We’ve had quite a week. PisecoDad’s mini-vacation (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week) was more than glorious. We took the time, together and in various pairings, to really focus on each other, and on the happiness we can bring. Sometimes that gets overlooked in the hustle of life and we wind up not communicating well. Father-son trips to two different zoos and a children’s museum, as well as daily naps, soccer practice and a game, and bowling night helped JediBoy feel loved and paid-attention-to again and let PisecoDad reconnect and relearn to see life from a four-year-old’s perspective. It was So Nice.
Things have been a little tenser since he went back to work on Monday, but are slowly relaxing again. I don’t think JediBoy has ever really understood that his dad doesn’t WANT to leave him behind every day, but has a job that isn’t flexible like that. I think he was a little afraid that things would go back to exactly the way they were before the mini-break, and is slowly opening himself to hope that things will stay better.
We have done a lot of talking and exploring about insects this week. I’d made a solo trip to the local parent/teacher store and picked up a few cool things:
-the book 1001 Bugs to Spot is a great look-and-find book (a genre JediBoy loves) which subtly teaches the names of all kinds of insects and arachnids by having you search for 5 emperor dragonflies, 6 hairy weevils, 4 giant millipedes and so on
-the “6ix-sided Bug Puzzle” is a set of cubes that can be rearranged to make six different puzzles - showing the life cycles of an ant, darkling beetle, silkworm moth, ladybug, painted lady butterfly, and praying mantis - the puzzles were a little hard for JediBoy to visualize but he enjoyed doing them together with me
-plastic toys for the life cycle of an ant including a pile of eggs, a pile of larvae, one big pupa and an ant - these were a huge hit and JediBoy played through the life cycle dozens of times telling a little story as he went along
-sunglasses that look like praying mantis eyes that even have flip-aside prismatic lenses to let him choose whether or not to have “true compound eye vision”
Looking at these new toys helped us get through our day on Monday! JediBoy also saw the Praying Mantis kit in the Steve Spangler catalog and is really pushing to get one. He’s fascinated with the praying mantis right now. We cut down several tent caterpillar tents from our trees and saved a few of the caterpillars to raise.
Monday night, I had one foot out the door to go to my choir rehearsal when JediBoy wailed that he wanted to go too! He doesn’t like for anyone there to talk to him or even look at him, but he loves to be there to watch them and listen to the music. He took his Leapster and a couple Richard Scarry books and parked himself under a table for the first hour of rehearsal. Then he came over to me and asked how I knew when I should sing and when only the men would sing. I quickly whispered a few of the basics of reading music to him - what whole rests look like - and ran my finger along the music, keeping my place, for a song so he could follow along. Then, he was suddenly droopy and he turned around to rest his head on my shoulder. Just as we finished singing “So Long, Farewell” he fell fast asleep. I had the joy of holding him on my lap for the next hour… when he was small enough to sleep in the sling I put him to sleep that way every week at rehearsal. It had been a long time since he fell asleep there!
Yesterday we worked more on organizing the basement and getting rid of lots of stuff. We even had one woman come by to take some of our kids’ books for the school library she works at, and JediBoy was thrilled to finally have a “customer” for his porch sale. He made more price tags for the boxes of books, which ranged from 12 cents to $10,000,000.10.
Today he finished his Hooked on Phonics Kindergarten set and immediately wanted to start in on the First Grade set, so he worked on learning some blends and reading a story using lots of ch- words. He is very motivated and keeps saying, “When we get to the end of the Red Workbook, I can read all the books on my shelf!” Here I was thinking we wouldn’t do any more phonics pages until after Memorial Day, but he didn’t take so much as a minute off between the two sets!
After that, we went over to N’s house to meet some more homeschooling friends and dye some playsilks. JediBoy wanted his entirely green “so I can be Link.” I made the other small silk entirely blue (does this surprise anyone?) and we brought home two larger ones to dye on our own. It was a very good experience, just to let the kids have the one small activity (it doesn’t take long at all to do) and then play on their own. The moms stood and sat around in various combinations and talked about everything - extended breastfeeding, homeschooling vs unschooling vs “relaxed schooling,” kids who chose to go to public / private school this year, families where the mom is pulling her kids out of public school one at a time, how to create a free school locally and what we’d want it to look like, our own families and the way we were raised, girls and boys and personality differences, local programs for homeschoolers that for some reason aren’t held during the “school day” and on and on. It was a good chance to be together and I hope we do it more often (hint, hint, Leigh!).
We came home mid-afternoon to rest before soccer practice, which has now been cancelled due to rain. Now we get to rethink our evening’s plans… hmm…
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