huh?

Here's one of the jail cells:

It could contain up to fifty individuals, some simply there to wait for trial, all sleeping on pallets on the stone floor, stinking so badly that they could be smelled in the courtroom above.

Here's where many of those individuals were headed:

If you visit the site on the anniversary of an execution, there's a noose hanging there. Ft. Smith is nothing but festive!

All that hard work was then rewarded--

--and we went out for a refreshing hike to the river and back to clear our heads of the history of people being mean to other people:

This was the grimmest site that we've been to yet, but it's good, you know? Eventually, the kids have to start learning the history of people being mean to other people, if only to help them memorialize all who have been victimized and to teach them not to victimize, themselves, but I'm a softie for the hearts of my children, and I'm reluctant to teach them as much about the sad stuff as they're probably ready for.

Nevertheless, I appreciated our time at the river as a balm to all the cruelty that had taken place here, practically under our feet:

Better, just then, to let the flowing water wash it all away, and then go back to Pappa's house for peanut butter fudge, Animal Planet, and craft projects.

Aerial Silks Winter Showcase: Momma's Little Sugar Plum

Since Syd spent much of the past few months rehearsing for her role in our university's production of The Nutcracker, it struck me as quite apropos when I learned that one of the songs that Will would be performing to in her own aerial silks show would be "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies."

Mind you, Syd's role was on the ground (although the angels were meant to look as if they were flying), and Will's role was in the air, but nevertheless, they were both Nutcracker kids this year.

My Will lives so much in her own head that she sometimes finds it hard when she's required to be in her body; she's strong and flexible and smart, but she has to work harder than the other kids to find the body awareness that leads to grace in one's movements, and it's not something that she can yet reliably achieve. That's one of the many, many, many reasons why I was so proud to watch her practicing and rehearsing for this aerial silks show--a lot of kids who are good at some things will only do those things, and never be brave enough to stretch themselves in a new direction in which they risk failure, but not my Will. She wanted to perform in this show, and she worked her butt off to do it.

I thought that this show would be a direct contrast to Syd's Nutcracker run--everyone in town, practically, saw Syd dance onstage this year, but I figured that only the performers' families, and perhaps a few doting friends, would be in the theater to watch Will. And yet when we got there, so early that I'd thought about doing a little window shopping first just so we wouldn't be the only people sitting in the audience, we actually walked in to find the bleacher seats about 95% taken, and we had to squeeze ourselves in at the far end of a row. And people just kept coming, and coming, and coming! The performers brought out folding chairs and put them all around the stage, wherever they thought that people could sit and probably not get kicked in the head. More people sat on the floor:

I don't know what else was going on in Bloomington that night, but there can't have been more people anywhere than there were in this theater, watching this show.

And what a show it was! I don't know if you've ever seen much circus arts performed live before, but it's really something special to watch. There was everything--synchronized numbers, solo numbers, aerial silks, aerial hoop, and trapeze:

And this kid, of course, who was my own personal favorite performer:

 She tells me that she wasn't nervous, but I don't know... look at that face:

Matt took videos of Will's performances (shaky, wonky videos, of course, as one does when one is holding the video camera and filming, but one's focus is rather on the actual show, as it should be), but I'm a rotten perfectionist, and I kind of didn't want to show them to you at first. I didn't want you to see Will's hesitations, her frowns of concentration, how she wants to always watch her partner to keep herself in time, the spots where she forgets her choreography, and think that she didn't do a good job.

But of course, who really cares about small things like that? You might see an imperfect performance, yeah, but you also see a really brave kid. A focused kid. A kid trying so hard that the concentration is clear on her face. A kid who hung out all day with her fellow performers and her teachers the day of the show, got her hair curled and her face glittered, and DIDN'T BRING A BOOK. 

A kid who, in her first rehearsal several weeks before, wept silently but hard as she tried and failed and tried and failed to master a stunt that she was able to successfully pull off during this performance. 

This is that awesome kid in her show:

It was a perfect performance.