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altarflameThese are the things Ananda and Aaron have done today, totally on their own:
-we got up extra early to drop Shadow (Annie's rabbit) off at the vet to bebroken fixed. She cleaned out his box and filled it with fresh hay and his bottle with water, and got him a clean towel in the carrier, before we left. They sang along with P!nk and the Indigo Girls the whole way there and back, stopping me often to explain what each song is about. I refuse at this point to spend more than 2 minutes talking about a song's meaning because otherwise I never get to actually hear the music.
-chores - he takes out the trash and recycling and clears and scrubs the dining table, she put away the clean dishes, moved the laundry through and picked stuff up off a bathroom floor
-he played piano for almost an hour solid, some of it so beautiful I couldn't do anything but sit with my mouth open
-she read a couple of chapters of her current book
-he did "an experiment" and then rushed out to show me when it was all done - scribbling all over a black and a white sheet of construction paper with the same few colored pencils, to see the difference. This led to him talking about museums, and how we should lease one of the available spots in a local shopping plaza for our own museum, at which point I explained that that would be about $10,000 per month which is why the Bayleaf Peddler went out of business, but we could set up a cooperative, or "co-op" museum of kids' art with our natural family group and homeschool group, and now they're all excited about doing that.
-Annie came asking me how to spell "sailboat" and "seagulls" but didn't want to tell me why because it's a surprise. I could see at a glance that she's writing some multi-page story in her composition book
-she also apparently drew Aaron in full detail, naked, which I thought was somewhat impressive but upset him too much, so we had a talk about artistic freedom vs making people uncomfortable, and privacy, and talent, and all that jazz
-I saw some art she did that looked just like ven diagrams, in that composition book, so I explained ven diagrams and we did some examples - foods that she likes, he likes, and they both like; farm animals, house pets, and animals that are commonly both. Aaron then suggested color ven diagrams, like with red on one side, blue on the other, and purple in the middle, and I told him he's a genius.
-they looked at most of the pictures Grant took way up in the northwest corner of the Everglades today, out on his own
-once we had Shadow back (Grant brought him home), we went over the vet's instructions together - low activity, regular food, liquid pain medicine once a day by dropper, coming back in 14 days to take out the stitches. Later they saw the shaved belly and were shocked and we talked about how doctors have to see what they're doing and the area has to be totally cleaned; how I got shaved for c-sections.
-this led into a detailed description of both what is currently wrong with my belly and what has to be done to fix it, that they were chomping at the bit for and ate up like it was just fascinating. Whatevs, I guess. They were laughing hysterically about how someone's going to have to make me a new belly button. They cannot BELIEVE some people electively have cosmetic surgeries for pure "looks" reasons.
-we (me and children) walked up to the grocery store and back, shopped. Annie picked out Elise's clothes and dressed her and put her shoes on before we left, purely because she wanted to. Ever since I asked her to that one time because I was headed to the ER with pain, she's realized she can, and now she seems to love it. And Elise is all about it.
-I went in their room and they had this whole big setup, that they eagerly explained to me, where flat crystal things were houses, bottle caps were farms, big random objects represented the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, Aaron's bike lock key was "the Florida Keys" (get it?! Hahaha, they said). And then Annie's marbles were storms. A small clear one was a rain shower, a small clear one with stuff in it a small thunderstorm, a small shooter a tropical storm, a big shooter a hurricane. The black shooter shot through with orange was a Category 5 hurricane, and it had just blown one of the farm's barns all the way onto a mountain (which was the drum set's stool)
-teeth brushing, reading aloud and bedtime prayers
This is just what I can remember right now, just from today. It blows my mind, what kids learn left to their own devices or just "facilitated" (like me getting them the piano, the books, answering their questions...)
Jake asks questions and demands I read him books ALL DAY LONG, too, and Isaac must have spent two hours today on PBSKids.org watching short video clips and playing challenging games. Those two spent most of the afternoon outside playing in the yard.
I love it.
-we got up extra early to drop Shadow (Annie's rabbit) off at the vet to be
-chores - he takes out the trash and recycling and clears and scrubs the dining table, she put away the clean dishes, moved the laundry through and picked stuff up off a bathroom floor
-he played piano for almost an hour solid, some of it so beautiful I couldn't do anything but sit with my mouth open
-she read a couple of chapters of her current book
-he did "an experiment" and then rushed out to show me when it was all done - scribbling all over a black and a white sheet of construction paper with the same few colored pencils, to see the difference. This led to him talking about museums, and how we should lease one of the available spots in a local shopping plaza for our own museum, at which point I explained that that would be about $10,000 per month which is why the Bayleaf Peddler went out of business, but we could set up a cooperative, or "co-op" museum of kids' art with our natural family group and homeschool group, and now they're all excited about doing that.
-Annie came asking me how to spell "sailboat" and "seagulls" but didn't want to tell me why because it's a surprise. I could see at a glance that she's writing some multi-page story in her composition book
-she also apparently drew Aaron in full detail, naked, which I thought was somewhat impressive but upset him too much, so we had a talk about artistic freedom vs making people uncomfortable, and privacy, and talent, and all that jazz
-I saw some art she did that looked just like ven diagrams, in that composition book, so I explained ven diagrams and we did some examples - foods that she likes, he likes, and they both like; farm animals, house pets, and animals that are commonly both. Aaron then suggested color ven diagrams, like with red on one side, blue on the other, and purple in the middle, and I told him he's a genius.
-they looked at most of the pictures Grant took way up in the northwest corner of the Everglades today, out on his own
-once we had Shadow back (Grant brought him home), we went over the vet's instructions together - low activity, regular food, liquid pain medicine once a day by dropper, coming back in 14 days to take out the stitches. Later they saw the shaved belly and were shocked and we talked about how doctors have to see what they're doing and the area has to be totally cleaned; how I got shaved for c-sections.
-this led into a detailed description of both what is currently wrong with my belly and what has to be done to fix it, that they were chomping at the bit for and ate up like it was just fascinating. Whatevs, I guess. They were laughing hysterically about how someone's going to have to make me a new belly button. They cannot BELIEVE some people electively have cosmetic surgeries for pure "looks" reasons.
-we (me and children) walked up to the grocery store and back, shopped. Annie picked out Elise's clothes and dressed her and put her shoes on before we left, purely because she wanted to. Ever since I asked her to that one time because I was headed to the ER with pain, she's realized she can, and now she seems to love it. And Elise is all about it.
-I went in their room and they had this whole big setup, that they eagerly explained to me, where flat crystal things were houses, bottle caps were farms, big random objects represented the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, Aaron's bike lock key was "the Florida Keys" (get it?! Hahaha, they said). And then Annie's marbles were storms. A small clear one was a rain shower, a small clear one with stuff in it a small thunderstorm, a small shooter a tropical storm, a big shooter a hurricane. The black shooter shot through with orange was a Category 5 hurricane, and it had just blown one of the farm's barns all the way onto a mountain (which was the drum set's stool)
-teeth brushing, reading aloud and bedtime prayers
This is just what I can remember right now, just from today. It blows my mind, what kids learn left to their own devices or just "facilitated" (like me getting them the piano, the books, answering their questions...)
Jake asks questions and demands I read him books ALL DAY LONG, too, and Isaac must have spent two hours today on PBSKids.org watching short video clips and playing challenging games. Those two spent most of the afternoon outside playing in the yard.
I love it.
