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Hatchet

Friday 05 July 2019

It’s all the Boy has been talking about for the last few weeks.

“Daddy, can we get a hatchet?”

He was thinking about buying it with his own money; he was thinking about splitting the cost with us; he was thinking about it, talking about it, probably dreaming about it.

Today, we finally got it. He wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to pay any of his money for it because he’s got his eye on another Lego set, but when, after buying nails, concrete screws, pegboard hooks, and other things on the list, we finally headed over to the gardening section, his excitement brought a smile to both K and me.

The highlight of the afternoon, then, was teaching him how to use it.

Reading with the Boy

Wednesday 12 June 2019

We try to get the Boy to read a little every night. Tonight we worked on L's old book about spiders. I found the place we'd left off, but the Boy insisted that he'd finished with K last night.

"Well, it doesn't hurt to read it again," I said. It might have sounded like I was just being lazy, but being able to read a tricky passage fluently will build his confidence. We learn by repetition, especially recognition of new words.

"The back part of a spider's body is called the abdomen," he began.

"Wow -- you read that tough word like a pro," I added.

"What word?"

"Abdomen."

He sighed. "Daddy, I recognized the word."

"I know. And that's a long word to know. How many letters?"

He counted: "Seven."

"You recognized a seven letter word!"

"No, wait," he said, counting hopefully again. "No, just seven."

He continued, stumbling a bit: "It has the spider's hear -- hear?"

"Heart," I helped.

"Heart and the spinnerets, which make silk," he continued.

"Spinnerets?!" I gasped. "Are you kidding? You read that like a pro as well!"

"But daddy, I stumbled over a" and he paused to count. "A five-letter word." He often stumbles over words, words that sometimes surprise me.  And he recognizes and reads fluently words that sometimes surprise me. It's part of learning to read.

"That's okay," I reassured. "You stumbled over that word, but you nailed 'spinnerets.'"'

Many of my students over the years have face similar struggles, and struggling readers are not confident readers. I've sat with kids who were reading, asked them to read aloud, and heard difficult passages come out like this: "It has the spider's hea hear -- whatever -- and the spin spin -- I don't know -- which make the silk." If that's what's going on in their head as they read silently, and there's no reason to think it wouldn't be, it's no wonder they don't feel confident with reading: the struggle produces nothing but a confusing text. And they're likely to anticipate all this: before they begin reading, they've convinced themselves that they won't understand it. And all of this builds and calcifies into not a mere reluctance to reading but a positive aversion to it.

Confidence eliminates those "whatevers" and "I-don't-knows." And so I have the Boy read books a second, third, and fourth time.

"But I already know this book," he complains.

"I know -- that's the point," I think.

Spring Monday

Monday 29 April 2019

I was worried that this would be the first of several very difficult days. With no one here to help with the kids (read: E) in the morning, it's difficult for me to get out of the house very early. This week, however, is my duty week: I get to spend thirty minutes before my contracted arrival time supervising kids on the eighth-grade hallway. It's loads of fun, but the downside is that I have to leave much earlier than usual. Which created a dilemma: what to do with the Boy. Two options: ride with the neighbor or leave without breakfast and have it at school.

At around 6:15 this morning, the Boy toddled downstairs, still rubbing his eyes, and presented a third option: "I'm just going to eat breakfast now."

"Are you sure? You could still sleep another half hour."

"Nah, I'll stay up."

And so the Boy proved once again that life is like calculus: there's often more than one (or even two) solutions to a given problem.

Once at school, the usually peaceful morning duty transformed temporarily into one of those moments when, as a teacher, I see a student's future and think, "Wow, if this kid doesn't make some serious changes, do some serious maturing, she's in for a long, tough life." And much of that, in most cases, is due to environment: they're not choosing necessarily to be a disrespectful kid. It's something that works on the streets and/or at home, and they just bring it into the school as well.

That particular exchange foreshadowed the discussion I was to have with my honors English kids, who read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" last week as their article of the week. We began with a review via video:

Then the kids went through a few discussion questions:

  1. To what extent do you find Socrates's point about the human tendency to confuse "shadows" with "reality" relevant today?
  2. What could be the elements that prevent people from seeing the truth, or regarding "shadow" as the "truth"?
  3. In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?

The common theme that came through in all of these discussions was the role social media plays in creating false realities, in preventing people from seeing truth, in shackling the mind. It's ironic: I see so many of these kids buried in their phones before and after school, yet they're strangely aware of the negative effects.

After school, I hopped out of the car thinking, "So far, other than the little issue in the morning during hall duty, this supposedly tough day is surprisingly enjoyable. After dinner, it was even more so: one of E's choices in his literacy log is to find a pleasant place to sit outside and read for a while.

And after that, a little project: a bird house. Where did this idea come from? I don't know. The Boy simply talked K into buy him a piece of pressure-treated 1 x 6, and although he originally planned on building a tree house from that single plank, he was flexible enough to realize that a bird house was probably more in the scope of that single plank. So he found instructions on YouTube, gathered tools, and together we built a little bird house.

"Once you're done, I want to help with the painting," the Girl declared, and so with twenty minutes to go before the start of E's evening ritual, they began working.

"Let's decorate it with birds," the Girl suggested. They began drawing various silhouettes of birds while I got the dog's dinner ready, only to discover we were out of dog food.

"Alright kids, you'll have to do the actual painting tomorrow. E, you'll have to go with me to the store to buy some food for Clover." I was expecting a small fit, some protesting at the very least, and I was reluctant to stop the work in progress: it's so rare that they find something that really engages them both.

Still, the Boy was surprisingly mature. "Okay," was all he said, and off we went to get some kibble for the pup.

And so at the close of this surprisingly pleasant day that was supposed to be the first of several tough ones, I find myself realizing anew that "tough days" and "bad days" and "rough days" depend more on our perception than anything else, just like Plato's shadows suggest.

Story

Monday 18 March 2019

His homework: write a realistic story.

“What does that mean?”

“No dragons and such.”

He wrote a story about a little boy who eats cereal for breakfast and watches Tom and Jerry as he eats.

Where do you think he got that idea?

Tuesday Play

Tuesday 26 February 2019

The Boy has wanted a Rubik's cube for some time now -- a week or so. For him, it's felt like an eternity. We ordered him a pair from the South American River Store: a 2x2 and a classic 3x3. This evening, I worked with him on the 2x2, trying to show him how to move corners around. It's a two- or three-step process most of the time, and while he's making progress, he's still got some time before he'll feel comfortable working a 3x3. And that's just working one color.

I never learned how to work a cube fully. I could do one side, two sides. I think I got three sides once or twice. But a fully completed puzzle? It never happened. I had a book, but it just didn't make sense.

Now we have YouTube -- which means I'll defeat this beast before I die...

Homework

Thursday 31 January 2019

Sometimes, everyone gets a little frustrated with homework.

Tough

Sunday 06 January 2019

No doubt about it -- this has been a tough week. Probably the worst week we've had in memory, K suggested. A good friend died on Monday; our cat died on Wednesday; Thursday saw two funerals (the friend and the cat, obviously) and a visit to the emergency room with Papa; and Nana still in rehab this whole week. The kids are likely feeling neglected but are showing great patience with everything. The parents are feeling exhausted. And, well, the kids, too.

Breakfast this morning started with a little nap at the table. After breakfast, we went our separate ways: the kids with K to church; I went to spend the morning with Nana.

When we came back, the clear skies, after weeks, months, no years of cloudy, rainy weather, called us outside. First things first: I finally finished up Bida's grave. We've been afraid that the dog might be too curious and tempted by the freshly dug earth despite the fact that we put a large stone to mark and protect the spot.

So today, I spread the best dog-digging-deterrent we've found al around: straw. K thinks it's because the straw gets in the dog's nose as she's sniffing around, which would cause a fair amount of pain, I suppose, if the strand of straw got jammed in a dog's nose just right. Or it could be that it hides odors, because the digging always starts with sniffing. Whatever the cause, we feel better about Bida's grave now, though we don't feel so much better about her absence. It's amazing how much a little old gray grumpy cat adds to the family dynamic.

Next, we went down for some swinging, jumping, and Clover-entertaining.

Next, a little homework. We're trying to get everyone back into a normal schedule, which includes daily reading and writing, especially for the Boy. The Girl takes her own initiative with the homework. The Boy -- not so much.

So we sat on the deck, and between yogurt breaks and tossing the ball for Clover, we finally finished the homework. The Boy was trying his best to make the process more difficult than it needed to be, and I just wanted to get through it all, because I knew what we were planning next:

Today's task: find a way to cross the creek. We found one, made another. Something tells me we'll be spending more and more time out there as the weather warms.

Finally, a small dinner with Aunt D, who's come to stay with her big brother and help out with everything.

Pig Reef

Monday 10 December 2018

The day began as yesterday began: outside.

The Boy has for some months been obsessed with The Axel Show, and lately, they've been going on an extended treasure hunt, set up by the Game Master and continually disrupted by imposter Game Masters who steal clues and create chaos. E desperately wants to have his own treasure hunt adventure, so we set off today to have one. No one's hidden any treasure anywhere, but as with many things in life, it's the process -- the journey, the adventure -- that matters.

When we got back home, we did some cleaning, ran some errands, then played Scrabble with the Girl. We've played Scrabble Jr. together before, but as we were cleaning, L discovered real Scrabble and knew we had to play today.

The Boy began and with some help from L, played "pit." A simple start that didn't offer a lot of options for continued play, but I had u, r, t, and s, so I played "trust," which eventually led to "tug," "rug," "roar" and "diver," but the Boy's next play was to add "ig" to his first word and create "pig." A few plays later, he took four letters from his holder and suggested adding them to "pig." The letters: f, r and two e's.

"You know, like a 'pig reef,'" he explained.

The Girl and I decided it was the best play of the whole game.

A quick search on the internet revealed, much to our surprise, that there really is such a thing as a pigreef.

The Last Few Days

Friday 30 November 2018

The Boy has been watching the Netflix series Extraordinary Houses. He loves it. Loves it. He’s started designing houses in his free time.

The Girl has been getting into math that requires assistance. K is only too happy to help.

Monday Afternoon and Evening

Monday 19 November 2018

When I got home, E was ready for some basketball practice. We don’t have a basketball goal, and there’s really no place we could put one, so that limits our play to some degree. Fortunately, he’s happy just to practice the basics: chest passes, bounce passes, and a bit of dribbling.

Sometimes K and I worry about his self-confidence, but at times, it seems he has a bit too much. “I’m already very good at dribbling!” he proclaimed as he slapped at the basketball. Certainly, in comparison to what he was doing a couple of weeks ago, he’s much better. But has he, as he insists, almost mastered it? So I have this fine balance to walk with him: keep him realistic but not crush his spirit.

“You’re much better than you were,” I said, “but there’s always room for improvement.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, “of course there’s always room for improvement.”

We took a little break to look at a few unusual clouds. One, in particular, looked as if Bob Ross had taken one of his wide, fan brushes and made a few strokes of Titanium White on Phthalo Blue.

After dinner, we played with his Legos. He took the Millennium Falcon set that he’d completed Sunday, tore it apart, and built something new from it. It’s a common thing he does: follow the directions, build everything in the set, then never build it again. That’s what Legos are for, I suppose.

When it came time for E to work with K on a little homework, I went up to see what the Girl was doing.

“Watching YouTube.” That’s how she spends most of her screen time these days. She watches DIY’ers and slime makers, but more and more, she watches more mature things. Like how to do makeup. She’s growing up.

“Want to play a game?” I asked. “Your choice.” But it really wasn’t. There were a couple of games that I nixed immediately. One, because I don’t even understand how to play it. A board game that has ten plus pages of instructions is not something I have the patience to learn. The other, well, I don’t really understand it either. We settled on Kerplunk, a game that takes longer to set up than to play.

I noticed how different we are regarding our sense of organization. The Girl wanted to segregate all the straws by color and then put them in the cylinder layered by colors, and she wanted the marbles segregated to the same ends. As she pulled out straws, she placed them in color-sorted piles. I, on the other hand, wanted the straws placed as chaotically as possible, and my pulled straws — just tossed in a pile.

After she beat me twice, I said, “Well, that’s fine. But you still won’t get me in chess.”

“Yes, I can beat you!” she cried and headed downstairs to get the chess set. I beat her, but she has improved so much that it’s difficult to believe. Her development followed tried-and-true principles (which is not to say “theoretical principles”–we haven’t talked about openings themselves, only the idea of getting out your minor pieces, castling, and connecting your rooks as basic opening development), and she saw clearly several threats a couple of moves away. As the game concluded, I showed her what backline mate threats are, how to anticipate them, and how to avoid them.

A perfect evening, in other words.