a puttering week

a puttering week in the life of a homeschooler & some photos to go with

Hi. I follow a number of substacks now and often forget why I follow people here until I’m halfway through their note. So just to recap…this is a substack primarily about homeschooling. We use of a mix of curriculum, Classical Conversations, and relaxation. Our family of seven lives in Vermont in the United States.

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an ice storm’s gilding

This week everyone got a cold from the baby. The kids slept in late, ate breakfast around lunch time, took vitamin d, read books all day, and then found themselves with weird evening energy just as it got dark outside. Slow mornings have always been up there on the list of primary reasons we homeschool. Kids waking up at different times, going about their routines of getting ready and making their bed, or choosing to read in bed for awhile, while Joe and I putter downstairs (now, with a baby!). This isn’t to say all homeschoolers do this. I know of many who wake their whole household at 7am and tackle math first thing. (Tackling math this way is a popular choice, parents like to get it out of the way.)

Seeking restful ways to learn, we spent a full afternoon watching travel videos on Youtube for different parts of Asia. Settled at the kitchen table on a cold but sunny morning we made collages from National Geographic magazines. This process is ultimately painful because once you open those magazines you are reminded they are so beautiful it’s almost impossible to cut them up. But cut them up we did, and as I was browsing the pages I realized that Disney+ has a number of new documentaries we haven’t watched, like this one about a storm chasing photographer and one about mummies! So those are on our list now.

We had one gracious gift of a warm day when I trimmed raspberry bushes and poked around the garlic row. I placed Thomas on a blanket where he frowned at tree branches. This was followed by several days of grey and snowfall. I made piles of food—chicken broth, instant pot chili, mashed potatoes with comté cheese and butter, roasted squash, green salads with blueberries and scoops of chicken salad on top.

a quick sparkle for you…

We read a bit more from our Medical History book and finished reading aloud In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Given Trump’s recent attempts to dismantle birthright citizenship, randomly canceling students’ visas, and the truly bizarre amount of people ending up at “a detention facility in Louisiana” (watch for that phrase in the news, you’ll see it everywhere), my heart sank when the main character, an immigrant from China, proudly announced that her soon-to-be-born brother would be an American citizen.

It could have been a great moment to share with my kids, in a softly funny book devoted to the old fashioned American Dream written by a Chinese immigrant in 1984, instead I could only contrast it to today’s news.

Perhaps our favorite moment from the book, the kids were tickled read and reread Betty Bao Lord’s rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance, written exactly as she had recited it as a young girl learning English…

I pledge a lesson 
to the frog 
of the United States of America. 
And to the wee puppet for witch's hands
One Asian
in the vestibule, 
with little tea and just rice for all.

wood grain meets cookie dough grain

One person in this house (not me) is particularly gifted with organizing this wild wall of warmth.

My sweet, organized, and thoughtful 13yr old reads this newsletter so let me talk about her for a minute. She is striding into all sorts of brave new worlds these days. She is going to babysit for strangers for the first time this week. She is considering going to the local public school for school next year, as a ninth grader. A few weeks ago she “shadowed” a friend there for the day and really enjoyed meeting the teachers and sitting in the classes. I think she’d love the social aspect and camaraderie, the larger structure to her days, and the opportunity to learn from different teachers. I think she would miss structuring her own schedule every day, being able to have a variety of hobbies and interests and jobs, being challenged by her academic workload and being able to travel for a week or two at a time.

As life is right now she often decides to bake something or make a fun snack halfway through the day, she’s taught herself to crochet and maintains baking inspiration pinterest boards, she is finishing her fifth year of Latin, has more photos of Thomas on her phone than I do and she has a peloton streak of 45 days! She’s managed to keep up with an enormous amount of self-led schoolwork as an eighth grader this year—reading five novels and writing papers on them, logic, Astronomy, chemistry, preparing for a mock trial. We’re so proud of her and thankful for the years of homeschooling companionship that we’ve had together.

a box of snacks gift

My friend Johanna recently sent me a big box full of interesting snacks as a new baby gift. This box of dates was so delicious that I immediately went to the website to order a few more boxes. I love keeping them in a jar on the counter next to a jar of cashews, so whenever Joe and I are roaming for a snack, this healthy option is front and center. On a plate with a little chocolate and maybe an orange if you’ve got one handy—a real treat to keep you company in the afternoon lull.

Incentives  

The 9yr old had a particularly great year of giving three minute presentations at our co-op. Every week she selected one of the proposed topics, did the research and dictated a few paragraphs to me to use as her notes for the presentation. The big change? Her parent teacher printed out this bingo and promised a candy of her choice after every finished bingo line. It’s a good reminder that rewards can be oh so encouraging sometimes, especially with work that can easily be left till last minute.

And, a quote for you…

It’s awfully suspicious how many great writers had periods of total boredom accompanied only by books during their childhood years. From Stephen King’s On Writing, reflecting on the year of first grade that he spent mostly ill at home…

Most of that year I spent either in bed or housebound. I read my way through approximately six tons of comic book […] At some point I began to write my own stories. Imitation preceded creation; I would copy Combat Casey comics word for word in my Blue Horse tablet, sometimes adding my own descriptions where they seemed appropriate. […] Eventually I showed one of these copycat hybrids to my mother, and she was charmed—I remember her slightly amazed smile, as if she was unable to believe a kid of hers could be so smart—practically a damned prodigy for God’s sake. I had never seen that look on her face before—not on my account, anyway—and I absolutely loved it.

She asked me if I had made the story up myself, and I was forced to admit that I had copied most of it out of a funny-book. She seemed disappointed, and that drained away much of my pleasure. At last she handed back my tablet. “Write one of your own, Stevie,” she said. “Those Combat Casey funny-books are just junk—he’s always knocking someone’s teeth out. I bet you could do better. Write one of your own.

And this quote is meant particularly for YOU, with love and squalor:

Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

-Alexander Pope