Goggles ( Read more... )

So E. and I have been watching our children play with Auntie S's children and it has made us think about how children play. Narratives--stories--seem to play a bigger part at various points. But how the kids learn and use them has been very different and kind of interesting ( Read more... )

M. decided today that the song "What do you do with a drunken sailor", which he knows two or three of the more publicly appropriate verses, is a "nursery rhyme", and emphatically NOT a sea shanty. Shows you what Mama knows ( Read more... )

I have now grated 6 zucchini for use in cooking, used 1 in spears for grilling for dinner tonight, 1 in latkes, 1 in a sliced Asian style sauce, and gave 1 away. I still have 3 on the counter ( Read more... )

I will be able to come in the door without the boy launching full speed at me, his arms extended to push as hard as possible ( Read more... )

B. came home from school recently with a worksheet that helped her choose an instrument to learn. The kids all got to hold the instruments so they could assess size (too small, just right, too big). They got to hear them so they could assess tone (too high, just right, too low ( Read more... )

So some of you may have experienced M.'s love for his stuffed ermine, Ermie. Small, white (mostly gray), tail ragged and chewed and shorter for having been re-sewn twice, eye falling out from her last trip in the washer/dryer. She was certainly beloved and irreplaceable (we know because we checked--she was discontinued by the company and not even ( Read more... )

Just home from the most excruciating girl scout bridging ceremony (where the girls moving up a level are welcomed to the next level). It started 15 minutes late, was poorly emceed, poorly enunciated, poorly directed, took forever, was overly warm, bored an already fractious boy who didn't really understand why he couldn't go stand with his sister ( Read more... )

Faculty development trip? Medieval art history class field work? Swil vacation?

http://ozarkmedievalfortress.com/en-us/

I didn't really expect that B. would be starting to tween already as she's two months short of 9, and despite the fact that she is precocious in many academic ways, I would not have said she was socially ept, much less precocious. But she's starting to do things like being more private about her body (and it is very slowly, almost imperceptibly ( Read more... )