the ELLA echo

wordless wednesday: the jolly friend

 

domestication: its a good thing

do you know what this is?  it's homemade ice cream.  made by ella and me.  in our home. 

first it was dishcloths.  then soap.  then butter.  now ice cream.  some of my friends, esp. my long-time friends (i'm talking to you, drew) are shaking their heads at all the domesticity.

there was a time, seemingly not that long ago, when making my own butter or growing my own food did not even cross my mind.  my world was huge then--it spanned practically the whole globe--and growing a garden was not only impractical for me but didn't make sense to my way of life.  after all, you can buy food--you can buy soap--you can buy just about anything and the people who make and sell these things are definitely grateful for your business.

besides, there's hardly any point in making pot holders if you don't cook.

but over time, my world shrank, bit by bit--at first it was limited to my own country, and then to my own city, and then a year ago this week my whole world was reduced to just this house--1200 square feet surrounded by a yard and a fence.

my commute to work now is from the kitchen to the dining room.  the only thing i have to pack before going is a cup of hot tea.

for a while i was a little concerned that i was not suddenly motivated to pursue all those projects that i had longed to take on when i was working outside the home--all those things that i always said i would do if, if, if.  i feared that i was becoming small, that my scope of interest was becoming narrow, that i was losing something of my identity even.

at the same time i was excited by all the new things that were calling me--i made menus and learned upholstery and started making our bread everyday. 

BUT WHY???

what coming home had done to my creativity was not clear to me until last night, when rudi made an offhand remark about the difference between designing rooms and designing cakes :D and then it all become crystal clear to me.

my scope of interest hadn't become narrow--it had become more focused, more distilled.  instead of looking outward in search of interesting things to make or do, i found them all around me, right in my own home and yard.  i started wearing and making aprons again--i recently started learning how to can and preserve fresh fruits and vegetables, i had a fresh salad from lettuce greens grown in my own back yard and i'm so looking forward to carving a pumpkin that i grew myself.

what i've learned is that there is a satisfaction and reward in the making of a home.  because of all this domesticity, this past year i've been able to do something i've never been able to do in my entire adult life:  i have opened my home, with pride, to a group of friends and their children on a weekly basis--have been able to offer them a safe, cozy, welcoming environment for learning and socializing--and i've been able to treat my family like the people they really are:  the most important people to ever cross the threshold of this home.

priorities.  i haz them.

how we homeschool: cousins

ella and i just got back from a short visit to my "ancestral homeland", AKA the appalachian mountains of virginia, where we got the rare opportunity to see my sister "lala" and her family, who live in maryland--my sister "bina" who lives in another part of virginia--and my parents who live in south carolina. 

my sister lala and i "see" each other daily online, but in real life only about every other year.  which means each time i see her boys they are several inches taller, and several increments more grown up, than last time.  which means i see just how much of their lives i have missed.

we visit my sister andy (who lives in the ancestral home) about three times a year and even though i don't see her or her girls online at all, the girls still seem to grow up dramatically between visits.

but the reason these visits are so special, apart from my getting to see my own siblings, is that ella gets to play with her cousins.  there is something special, almost magical, about the relationship of cousins.  ella sees the girls no more than 7 days a year--spread out over a several visits--and yet the minute they see each other it is as if they'd never been apart.  they pick up right where they were and play as though they hadn't stopped.  and ella deeply misses them, even dreams about them, between visits.

it doesn't end with the girls.  lala's boys are much older--one preteen and one teenager--they and ella have only seen each other three or four times in her whole life, but they played together like old friends.  lala's boys are kind and gentle, and yet they know how to be just rough enough to make my little tomboy princess giggle with utter joy.  they are special boys, and i grieve that we are so far away from each other.

each of the children at one time or another spent extended time with each of the adults--sharing ideas, describing their lives since they last saw each other, or simply being together and enjoying the closeness of someone they love.  i actually got to hug a teenager in public--and it was HIS idea!  and i got to hear each child tell me something that was important in their lives, got to hear them express joy or frustration or curiosity and was invited by each to share those feelings thru the vividness of their stories.

what does this have to do with homeschooling?  just this:  there were five children packed into the house on this visit, from teenager to kindergartner and several ages in between--plus parents and grandparents and even pets.  everybody played together, laughed together, cleaned up messes together--everybody shared something special with someone else, everybody got to know everybody else just a little better, everybody interacted with grace and ease across the various ages and skills and experience levels. 

in other words, we socialized.

and THAT is how we take care of that.

how we homeschool: disney's sleeping beauty, part 3--the 14th century

 

let's just start by saying that disney whitewashed the entire 14th century.  :D  this was an infamously disasterous period in european history, and i made the conscious choice to not delve too deeply into the complexities of the time due to the fact that this is kindergarten and we still have a lot of coloring to do.

why the 14th century?  when king stephan tells prince philip that he can't marry a peasant girl--because he (philip) is a prince--philip says, "now, father, you're living in the past. this is the 14th century!".  i still haven't figured out why they choose THAT century--i couldn't find any reference to a specific period in either perrault or the brothers grimm--but there it is.

what we did not cover, or just barely touched on:  the plague.  :D  and the hundred years war.  the point of this unit was to investigate things that were presented in the disney movie, and then to folow those things where they lead, and the only time we even came close to the plague was when we talked about how people of the time had their sicknesses and wounds taken care of (what would they do if they really did get pricked by the point of a spindle?).  that discussion lead us more toward investigating the philosophy of illness (about humours and about how illness was believed to be spread at that time).  the only time we talked at all about war was when we discussed the place of the knight in society (more on that coming up).

math, overlapping with history and probably something else: (feel free to educate me on what area of study this is):  merely learning the meaning of "14th" century was a lesson in itself, because when you are five years old, ten years ago is ancient history--seven centuries ago might as well be the beginning of time.  so we made a timeline on the floor, using some gaff tape and a marker and starting with a date she understood--the birth of christ--we marked out one foot for each century up to the present.  ella put photos of our family on the end that represented our time, she put her bible on the end that represented jesus' time, and then we "traveled" from biblical times to the 14th century.  there she put two dolls that she tells me are princesses, although i honestly suspect they are imposters.  she is now working out how many hundreds of years it is or has been between various centuries but this is complicated by the fact that the 14th century is actually the 1300's.  :D  oh well, the basic idea behind the math is sound.

vocabulary, overlapping with social studies and history: we investigated social class and structure of western europe in the 14th century (ok, not exclusively the 14th century--we covered the broad category of "middle ages").  we investigated what life would be like for royalty, nobility, gentry--we looked into the place of the military and of religious life and talked about the code of chivalry (her favorite: "live one's life so that it is worthy of respect and honor."), and talked about what it meant to be a peasant at a time when almost everybody was a peasant.  we looked at images of paintings and icons and statues to see what the people of the time wore, where they lived, what games they played, etc. (as a follow up, i'm hoping i'll get a chance to take her to the medieval treasures exhibit at the frist center for the visual arts--oops we're running out of time!)  we discussed what might be the equivalent social classes and conventions of our time--we imagined living in the 14th century, what part of society we would be in, what our days would be like, what kind of home we'd live in, and THEN:

we went to go to the TN renaissance festival!  the TRF is actually set in the 16th century but that was as close as we could get without a passport.  ella got to see firsthand the kind of clothing the various classes of people wore, got to see the actual games (have you ever seen a game of human chess?  it was not what i thought it would be)--got to see and try foods the people of the time ate, like soup in a bread bowl.  she got to see queen elizabeth I (again, i suspect she was an imposter), got to see a "peasant" (aka, contemporary man) approach her and request an audience and got to see the queen respond, got to see the interaction of the various characters in their roles--we got to see real jousting, ("mama, it's just like gawain's word, except with sticks!") and she even got to see the part of the middle ages that was as real to the people then as it is to her now:  THE FAIRIES!

human chess game:

 

"mama, they must have wanted me to find a unicorn!":

 

jousting!  real jousting!  with sticks and everything!:

 

in the maze--she found the bell!:

 

"mama, i didn't want to see their bellies, but i did want to see their bellies dance.":

 

"next time, let's ride the camel first."

 

she didn't want to meet the ogre, she was just humoring the ladies:

 

at last--FAIRIES!  they even spoke to her in fairy-speak:

i'd say of all the things we did during this unit, the ren faire had the biggest impact simply because it did what education is supposed to do:  make real meaning out of cold facts.  and besides, who doesn't want to joust a dragon?  ELEVEN TIMES? 

 

 

for bravery in the face of plywood dragons:  certified knight of the realm:

 

willy wonka and the art of motherhood

ella and i watched willy wonka and the chocolate factory today.  it was the first movie--the "good" one--the one with gene wilder.  i had been looking forward to watching it with her for years, but i waited until i thought she was old enough to really enjoy it and not be frightened by it.

early in the movie, the scene comes when charlie visits his mother in the laundry where she works.  she's covered in sweat and moving heavy, wet clothes from one vat to another--the work is hard and she is stuck in it by the poverty of their life.  and we see the one moment in the whole movie when charlie loses his temper--when he tells his mother that he knows he won't find a golden ticket, that even though he wants it more than anybody, he isn't fortunate enough to have something so good happen to him.  we hear this young child, who has to work so hard just to help feed his own family, lament the unfairness of his innocent life, despair of ever having anything good in his life, express in sweet, childish words his resignation with his lot in life.

charlie walks home alone, while his mother remains at the laundry and sings a simple little song--not a song about how much she hurts for her child, but a song encouraging him to have hope, to cheer up, to know that his time will come.

a brave little song, with forgettable lyrics, sung without self-pity and without irony.  she never even sighs.

but today, the tears rolled down my face.

that's never happened when i've watched the movie before.

things like this come over me so suddenly these days.  i have seen willy wonka at least a dozen times, yet this is the first time since ella was born.  and it took me completely by surprise.

how many more moments like these there might be ahead in my life, i do not know.  i resent this vulnerability, that makes me so easily wounded by the sorrows of this world.   and i am made uneasy by the realization that i actually wish this on my own child, that i pray she too will one day be fortunate enough to be a mother and thus be burdened with a mother's heart, a heart that feels every little thing so much.

the space between the rock and the hard place gets smaller every day.  balancing the incompatibility of impulses--on the one hand, my desire for ella to have the blessings of motherhood, and on the other my longing to spare her its sorrows--there is a lesson for me in there.  i guess i'm just wasn't ready to face it today.

wordless wednesday: starting a garden

 

 

wordless wednesday, one day late: flower arrangement for dinner

how we homeschool: centers--the book club

ella is coloring some alphabet pages:

oh, can't you see her?  let me show you a different angle:

this is the book club, safely tucked behind the couch.  it is just the right size for one girl and her mother.

this basket holds her chosen reading selections for the week.  the lantern is for when it is dark.

this is her "cubby" area:

on the lower shelf are a container of magnet letters, numbers, etc, and a baking pan to use them with.  on the back of the baking pan we glued some felt which she can use to stick felt shapes to make pictures or patterns.  we take this along with us when we go on road trips, and at home ella uses the baking pan for a lap tray.

on the upper shelf she keeps her cubby box with crayons and markers, her journals, and her letter kit.  it also holds her favorite part of the book club, her white noise machine.  i got this when she was an infant and we have used it in my office, in the costume shop, and now in the book club.  ella says it makes the club so peaceful.

"white noise" is sort of a misnomer, because it also plays what ella calls "habitat sounds"--spring rain, heartbeats, summer nights--and her favorite and mine, ocean waves.  this is what it sounds like when ella is in the book club:

we also have a nature table back here that holds ella's collection of rocks and shells, plus any miscellaneous extras she might like to add ("look what i found, mama!  this is the first feather for our feather collection.").  the table is actually a trunk that rudi's grandfather (or was it great-grandfather?) made as a wedding gift for his bride.  the stuff on the window sill is whatever ella wants to display, right now it is a ukelele, a wooden santa with a paper chain necklace, an angel with broken wings, an eagle plaque, and a basket for the kitties to nap in.

and to go with the ocean waves, ella redecorated the christmas village (did i forget to tell you?  we leave our christmas stuff up all year round).  the village has relocated to the beach, which i myself would happily do too if we could pick up our house and move it as easily.

but first I'll be a mother

some houses try to hide the fact
that children shelter there.
ours boasts of it quite openly--
the signs are everywhere.
for smears are on the windows,
little smudges on the doors.
i should apologize, I guess,
for toys strewn on the floor.
but I sat down with the children
and we played and laughed and read.
and if the bathtub doesn't shine
their eyes will shine instead.
or when, at times, I'm forced to choose
the one job or the other,
i want to have a lovely house,
but first I'll be a mother.

--author unknown

SIBLING NEWS FLASH!

gorg and milkie are getting married!  RIGHT NOW!  ella is playing for the wedding. 

the wedding march is "civilization", which luckily i have the sheet music because we used it in a show about 10 years ago.  we made the artistic director of the company be a spear holder in his own show.  good times....

oh, tootie and grophie are fine with the wedding, because they are all big kids so they can still play together.