Since September, Annie left in the morning to go to her school and Pippi sometimes left in the morning to go to her own school or to play with a friend.  Before the end of the day, Pip couldn’t stand waiting any longer to pick Annie up from school.  Pippi practically burst up the stairs at “pick up” and would tackle her sister full of things to tell her, candy or treats that she saved for her, and eager to have any of her sister’s time and attention.  She asked all the time why she couldn’t see Annie at her own school and continually asked if they could be together more.  Annie, though a bit more reluctant to admit it, was often the same way.  She saved things for Pippi.  She drew pictures for her and even created a set of paper dolls for Pippi to play with during “center time.”  As the adage goes, though, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and familiarity breeds… well… in our case… fatigue.  Even after 3 solid weeks of playing practically solely with one another, the girls still get along.  However, there is more competition for attention than there had been.  Tempers are shorter, and the quick push or pull or tearing of dress up clothes sets in sooner and sooner each day.  So, I’m beginning to wonder how the homeschooling will affect sibling harmony.

I know that there are no quick or easy fixes for sibling harmony.  The girls need to work together on many things.  They have a joint sticker chart for cleaning up and following directions.  They can earn stickers independently or by working together.  Working together, however, yields quicker results and this has created moments of genuine teamwork and cooperation.  However, for sisters who sleep together in the same room, play together in the same play areas, and now learn together in the same play spaces… I’m worried that they need a few things that are just their own.

There are 2 areas I know where I can do this.  Firstly, Pippi loves gymnastics.  Both she and Annie started doing toddler tumbling when they were about 18 months.  Pippi, however, is a natural climber.  She has exhaustive amounts of energy and is constantly moving.  On Mondays, she goes to gymnastics with my mother, her Grandmom.  This is her special time during the week.  She also spends time with her friend Matthew on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  His mother and I swap children so that we can get an extra day’s worth of work in each week.  On Tuesdays, Pippi goes with Matthew and his mother on adventures ranging from visits to the farm to trips to the train store.  She looks forward to *every* Tuesday.  These are her special times, and I think it’s important that she maintain these as her very own.

I’m still finding my way with Annie.  She loves to perform.  Singing, dancing, and acting capture and hold her attention longer than any other activity.  A child who has never really played with toys other than those she can “make believe” with, Annie can occupy herself for hours by adopting ever-changing personas.  For years it was Cinderella or Snow White.  The roles have branched from the specific such as Fancy Nancy, Felicity, Orphan Annie, Clara from the Nutcracker, the Velveteen Rabbit to the less specific “an orphan,” “a saint,” “a dog,” “a mouse,” “a vet,” etc.  I would really like to find a class for her that would help her to explore her natural tendency to perform.  She would love to take a ballet class, as well, and I’d like to help her with that.  Finally, she has been involved in the church choir, and this activity has become very important to her.  So I’d like to preserve that as an important part of her own independent self.  The challenge, now, is for me to find a couple areas where she can grow and shine in her own way apart from her sister so that while they share and cooperate so frequently, she (and Pip) can have some activities all of their own.

Hence the panic. I’ve worked out on paper when we can set aside instructional time. I know that at some point I’ll have some materials to work with from the school where we hope she’ll attend. In the meantime, I’m on my own. I feel a certain amount of pressure that when we start on day one that it not be rushed or disorganized. I want to portray for Annie the sense that we have it under control, that there is a plan, and that we are going to achieve short-term and long-term goals right from the start. Still, I don’t *have* the materials yet. Also, I want to make the goals reasonable, challenging and yet achievable. I don’t want each day to become a series of workbook pages. Sure, a few at a time are fine, but page after page of busy work is something that she and we reacted against at her old school.

So, where do we begin? Many of the books on homeschooling that I’ve skimmed through or read suggest starting with a kind of learning style assessment. There are quite a few books out there about assessing your child’s learning style. From Judy Willis’s How Your Child Learns Best to 100 Top Picks for Homeschooling Curriculum by Cathy Duffy, there are plenty of books dedicated to this topic. I have to, sheepishly, admit that I ordered Talkers, Watchers, and Doers by Cheri Fuller–and not necessarily for the most admirable of reasons. It was only $8 on my Kindle. Anyway, it makes sense to start here. I know that I talk about Annie as if I already know what her “learning style” is, but my goal is to be genuine in my attempts… and I don’t just want to borrow from my parenting baggage and proceed based on my own, sometimes shaded, preconceptions. On the other hand, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’m also a little concerned about the idea of labeling any one child’s learning “style” so early on in life. It seems to me, in my not-so-expert opinion, that learning styles would change, develop and grow along with the socio-emotional-cognitive growth of the child. So, lest I put too much stock in one “style,” I still need to have some “plan” for getting the basics down.

It occurs to me, though, that one place where Annie has really been struggling is with her handwriting. It’s one of my biggest complaints about how kindergarten was going for her, and perhaps one of the areas that need the most support. I believe that good handwriting is important. The ability to make well-formed letters seems tied to one’s ability to think, to parse, and to organize language and ideas. Again, that’s just my own assumption… I’m not an expert. But, since this is “Mommy School” anyway, I get to base my own curriculum on my own assumptions and discovery, right?

Handwriting, then, will be a second area of emphasis for us. I know that Annie’s new school uses the Handwriting Without Tears instructional method. In fact, they used it for her nursery school classes, so potentially, I could use some of the materials that were unused and try to improve on it. I’ve discovered that there are online you tube videos, as well. Since I don’t have a copy of the materials yet, I’ll begin with a general premise of the curriculum, then work from there depending on whether or not I can get the materials myself. I’ve been watching youTube videos, and will start with some of the songs and with reaquainting Annie with the language of big lines, little lines, curvy lines, diagonals, and frog jump letters.

Annie wants very much to wear her Cinderella watch more frequently. I had explained at one point that when she could tell time to the half hour, that I’d let her wear the watch on a more regular basis. We do have flash cards for telling time, and she eagerly learned how to tell time to the hour… so perhaps this would be a good week for working on telling time to the 1/2 hour. That covers math.

Last week we went to Philadelphia and visited several museums. When we left, I created a “writing journal” for her. She’s eagerly writing words and sentences whenever and however she can, but I wanted some way to capture her ideas in one place so that she could see her own growth as a writer and have a record of her own musings about what she sees and does, from the mundane to the adventurous. This week, then, it makes sense to start the notebook. It has three lines at the bottom of each page for handwriting and space at the top of each page for pictures. We can start with one or two sentences each day with a picture. This week’s topic can be “What we did in Philadelphia.”

Finally, I just got off the phone with Jason, who has taken the girls with him to visit his parents and to retrieve our dog whom Jason’s parents have so thoughtfully and generously been taking care of for the past week. They went to Barnes and Noble last night, and Annie bought a new Felicity book from the American Girl collection. For social studies, I think we’ll make it a goal to buy a map, to read the book, and to learn about what life was like for children during the Revolutionary Era. I have the loosest ideas here, not exactly sure what the learning outcomes “should” be, but perhaps this is the purpose behind leaving some area of our schooling unscripted. There should be at least one part that is open-ended exploration. Felicity will provide that for us this week.

The panic has begun to ebb. As I list out possible goals for the week, I am beginning to believe again that this may be possible and that it may all get done… maybe.

This is where the blog comes in. As I begin this journey as a homeschooling parent, I want to take time to reflect on what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and if it’s working for me and for my daughter.I’m not sure how long we’ll be working this way. When we decided to remove Annie from her school, we did so with the intention of placing her in a parochial school as soon as a space becomes available. That may be this year, but it may not happen until the next school year. I’ve been working on an explanation of how and why we made our decision, but that will probably appear later. It was not a sudden decision, but rather something we arrived at after months of trying to make something fit that simply wasn’t right for our child.

So, we’ve made a clean break. Annie is excited about what she calls “Mommy School.” She’s laid out a list of things she wants to study: the colonial period of American history (including Felicity, the American Girl stories about that time); Western expansion (in light of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series of novels, which she has listened to on CD); the lifecycle of various animals including frogs, butterflies, and penguins; and fitness and nutrition. When I asked her what she wanted to study, these were her answers, and given that they’re interesting, compelling areas, I’d like to honor those. We’ll add to that some of the other kinds of things we’ve been doing this year, revisiting field trips from the summer and from this past winter break. Annie and I have also become subscribers to Imagination Stage in Bethesda, where we’ve been following each of their plays and their respective books. Also, we’ve just returned from a trip to Philadelphia where we explored the Please Touch museum for the second time, the National Constitution Center and the Liberty Bell on Independence Mall, and Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ. I’d like to find a way to include all of these in her portfolio.

2009 was filled with adventure. We did manage to make it to almost every one of the items on our initial list. We’ll continue to make our way through that list and to add more as we go this year. I’m looking forward to our new challenge. As exhausting as it has sometimes been to take 2 or more children on day-long adventures so frequently, the energy expenditure pays in dividends. I’m looking forward to sharing more of those with my daughters and with you in 2010.

I wish you equally exciting challenges and adventures…

• Adventure Park USA
• Adventure Theater
• American Visionary Art Museum
• Assateague State Park
• Brookside Gardens
• Butler’s Orchard
• C&O canal
• Cabin John Park
• Calvert Cliffs State Park
• Croyden Creek Nature Center
• Cunningham Falls
• FDR memorial
• Fort Frederick State Park
• Germantown Water Park
• Glen Echo Park
• Glenview Mansion
• Gravely Point
• Greenbelt State Park
• Greenbrier State Park
• Harper’s Ferry
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
• Homestead Farms
• Imagination Stage
• Kennedy Center (Millennium Stage)
• Lake Frank
• Lake Needwood
• Libraries (Mongtomery, DC, Fairfax)
• Locust Grove Nature Center
• Meadowside Nature Center
• Montgomery County Agricultural Fair
• National Building Museum
• National Children’s Museum
• National Museum of Natural History
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
• Old Post Office Pavillion
• Olney Farmer’s Market
• Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge Visitor’s Center
• Pea Island Nature Center
• Playwise Kids
• Rock Creek Park
• Rockville Farmers’ Market
• Rockville Town Square
• Sandy Point State Park
• Seneca Creek State Park
• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
• Smithsonian National Zoo
• The Children’s Museum of Rose Hill Manor
• The National Capitol Trolley Museum
• The National Museum of American History
• The Puppet Company
• The Theater in the Woods
• The United States Botanic Gardens
• VisArts
• Washington Monument State Park
• Way Off Broadway Children’s Theater
• Western Maryland Scenic Railroad
• Wheaton Regional Park

This is a starting list.  If you  have fun things that you love to do in the area, please leave a comment, and I’ll add it to my list.  In the future, I’ll post a top ten things to do to make “adventures” as smooth as possible…

What I like best about the show is that it treats children as real scientists, and my daughters respond very well to this.  The subjects of “Sid” become the topic of many of our conversations, from “Mommy, did you know that I just slid down an incline plane.  Did you know that an incline plane is a simple machine?” to “How do we breathe, again?”  The girls have their own “observation notebooks” which are filled with leaves, drawings, tables, and charts.  Also, what I love about the show is that rather than answering questions or teaching information that stays put when the show is done… we are taking what we learn (and I say we, because I watch it with them) and using it throughout our day…. not to mention the fact that I’m re-learning all kinds of science I’d either forgotten… or never really learned in the first place.

We did a “leaf investigation” on Tuesday, which I will try to write up soon.  It’s really easy to do and works on observing and recording, but also on comparing and contrasting, and expanding vocabulary… all very useful skills.  Today, though, we have no real investigations planned.  Instead, Annie is making a list of “science tools” that have been used on the show and that she thinks would be useful so that we can put them in her playhouse outside.  Her list is mostly comprised of simple drawings: a ruler, an “inclined plane” (aka slide), a “lever and fulcrum” (teeter totter), a magnifying glass, an estimation jar, and a notebook.  She’s planning to collect the things she can lift and put them in a box.  I’m just thrilled that the playhouse has taken a break (however brief) from being Snow White’s or Cinderella’s or Sleeping Beauty’s castle… Thank you, “Sid.”

I’ve only begun the planning, but come May 31st, the girls are all mine, all summer.  My goal, then, is to have a basic daily schedule of events (including times for me to get things done that *I* need to do), but also a general, weekly calendar that focuses our attention on topics we already like or that we haven’t already considered.

So far, here are the themes I’ve come up with:

• Farming/Growing/Gardening
• Reptiles/Amphibians
• Entomology/Butterflies
• Birds
• Architecture
• Oh, Pioneers!
• Dinosaurs
• Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
• Fairytales
• Beach and ocean life
• Pets
• Orchestra
• Theater
• Chinese culture
• Sign language
• Spanish
• Your body
• Swimming

Assuming that I have about 10 weeks to plan for, I’ll have to whittle this down a bit as we get closer in.  Some of the extended projects that we were planning this summer include growing some vegetables (we’ve already begun a few seedlings on our deck and in the windows) and planting a butterfly garden.  We have the butterfly garden seedlings in the kitchen waiting to be put in.  We have  pool membership at the neighborhood pool, too, and the girls have asked for swim lessons.  Of course, that means Pippi needs to be potty trained… and that’s a whole other story!  Perhaps today, the girls will help me brainstorm ideas.  I have a folder that I’ve been stashing lots of flyers and circulars in as I see them around town with ideas for puppet shows, places for nature walks, free community events, etc. that might help me to plan dates and times for certain themes.  As I focus my plans, I’ll post them… I think the next step is to think concretely about the resources we have in the Washington, DC area and listing the ones that would be useful for 2 and 5 year olds.

Nor should it escape the editors of The Washington Post.  I thought, as a follow-up to my open complaint about the parenting advice available in the Post, that I should also comment on Lenore Skenazy’s piece, “Parenting Advice?  That’s Just Quackery.” in which the author condemns the state of parenting publications and our complicity in its consumption. In broad strokes, Skenazy faults the masses of poor, hastily-written, and poorly-conceived articles offering effete advice to parents and blames parents’ collective loss of confidence in their own common sense on the proliferation of bad advice and trivial but frantic controversy. Essentially, she makes a good point.  Quoting an article in Parenting magazine that recommends that parents, for example, “Choose a sunny day when there’s no chance of lightning,” in order to take one’s child out kite flying, Skenazy points to example after example of lame advice that reinforces a reader’s inability to make simple decisions or observations for one’s self. Whether it is eating chocolate while pregnant or products that test bathwater temperature for your little bundle of joy, Skenazy explains that our willingness to read and to consume advice, regardless of its value, and our suspension of our own common sense in deference to the publishing industry’s frenzy to produce debates has collectively eroded parents’ sense of confidence in their own decision-making skills.  I think back on all the articles I’ve read recently in parent publications and wonder, is much of this really news to parents? No.  Not really.

Can parenting literature go beyond creating controversy?  Can we expect more from parenting magazines, advice columns, book publications, and blogs (admittedly, like this one)?  I think it (and we) can.  Parenting literature is best not only when it opens our eyes or alerts us to potential dangers, but more importantly when it shares genuinely useful knowledge and skills with parents.  Of course, this is hardly a solution for those interested in publishing volumes and volumes of literature, and requires that the authors, and more importantly the editors, of each publication understand its audience–and not simply consider them to be oversized lemmings.  Then again, that also requires us as readers to ignore banal articles and bad advice, but we’re so busy chasing the “Top Ten Ways to Solve Potty-training Woes” to notice that we’re falling off a proverbial cliff. And if we can’t keep straight whether we feel more or less like lemmings, keep in mind that neither can The Post.  In case, we start feeling confident in our parenting skills, don’t worry. I’m sure The Post (or any other publisher for that matter) will try to relieve us of that feeling by the next issue.

• Washington Parent: http://www.washingtonparent.com/calendar.php
  The Washington Parent magazine is fairly ubiquitous.  Free of charge and often found in the entry area to malls, grocery stores, and community centers,  it offers several articles per month ranging from how to handle bullies to selecting a name for your child.
• The City of Rockville: http://www.rockvillemd.gov/events/index.htm and http://www.rockvillemd.gov/events/thisweek
  Rockville offers its residents a wide variety of events and community activities which are either free to the public or require a small fee.  For Mother’s Day, the city is throwing a tea party for children 2+ and their mommies.
• Washington Family Magazine: http://www.washingtonfamily.com/page/Places-to-Go_
  Much like Washington Parent, Washington Family magazine can be found free-of-charge in locations such as your supermarket, the community center, the coffee shop, or the post office.  According to the blogs on the site, this section is new and it lists many of the places where you can go adventuring in DC.  It isn’t a calendar, per say, and I’ll do a list of “places to go” in a future post, but it did include a link to one of my favorite places as a child: The Children’s Theater in the Woods at Wolf Trap…(This summer includes performances by Dinorock and Steve Songs… family favorites)
• Nick Parents Connect: http://gocitykids.parentsconnect.com/calendar/washington-dc-usa/2009/5/1
  Maintained by the TV network Nickelodeon and promotes free events to parents who live in cities, such as Washington DC. It displays only one day at a time, so you’ll need to play around with the date feature a bit, but it has a surprisingly large collection of free events in our area.
• Smithsonian Institute Calendar: http://www.si.edu/events/
  A comprehensive calendar of all the museums and centers that are part of the Smithsonian Institute, this calendar can be narrowed to focus only on events appropriate for children.  You can select the day, narrow your search, and find precisely when the zoo keepers feed, for example, the giant octopus.
• WETA: http://www.weta.org/local/calendar
  Events in DC according to its local public television channel.

There are more, but I’ll start with this for now.  I’ve tried listing calendars that draw mainly from “free” activities.  One of the key features I’ve learned about keeping busy is that it can get pricy if everything you do costs a little here and there.  One way to cut down the costs is really to focus on those places that have lots of payoff for very little money up-front.  This way if someone throws a killer tantrum or falls asleep or gets you kicked out of the facility, at least you aren’t out the extra cash!

Today, Pippi (aka potty-training-with-attitude) called in her sticker chart reward: a trip to “Chuck E Cheese.” Don’t worry, it’s Tuesday at 10 AM. Believe it or not, there are only about 3 people at Chuck E Cheese at this time. (No, it doesn’t disappear into some Dr. Who time warp where everyone is always hungry, whiny, and under 4-feet tall … as I had suspected it might before we tried it the first time.) When we go, we do so with 10 tokens each, no food, and I smuggle in drinks. It usually takes us about 1-1 ½ hours to use all the tokens, climb the indoor equipment, dance in front of the blue screen, and then cash in 20 tickets for 2 overpriced lollipops. Still, so far we’re grinning ear to ear at the end every time, and that was no different today. We were a tad bit later on our arrival (10:30), but we still managed to end happy by 11:45 or so. Next, we ventured to the nearby Safeway to stock up for my attempt at a Cinco de Mayo dinner celebration. We also bought a $5 cheese freezer pizza and gnawed on two “sample” oatmeal, raisin cookies before making our way back to the car. This, however, was the beginning of the end. Having pushed our excursion past 12:15 meant the beginning of what I call, “The Great-American Whine.” “When will we eeeeeeat? My tummy is so hungry it is going to explode!!!” and “I NEEEED a DRIIIIINK!!!! I’m dyyYying of thirst… Don’t you care mommy?!?!?!?” Which at home melded nicely into a battle royal over Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and a blanket. (“Mommy knows you’re tired sweetie because you’re crying at ‘Mr. Roger’s,’ and he’s on the TV.”) Anyway, we suffered our way through pizza, potty time, and the beginning of a nap when Annie realized… she’s about to take a nap. This realization, so thoroughly jarring and startling to her senses caused an inverse reaction: imaginative play with paper doll princesses who only speak in screeching, loud voices. As she played with her dolls (and as Pippi who *needs* a nap had begun to settle down), Annie’s voice crept higher and higher. I went back to the “quiet zone” (the name of the room being the first indication of my expectations) to gently remind her that she needed to keep her voice down. Five minutes later… her voice is back up, and worse… she’s wandered out into the hallway directly in front of the room where Pippi is napping. Standing in the hallway, I whispered to explain, “This is your final warning. Your voice needs to be a whisper. If I hear you again, I’ll take away one of your dresses.” (This, of course, being one of the ultimate disincentives… I could take anything away from her… any privilege, and she’d shrug it off… but not the dresses!) She took one step back to the room, turned to me and asked, “Which dress?” Not thinking that far ahead, I was caught and paused to think about what dresses were hers… which were clean… which needed laundering… , and when she volunteered, “*Gasp* NOT my kitty-cat one!” I jumped at the opportunity. “Yes, dear. I’m afraid that’s the one.” She turned, “sobbing” into her arm, took one more step, and turned back around, dry-eyed. She looked at me and asked, “For how long? A week?” The “ee” in week approached a pitch only heard by our dog, Sasha, and which I only understood because “whine” is my second language. Again, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, and it seemed adequately long enough for waking Pippi from the early stages of a nap, so I said solemnly, “yes.” Taking one more step back to the room, Annie turned mid-stride, smiled and explained, “That’s ok. A week is only seven days, Mommy, and it takes you that long to do the laundry anyway.”
I have reached an all-time low: duped by a 5-year old. Here’s hopin’ Pippi naps every day until she’s 18!