Morning Work

Since I didn’t have much to do for school this morning, I took over the first part of E’s homeschooling adventure. Our first task: to write the first chapter or two of his book about frogs and toads. Six chapters will constitute the final product:

1. Introduction
2. Toads
3. Frogs
4. Similarities
5. Differences
6. Dedication

As we read, I saw the difficulties and frustrations lying ahead: when it would come time to write the book, he might fuss, “Now we’ll have to go back through the text again. We have to read it again!!” So I taught him a little trick as we read that I use with my students.

“As you’re re-reading, highlight facts you might want to rewrite in your own writing. Then put a number beside it to indicate which chapter you’ll use it in. When it comes time to write, then, you’ll just have to look at all the numbers for the chapter you happen to be working on.”

There are two reasons for this: first, it will help him with his writing later. That’s the most obvious way it assists him. Less obvious but more importantly, it helps him develop skills as a critical, analytic reader. My own students often have difficulty reading because they’re not reading for a particular reason. Giving kids a purpose as they read gives them a goal and a metric to measure comprehension and success.

As we read, E grew more confident about the whole process; as he began writing the first chapters, he realized the sense behind it all. That might lead to a little less fussing as he continues to work on the piece.

Hook

Mr. F, our neighbor, is a keen fisherman. He’s got a boat, countless rods and reels, and multiple tackle boxes filled with endless lures and hooks. Heading out to the lake regularly, he often comes home with enough fish for his family and some neighbors: he’s given us many, many pounds of fish over the year. He’s the type of fisherman that, as regards fishing equipment, if he doesn’t have it, it probably doesn’t exist.

The Boy often goes over to help Mr. F. He’s something of a third grandfather to E, which makes him really like a second grandfather since Dziadek passed before E was a year old and E knows him only from pictures.

When E and I discovered in the creek that runs behind our house a couple of pools that are deep enough for larger minnows — some looking to be three or more inches long, maybe even four inches long — I commented that they’re almost big enough actually to use a hook and bait. Recalling the little minnows we caught in Lake Jocassee with just a line, a hook, and some bread, I suggested that we could use a bamboo cane and make a real, old-fashioned playin’-hooky-to-go-fishin’ cane fishing pole.

After we were both done with school, we headed down, saw and net in hand. “I still want to try to net some minnow,” he explained. We found an adequately small cane and cut it after a bit of unsuccessfully netting attempts.

“Now we just need the line and a hook,” the Boy said as we headed back, adding as a sad afterthought, “but we don’t have any.”

“Why not ask Mr. F?” I suggested.

“Oh yeah!”

Then the real question as far as I was concerned: with Mr. F not out, he would have to go knock on the neighbors’ door, and I decided it was something he was going to have to do by himself. Would he do it?

“Just go knock on their door,” I said after he protested that Mr. F wasn’t outside at that moment.

“What if Mrs. P answers the door?”

“Just tell her that you have a favor to ask of Mr. F.”

He paused in thought. “Okay.”

When he came back, the Girl had joined us and was snooping about to figure out what was up. I explained. “Oh.” No protests about how awfully cruel it would be to catch a minnow with a hook. “With a hook!? Jabbed in its mouth?!” I could just hear her indignantly and incredulously asking.

When the Boy headed down for some fishing, I suggested that L might want to go with him. “Don’t let her talk you into letting her have the first turn because she will try to bamboozle you,” I warned.

He headed down by himself, though. I thought for a while that I should go with him at least to memorialize the moment photographically. Then I thought better of it: he needs some independence, and since he didn’t even ask me (with the explanation of being scared or worried about this or that) to go with him, I stayed behind.

He came back up a few minutes later, a scowl on his face as he stomped up the hill.

“Guess what?” he began, not waiting for a response. “I had one or two good tries and then the hook got stuck. When I tried to pull it out, the hook came off!” He plopped in a chair. “Now I can’t fish at all today!”

“Sounds like we might need to go get our own hooks,” I suggested.

More incredulity: “At the store?!” E is the most worried about cornavirus in our family. I think he’s convinced, despite our efforts to explain everything, that one can just get it, that it just lurks in the air waiting for unsuspecting victims.

In the end, we didn’t have to go get more hooks: the Boy remembered he had one small hook still on his fishing pole, so we cut it off and tied it onto the cane pole. We took some bread from a dinner roll we had, rolled it back into dough, and put it on the hook.

Soon enough, we had a minnow.

But our catch-and-release plan was thwarted by the difficulty of removing a hook from such a small fish. In the end, something terribly traumatic happened to the poor fish as we were removing the hook, and it went belly up immediately upon release.

The Companion

Clover has become a companion dog. She doesn’t wander around, looking to find what she can get into. She doesn’t sneak off to try to get on the couch. She doesn’t (always) go off searching for a toy. She plops down next to someone and just relaxes. When we’re outside and L is, for instance, in our fort reading and Papa is on the deck listening to music (he’s become a real Spotify fiend), the pup moves from person to person, spending a little time by my side, a little time by Papa’s side, and a little time with L.

Another sign that she’s no longer a puppy.

Then she goes over to the fence just to antagonize the neighbors’ dog, so many not so much…