Penny walks and other unrelated items

So, I haven't posted in a while, but probably because everything is just about the same as always. The only thing I have added to my day lately is a "penny walk". It is my mental break at work. To keep sane during grant writing season, I am picking a time in the afternoon and going for a 15 minute walk looking for pennies for my "found money" experiment. That way, the only thing I am thinking about for 15 minutes is finding pennies and NOT why I do not have everyone's NIH style biosketch for the grant that is due in at 5 pm, even though I emailed everyone weeks ago for the information...grrrrr.

I just started doing this penny walk about 2 weeks ago, and was excited this week when I found my first Canadian Loonie (1 dollar coin). It made me think that maybe, since probably 2-3 dollars of the loose change I have found so far is Canadian, I should separate my found money counter this year by currency since I know the coinstar machine is going to spew out my non-American currency anyway...and I was curious to see how much Canadian money I have found so far. Maybe I will do that tonight. (Edit: OK--we were bored so Simon and I separated out the currency on the sidebar. I actually had more money than I thought--I guess I haven't been keeping track as well as I thought.)

Today I found my first 10 cent Euro--would you call that a Eurodime? I have no idea...it has to be worth at least 5 bucks by now, right? Ha! But the best part of today was finding my first $5 bill. I can't even remember the last time I found a $5 bill just lying in the street. It made up for the $1 bill I missed in the student center a month ago when some other eagle-eyed student snatched it up seconds before I could get to it!! B*st*rd!

In unrelated news, I joined Weight Watchers this year. Before anyone rolls their eyes or starts mocking me (as Hawksbill promised that would happen), I was just trying to lose that darn 12 lbs I haven't been able to lose the last 3 years since I had Gwen. I knew I was in trouble when I went to the first meeting and the woman who RUNS the meetings took one look at me and said, "We have plenty of skinny people join ALL the time." Sigh...but anyway...I managed to lose my 12 lbs since joining, and have just today made "Lifetime member" status--which I thought meant they just gave me a little gold sticker, but apparently I can go to WW for free now...so that was pretty cool. I have been using the points system, which means I can eat anything I want as long as I limit myself to 20 "points" of food per day. Losing weight was easier after I discovered my morning banana nut muffin was freaking 14 points!! But, like all diets, it is mostly, eat less and exercise.

Changing the subject AGAIN, we have had a rash of crime lately in our otherwise sleepy, boring neighborhood. On our street alone (and this is all I know about) we have had the tires stolen off 2 cars within 4 houses of our own. I can imagine it would suck to wake up to find your car sitting on bricks. My next door neighbor is missing some bricks from a retaining wall, so she thinks hers were used in at least one of these crimes. Then last weekend someone broke into our favorite pizza place down the street making off with $13 from the register after smashing the front door. One of the employees said that they also tried to steal the grease trap from under the fryer, but perhaps they thought it was a safe, or maybe that it was some type of "metal" they could sell at a scrap yard. The employee said that these particular criminals have already been caught, so I am kind of hoping these are the same people who have been stealing tires...but I have no idea.

The kids are doing well. We are calling this time "summer vacation" and are not doing any formal homeschooling, but the learning is still happening. We had planned on having Simon work on his printing skills for writing letters next fall, but he decided about a week ago he wanted to start doing this on his own when he found a book with dry erase markers that shows you how to write your letters...Simon knows how to write all of his letters upper and lowercase already, however, he wasn't using anything (lined paper) as a guide, so everything still comes up all squiggly. So, he just started practicing this last week. He is also finding new planet facts to tell me about every time I come home such as how many Plutos it would take to circle the Earth--apparently the number is 17.

Gwen is learning new things, too. I asked her if she could count to 20 the other day and she looked at me and said, "20." I guess if she is counting by 20's, then technically, she is correct. :) But after a short pause, she started saying, "21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28...." and I honestly didn't know that she knew any numbers past 20. Gwen has also become obsessed with 24-piece puzzles...another skill I did not know she possessed, but she can put them together without any help. I thought that was cool. :)

Not much else is going on except that I cannot believe it is the end of June already. It is weird not worrying about Hawksbill going to school in the fall since he is done. It is weird to know that I really DON'T have to think of life in semesters anymore...however, since I work at a university, I still do and probably will for as long as I live.

I have to go sit on the porch with Gwen now. Until next time, I hope to have some more interesting information to share. :)

Hawksbill on Potty Training

Sometimes you just have to admit when you're wrong.

I really wanted to do the potty training boot camp last week for a couple of different reasons. First, because Barb sent that video she mentioned and it all made so much sense; second due to the increasing cost of diapers; but third because I got some disapproving comments from another parent at the park last week about Gwen still wearing the diapers. I'm ashamed now to admit it, but it is that last reason that really drove it.

So, I decided that, starting on last Thursday morning we would get up and put Gwen in underwear instead of diapers. Then, if she messed in her pants she would have to do the following all by herself:

1. Take paper towel, get down on her hands and knees and clean up the pee/poop (depositing poop in the toilet herself if needed)
2. Go into the bathroom, remove her soiled clothes and clean her self off
3. Go to her bedroom and put on clean clothes
4. Come back out and do it all again in 15 minutes

So, that was my plan. And can you guess how it worked? Well, it worked perfectly... sort of. She did all that without complaining at all. She was perfectly comfortable getting down on her hands and knees and cleaning her own piss and shit off the floor. She didn't seem to mind at all. She accepted all of that as a given. What she wouldn't do was to ever pee / poop on the potty.

It didn't work on Thursday so we tried again on Friday. Both days she peed all over our house. Upstairs and downstairs. On hardwood floors and on rugs. 15-20 times a day.

By the end of each day I was experiencing Hulk-like rages. I totally lost my mind. Each day when Barb got home from work I left immediately to either go to the movies or to game at Steve's. I like to think that I'm normally a fairly laid back person, but on these days I didn't even recognize myself.

And how was Gwen? Exactly the same as always. She didn't react to the potty training routine and she didn't react to my hugely increased level of frustration. She took it all in with zen-like grace. But she refused to pee on the toilet. I told Steve about this on Friday night and he said: "Damn, Gwen's a bad ass!" And he's right. She is a bad ass!

In the end it stopped seeming like I was trying to potty training her and more like I was trying to break her will, or her spirit. In the end I had to admit that it not only wasn't working, but also that this whole thing was violating every principle of parenting I hold dear. And the process was turning me into a horrible father so on Friday night we put the diapers back on. Gwen actually seemed a bit disappointed by that. She wanted to keep wearing her underwear, even if it meant scrubbing her own piss off the floor.

What can I say? My little girl is a f@$%ing bad ass!

Potty Training Boot Camp Day Two--Failed

Oh, yes...day two of potty training boot camp was yet another disaster. Gwen woke up dry as usual, and we reminded her that if she had to pee, she had to pee on the potty. So, she took off her diaper, put on her underwear, went into the living room, and proceeded to pee 15 gallons of pee all over the floor. I think the only bladder that I have ever seen bigger than this girl's would be our late Great Dane, Dunstan. For those of you who remember Dunstan...well...he could pee for about 15 minutes straight....200 lbs of pure love that dog was...of course, HE was housebroken. Grumble. Grumble.

So, Hawksbill called me around noon or 1 o'clock whilst I was enjoying a lovely shot of something blue at the world's most awesome restaurant in Greektown called Mosaic (yes, that was a plug--but dude--their food is sooooo good, but I digress). The news from Hawksbill was that potty training boot camp was going exactly the same as yesterday, except today it is raining out so all the accidents are occurring INSIDE our house. Hawksbill seemed like he was in ok spirits still, however, was starting to think maybe this experiment with Gwen the Terrible was not working so well, and maybe we should go back to a diaper or pull-up or a somebody ELSE walking behind her with a bucket...

By 4 pm, Hawksbill called again pretty incoherent...I heard mumblings of damn potty training, pee everywhere, need to leave, get out of the house...when the heck are you coming home??? You know how it goes...

So, potty training boot camp ended today by 4 pm. It was a total loss. Gwen wore a diaper for the rest of the evening with not even a hint of being interested in trying to pee anywhere except in her pants...so, I guess lesson learned is that she is actually NOT ready and we'll just give up for now...maybe another week....another year...no...not another year, but seriously...it ain't happening this weekend.

But, before I go, I did get some other ideas from someone from work who actually remembers her mom potty training her and her brothers...she said her mom would sit them on the toilet and put their hand in warm water to get them to pee on the potty...hmmmm...maybe that coupled with the food coloring in the toilet idea (you know, put in blue color so the kid can make it turn green or something) maybe something to try another day. Of course, I have to remind myself that trying to get Gwen to just SIT on the potty is about as easy as trying to bathe a cat. Until next time...potty boot camp is over.

Potty Training Boot Camp Day One--Failed

So, anyways...here is another thrilling post about potty training...how exciting. I can hardly contain myself. Really. But Gosh! Darnit! Gwen is freaking 3 years old, quickly approaching 3.5, and the news announced an expected 5-8% increase in the price of diapers (on top of the already added $5 a box that happened after Christmas this year) and that girl needs to freaking pee/poo on the potty!!!!

I can't remember if it was last week, or just a few days ago, but I stumbled across this video of the "potty whisperer", a woman in Chicago who runs a little kid boot camp and claims she can potty train your child in one day...well..when you watch the whole thing, she actually says it may take up to three days, so today was day one of our own potty boot camp at home.

If you really don't want to watch the video (don't worry, I won't be hurt!) the idea is make it the kid's responsibility for their body. Don't ask them if they have to pee--tell them, "If you have to pee, you have to pee on the potty." If/when they have an accident, they have to clean it up (you help them initially, but remind them that it is their responsibility--along with cleaning up themselves, and changing into dry clothes.

Keep in mind, it is Thursday and I had to work, so Hawksbill basically set out to do this on his own today...I knew he was in for a fun day this morning as Gwen lay in a fetal position on her changing table crying that she didn't want to wear underwear....but before I left, she was in her underwear and all excited about potty training. Uh, huh.

Hawksbill spent pretty much all of today upstairs in the part of our house without carpeting watching Gwen pee her pants over and over again...she has mastered the part of cleaning herself up, putting her wet clothes in a bucket and cleaning up her mess on the floor, but that was it. My favorite was when he called at lunch time to say she pooped in her pants and wanted him to change her, but he told her it was her responsibility and that she had to do it herself...fun!! So, after she figured out how to get her soiled clothing off, and it was messy I hear, and after stepping in said mess and being told she had to clean it up herself...well...the day just went on.

I came home about 5:30 pm to a disgruntled Hawksbill who had already picked out a movie to go to tonight and left me in charge of boot camp which lasted until 7:30 pm tonight....Gwen had another 4 accidents (but happily took off her clothes, cleaned up her mess, and redressed herself...)

So, I don't know. Was it worth it? I really don't feel like we are any closer to potty training than we were yesterday. I have a load of totally pee soaked clothing and towels in the washer right now, and Hawksbill is somewhere at a movie. Gwen is in a diaper now--not because I am giving up, but because it is almost time for bed, and I am a realist about trying to let her sleep without a diaper tonight. I know she can hold it all night--she wakes up dry, but I have only had 1 time EVER that I convinced her to pee on the potty in the morning before she soaks the damn thing.

My hope is that maybe, just MAYBE, if Hawksbill has the patience to do this again tomorrow, that she will try to sit on the potty...that maybe she'll pee just one time...or a miracle will happen and she'll just decide to do it. If you know Gwen at all in person, you know she HAS to do everything herself--feed herself, dress herself, get things down from shelves herself, she'd probably try to peel her own apple if she could reach the knives, so the resistance to free herself from the evils of the diaper is beyond me.

On a slight side note, going back to the price of diapers...don't these diaper companies (and I mean YOU Kimberly-Clark) understand that raising the price of diapers only encourages more people to not want to use disposables EVER? It makes you want to use good old fashioned cotton diapers which in turn leads to the parents potty training their kids earlier...eliminating the NEED for disposable diapers..heh heh....and for those of us who never used cotton diapers...it only makes us that much more eager to not be a slave to the diaper genie.

Our Different Drummer

Simon's not the only one who has been learning new things lately. A few weeks ago I thought it was about time we started teaching Gwen about the alphabet and the letter sounds. So, we bought her some foam letters and starting going through them, but it turns out she already knew. I don't know if she learned all the letter sounds from TV or from Simon, but she's pretty much up to speed on all the "short" letter sounds.

Next up we can start learning the "long" sounds and the difference between upper and lower case. Here are some recent pictures of Gwen being as adorable as always:


I don't know how it happened but Gwen is turning out to be quite the girly girl. She didn't get it from me, that's for sure, and Barb has always leaned towards the tom-boyish side of things. But, Gwen is a stereotypical girl if there ever was one.

It all started right around her 2nd birthday. We had a big friends & family birthday party for both kids (their birthdays are 3 weeks apart) and our friends Eric and Karen bought Gwen a "princess kit" which included silvery high-healed shoes, a tiara and a silvery plastic wand. Then someone else bought her a huge feather boa. For weeks after the party she paraded around the house wearing that outfit and saying (over and over again) "I'm a MAGICAL PRINCESS". We didn't even know she knew the word "princess" but there she was... hooked on a totally new lifestyle.

Nowadays she changes clothes many times a day and almost always dresses herself. If we try to pick out her clothes she usually gets mad at us so we just let her do it herself. In fact, she was dressing herself independently long before Simon was, and he's 3 years older.

And, she often uses her allowance money to save up for all sorts of princess related toys. A few weeks ago, much to the consternation of her mother's inner feminist, Gwen decided that the thing she wanted most in the world was a Barbie doll in a wedding dress.

When this all started we talked briefly about trying to prevent the accumulation of all the princess paraphernalia and the whole ideology in general, but we ruled that out pretty quickly. This is just who Gwen is. She glommed onto the whole princess thing in the same way that Simon became obsessed with stars and planets. Something just clicked inside her and resonated with her soul. She definitely walks to the beat of a different drummer around this house, but it's her drummer, damnit!

Finally, to wrap this post up, here's a picture of Gwen doing what princesses do best: suffer with a smile!

Oh, and for the record, she wasn't just pretending to wash the cupboards in that picture. Without us suggesting it she got a wet sponge and washed all the kitchen cupboards that she could reach. Sometimes princesses can be VERY helpful!

(As a socio-political aside: I used to assume that gender roles like those associated with stereotypical femininity or masculinity were entirely socially created. However, now that we have a child of each gender and we've had the chance to see them develop their own styles and interests, I've had to revise my views. There may be social elements to some of this stuff, but most of it sure seems to be innate. You could argue that Simon's interest in astronomy was encouraged by me... but nobody has been encouraging Gwen's obsession with all things princess.)

Kindergarten Recap

I'm not the only one in our family who graduated recently. A couple of weeks ago Simon finished his final formal assignment for his Kindergarten year. This ends our first official year of homeschooling, so I thought I'd write a bit about how it went.

First, here's a picture of our happy Kindergarten graduate.

When I had originally planned his Kindergarten year I had a very organized and structured curriculum in mind. When we experimented with that, though, it turned out that nobody was having any fun at all. The whole thing was just a drag so I went back to the drawing board and re-planned the whole thing. This is how we organized what ended up working very well for us.

First we set out to determine exactly what a kid “should” learn in Kindergarten. For this I consulted Rebecca Rupp’s Home Learning Year by Year and E.D. Hirsch’s What your Kindergartner Needs to Know. What came out of that research was roughly this:

Language arts:

• Know all upper and lowercase letters and the sounds of each
• Begin to read 3 letter words
• Recognize their own name in print
• Understand syllables

Writing:

• Be able to write all letters – upper and lowercase
• Be able to write simple words, messages & such

Listening & Speaking:

• Follow simple 1 & 2 step directions
• Retell familiar stories
• Invent & tell fantasy stories
• Memorize & recite short stories & rhymes

Mathematics & such:

• Be able to group objects into sets
• Identify and continue simple repeating patterns
• Count from 1-31
• Identify ordinal positions (first to fifth)
• Adding and subtracting number from 1-10
• Solve simple story problems
• Identify pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and recognize dollar & cent signs
• Understand measurements of length, weight & capacity
• Tell time to the hour
• Know days of the week

History & Geography:

(Note: the books I referenced above recommend starting with US history, but we opted to teach history chronologically a la the “classical” approach that I’ve written about before so we modified this to suit our needs)

• Listen to stories about ancient times including Greek & Roman mythology
• Able to use maps and globes, learning US geography and understanding the major world land masses

Science:

• Sorting objects according to physical characteristics
• Understand living vs. non-living
• Become familiar with plants
• Become familiar with animals
• The five senses and the associated body parts
• Basic composition of the earth
• Understand the seasons and weather
  

Art & Music:

• Name and describe colors, shapes & lines
• Experiment with a range of art techniques & mediums
• Be familiar with rhythm, melody and harmony

Health & Physical Education:

• Know importance of exercise, cleanliness, good nutrition & sleep
• Participate in age-appropriate athletic activities
  

Then, after compiling a list of things that a Kindergartener “should” learn in Kindergarten, the next thing we did was to assess what Simon already knew. It turned out that there was quite a bit he already knew. For example, by the time he was 5 he could read simple sentences and he already knew all the colors and shapes. Also he could already count to 100 and add & subtract numbers between 1-20 in his head without using manipulatives.

The next step in the process involved reducing the previously mentioned level of structure in our homeschool. So, we decided to decided to divide his “lessons” into two categories: formal and informal (or, structured and “unschooled” if you will).

The “formal” lessons were things that we tried to do on an almost daily basis and included the following:

1. Math lessons: for this we chose the Singapore Math text and workbook level 1. We actually started with Saxon Math level 1, but it was really boring and repetitive so we switched in mid-year to Singapore, which we all liked a lot more. Using level/grade 1 actually put him a year ahead of things in math, but he already knew all the kindergarten math basics so it would have just bored him to keep things too simple.

We didn’t do math lessons every day, but some days he would voluntarily do 3-4 days of lessons all at once so it evened out over time. From these lessons he learned more complex addition and subtraction (numbers 1-100) and even multiplication. He also began to learn the basics of division, but on a very superficial level. There were also a bunch of lessons about money… learning to add and subtract various coin amounts and whatnot.

2. History: For this we used Susan Bauer’s Story of the World Volume 1 (Ancient Times) on CD. This is a 7 disc set and every night for the past year Simon has been listening to 1 disc at a time at bedtime. I tried reading the book to him also, but he was annoyed that I was just repeating things that he already heard on his discs so I gave up.

3. Read good books: Every night at bed time we’ve been reading novels like Charlotte’s Web or The Chronicles of Narnia and also traditional fairy tales, Greek & Roman mythology, Aesop’s Fables and anything else he seemed interested in. I tried also reading to the kids during the day, but they weren’t interested in that and couldn’t sit still. Bedtime it is then.
   

That was it for the “formal” part of our lessons. Everything else was informal or “unschooled”. For us, what this meant is that we would pay close attention to the sorts of things Simon was interested in and we would make sure that he had all the books, software, videos, arts & crafts, comics and everything else he wanted to do his own research into these things. We decided not to impose any further subjects on him, but rather to trust him to develop and pursue his own academic interests. This may not work with all kids, and it may not work with Gwen in a few years, but Simon had already established himself as being able to deep dive into subjects he was interested in and we figured that would continue.

The way this took shape over the course of the last year completely met our hopes and expectations. On his own Simon continued to research and study everything he could get his hands on about astronomy. The boy is completely obsessed with stars and planets. We found a ton of books for him and also some really great free astronomy software (Celestia) that allowed him to tour the solar system, visiting every planet and moon and also to learn about the constellations. As part of this we are constantly printing out black and white pictures of the planets the he loves to color. Then we cut them out and he will carry them around with him all day talking about them. His bedroom is filled with planet books, planets hanging from the ceiling, little plastic planets littering the floor and giant inflatable planets pushed into every available nook and cranny.

What has been especially interesting about this is the way that other subjects become organized as part of his particular passions. For example, introducing him to Greek & Roman mythology was easy, once we learned that they Roman Gods have the same name as the planets. Then, when we read the myths we were, from his perspective, reading stories about the adventures of the planets. Also, becoming a better reader became important to him because he wanted to read more about astronomy, so he put a lot of effort into learning more words and letter-sound combinations. And, he became interested in really large numbers, because of the distance between the planets and the sun. So, he learned about hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, etc.

(The other day Barb and I were sitting in the living room and Simon walked in and asked: What’s 365 times 248? We said “huh”, but he insisted we find the answer so we pulled up the calculator and figured out that it was 90,520. Then he explained that 90,520 was how many days it took Pluto to go around the sun.)

But, the best education Simon is receiving happens after bedtime, after we read to him and shut his door for the night. It turns out that the boy is a night-owl. He loves to stay up late. So, after some discussion we’ve decided to let him stay up as late as he wants, long after we’ve gone to bed. The following rules apply: he was to stay in his room with the door shut (except to visit the bathroom) and he must be quiet and not disturb anyone else.

Neither of the kids will ever have a TV or a computer in their bedroom, so he spends this time (from 9pm until after midnight) reading and playing with toys. Before I leave his room for the night he will often ask me to pull some books down from high on his book shelves for him. Also, recently he asked us to get him a set of foam letters. For the past couple of weeks he has spent this quiet time with these letters and a couple of phonics books. The other night I peeked in on him at about midnight and he had the books open and was spelling out words with the foam letters. I asked him how it was going and he started telling me all about letter “blends” and what different letter combinations sound like if you put them together. We did not suggest that he do this at all, it was all up to him.

So, that’s been our first year of homeschooling. We’ve decided that there are a few things that should be learned in a systematic way (like math and history) but for almost everything else we’ve learned that we can trust him to more or less teach himself. Our job is mostly to pay attention to the kid’s interests and then to make sure the house is full of books, software, art supplies and toys relating to those interests and they pretty much do the rest.

Now that I review the list of things a kindergartner “should” learn with what Simon actually learned this year, there are only a couple of things I think we missed. Foremost of these is to develop skills associated with summarizing stories and repeating back the story’s basic theme or plot. We haven’t done much of that. Later in the year when we start first grade I plan to add an additional “formal” lesson to our repertoire dealing with general language skills. I plan to use Jesse Wise’s “First Language Lessons” which is a two year program for 1^st and 2^nd grade which is a gradual and systematic study of grammar and other aspects of English language study. It includes memorizing short poems and also begins the process of learning to summarize story elements (first verbally and later in writing).

Overall, though, Simon’s kindergarten year accomplished just what we hoped. It has become a blend of the classical approach (with an emphasis on history and “great” books) and an unschooling approach in which we follow the kid’s interests. We’ve decided that there are some things that should be taught in an organized way, but that many things can be left up to them with us more or less just supplying resources.

The way that these two elements of our homeschool are balanced may change over time, but for now this seems to be working for everyone. It’s been a good year.