A Season of Larnin'

Geez, I coulda sworn I'd posted here more recently than October.

Spring is upon us. I will attempt to recall significant things we did, unschooling-wise, over the winter.

Kaleigh displayed her rock collection at the Illinois State Museum's Junior Collector's Day.

Today K and I went to see My Heart in a Suitcase, at Sangamon Auditorium. It's about a Jewish girl in Berlin at the time the National Socialists are coming to power. It was emotionally intense. It surprised me how, in just a matter of months, conditions went from Jews getting banned from working in banking, to Jewish parents shipping their kids off to England to save their lives. Whew!! We were both a little verklemmt after all that. It was a terrific performance, though. At the climax, when the girl was getting ready to board the kindertransport, it looked like the young woman playing her really was about ready to break down.

Kaleigh and Carey read their way through the Little House books again, and are now almost done with the Rose books, about Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter. Good stuff.

At the moment, K and I are reading Larklight, a young adult novel by Philip Reeve. It's science fiction, but in an early 19th century vein. Spaceships that look like sailing ships; alchemical engines; spacefish, er, Aetheric Icthyomorphs, that flap through the aether. And all kinds of fascinating (and scary, and friendly) aliens on the moon, Mars, Venus, and more. The book has plenty of scary parts, but I assured K that it's one of those where they always manage to escape, and now she seems more willing to continue reading it. I've read ahead in it, and quite enjoyed it. (Thanks Ran for the recommendation!)

K has dabbled in rock identification (for the show at the museum) and birdwatching. One day she discovered/realized we had binoculars, and started staring out the window for long periods at the birds around the feeder in the yard. We got books from the library and learned about some different kinds of birds. I think all the ones we see in our yard, Carey and I already knew. Typical midwestern urban birds.

Lately, the robins have been coming back, for Spring. We've been doing gardening, which K helps out with. She even picked out several kinds of seeds for pretty plants she wants to grow. A lot of them are vines, which can grow on her playhouse in the yard.

The other day she helped Mike with putting up shelves in her room. I hope she grows up more handy than I am :)

K has been taking various gymnastics classes, and art, and swimming, which seems like normal stuff for us now.

I'm sure there's more. There's always more. Worksheets, arts and crafts, fashion shows, spontaneous generosity, playing with folks of all ages, cooking. But now it's Carey's turn for the screen.

Today

K and I walked to Humphrey's twice for a variety of groceries. We played kickball twice, amounting to about an hour total of running around. We went to the library, returned books, looked for specific books, found some additional books, startled Ms. Lisa with a good BOO!, colored a few coloring sheets, built a log cabin with lincoln logs, looked up a book on the library catalog computer and requested a copy. I finished reading The Celery Stalks at Midnight to her, and we started on Nighty Nightmare. We hauled in firewood; when I want to laze on the couch, and she says "Dad! Let's go get some wood!" how can I not accept that offer?

And K learned to knit!

Off the top of my head

(I posted this on Little House in the Ghetto, when I meant to post it here. Here's where's been needing an update for a while!)

Off the top of my head, what we've been doing lately, as far as unschooling. Reading about Halloween. Going to the Farmer's Market twice a week. Attending the Food Not Lawns talk on the bee crisis, learning a LOT about bees. Saw Compania Flamenco Jose Porcel at Sangamon Auditorium, that was very nice. K liked the twirling dresses and fancy footwork; I liked the music, a Spanish Gypsy melange with some Arabic influences. The footwork was quite impressive, too, though!

Kaleigh got a (disgusting) American Girls doll catalog in the mail. She's paged through it many times, oohing over stuff, and wowing at how much they want for something. Get your doll an outfit for more than I'd spend on an outfit for myself! So, she's experiencing firsthand, and hearing from us, about how advertising creates desires for things you didn't even know existed, and how conspicuous consumption works. American Girls is partly about history, though, so we can work some history lessons into looking at a catalog.

We attended Super Saturday at the Illinois State Museum, this time the topic was migratory birds. So we learned some about migratory birds that appear in Illinois, and made the usual cut-paste-n-color crafty things. (One of which was an owl puppet, but owls don't migrate!) We also poked around in the Changes exhibit (creationists beware!) and played the video game that illustrates how evolution by natural selection works. We watched the Changes movie for the umpteenth time (10 or 15 minutes of Illinois geological history and how Earth forces affect everything).

We got the woodstove going again, entering our first autumn and winter with it. K has been helping out with retrieving wood from outside, and loading the stove. Considering wood is the only carbon-neutral fuel, and hypothetically could be used sustainably, stove skillz are now leading-edge.

Halloween dress rehearsal

Vote for your favorite costume. All modeled by the very fashiony posing Kaleigh.

Cinderella, with extra fashiony arms and smirk.

Little maid Kaleigh.





Cheerleader.

Princess.










Prom Queen.

Unfinished late 60's girl (need some brown polyster pants to complete).











Witch with (lazy!) cat.

State Fair time!

Today Don and Kaleigh went to the Illinois State Fair. Don wasn't eager to go on the first Saturday of fair week, with the weather all nice and everything, expecting major crowds. But he decided if they got going as soon as they could in the morning, it could be all right. And it was. They got off the bus at the fairgrounds at 9:00, and got on the bus to go home at 5:00!

Kaleigh wanted to go on the canoe ride at Conservation World, but Conservation World didn't open until 10:00. They looked in some nearby livestock barns, with goats and sheep. They saw some sheep getting sheared. Baaas of boredom and annoyance resounded throughout the sheep barn. Like consumers waiting too long for something not worthwhile.

Finally, Conservation World opened. But it turned out the Voyageur canoe ride didn't start until 11:00. Sigh! Don and Kaleigh poked around in various tents in Conservation World, looking at replica mastodon and giant ground sloth bones, playing in a water table (where you make channels for water and toy boats to course through), and pedaling a bike to see how much it takes to light an incandescent bulb vs. a compact fluorescent. There was probably more that Don can't think of right now. Kaleigh petted a bluegill fish, and a crawdad. (crayfish? crawfish? craydad?) They decided to take the fairgrounds tram over to the food area and come back later for the canoe ride.

After eating their day's worth of trans-fats, white sugar, and white flour, they moseyed over to the kids' area. Kaleigh rode the bicycle course several times until Don got bored of waiting around. Kaleigh did a little putt-putt golf in a 4-H food bank tent. Then Kaleigh climbed into a smallish but real Cat brand digger, working levers and observing the air conditioning controls.

They went to the fire safety area and Kaleigh slid down a firefighter's pole a few times. Then they went through the fire safety house (more like single-wide trailer) and learned different safety tips for different rooms in the house. The event culminated in the mock-second-story bedroom with a smoke machine pumping smoke into the air, and the closed bedroom door feeling what. What to do?! Get down on your hands and knees, and climb out the window and down the emergency ladder, and in real life you'd go meet your family at the prearranged meeting place.

Then the tram pulled up, so they saw the chance to go back to Conservation World. They FINALLY got to go on the canoe, with about 20 other people. It was a BIG canoe. Kaleigh and everyone else seated on the outside got to help paddle. A fiberglass canoe through a machine-built lake.

It's time to go put her to bed, and I haven't even gotten to the chemistry tent yet!!

reading and raspberry riots, and other news

Yes, that's Kaleigh! She's reading her first chapter book to herself. She's almost done, after working on it for a couple of days. She signed up for the library's reading program, and we're almost finished (over 18 hours in six days, and counting...). We've been reading good books by Robert Burch (one of my new favorite authors), and Clyde Robert Bulla. When you have good books to read, and it's hot and mosquitoey outside, it makes for a lot of reading time! Kaleigh picked up the Boxcar Children, one of her favorite books, and found that it wasn't so hard to read those intimidating chapter books after all. And we parents are enjoying much appreciated quiet and down time.

The raspberry patch is starting to yield. We are about 10 inches of rain above "normal", and everything is lush and large this year. Kind of makes up for last year, I suppose. Kaleigh has enjoyed raspberries in her yogurt, and her parents are looking forward to raspberry wine!

Yesterday, Don and Kaleigh went to the Juneteenth celebration (for more info on this holiday, see http://www.juneteenth.com/). It was within biking distance! They had fun, and Kaleigh bought a bracelet with her own money. It's her good luck bracelet, and she's never taking it off, not ever, until the next time she gets a new bracelet.

Kaleigh moved her bed into her room a week ago. She has enjoyed waking up with Cozy the kitty snuggling at her feet. She also enjoys waking up and being able to play without worrying about waking up her parents. Ah, freedom! Her parents are enjoying this also, especially the part about sometimes sleeping later than 7 a.m.

Through the library's summer reading program activities, Kaleigh attended both a cheer clinic and a pom pom clinic. She had fun learning about these fun sports, and took home a white t-shirt (mud girl says, "I've never had a white t-shirt before!) and a set of silver poms. She also had fun playing Little Sally Walker.

the recital!

Kaleigh was very excited to have the opportunity to take ballet and tap lessons this year. She danced with 10 other girls. They did their ballet recital to the song Dance Your Dreams. They did their tap recital to the song I Love a Rainy Night. They had fun, did well, and Kaleigh got to stay up extra late!