Ordinary Time

"The workers in the valley [Imperial Valley, CA in the 1930's] lived in 'primitive, even savage' conditions, the commission [from FDR's National Recovery Administration investigating what was happening] concluded, in camps characterized by 'filth, squallor, and entire absence of sanitation, and a crowding of human beings into totally inadequate tents or crude structures built of boards, weeds, and anything that was found at hand to give a pitiful semblance of a home at its worst.' As dismal as the camps were, however, the commissioners found the lawlessness of the Valley law enforcement officers even more horrifying. 'Freedom to assemble and to speak out thoughts and convictions must not be interfered with,' the report concluded, 'especially by those who, as peace officers, are sworn to uphold the law.' " (p. 124) ... "The Associated Farmers [an association of growers in Imperial Valley organized to fight farm workers' demands ...

(I'm listening to the debate as I am writing this post. I'm not sure that this will be a good idea as I am not good at multi-tasking to begin with, and when I feel the need to say bad words as I listen, well, this may need to be a post I edit before I post. But before I go on, can I just comment that it is not our beyond our capabilities to silence a person's mike when it is not their turn to talk.) Anyway... I was talking to a friend and she commented that she was curious to see how I was eventually going to connect Ancient Greece with chemistry, our two unit studies, as I was mentioning that I like finding connections between what we are studying. It was also this same friend who sent me a text a couple of weeks ago saying I needed to read a book. This friend and I share very much the same taste in books, so when she says I should read something, I put it on my hold list at the library. (Can we say bully? Being talked over is a personal pet peeve, and boy is he pushing my...

 We've made it home. Internet is always tricky up there, which explains the lack of post yesterday. It was a lovely restful vacation. We played games, some people swam, R. dug holes on the beach which she very much was looking forward to, and many books were read. Personally, I finished four books over the weekend. Three I had already started, but one I read start to finish. My brain is full. Brace yourselves; there may be quite a few book related posts over the next few days as I think my way through it all.  We also took a hike yesterday at a nearby hiking area that we had never been too. It was beautiful... and the perfect weather and lack of bugs didn't hurt, either. We all had kind of wished we had come prepared to take the much longer loops. On our way home today, we stopped by an orchard and picked up two bushels of apples, a 1/2 bushel of pears, and several pie pumpkins. Guess what I'll be doing in my free time over the next week or so. Since we only ended up with f...

I'm a little bleary at the moment. After months of life being somewhat calm in regards to R., last night was bad. Not quite head to the ER bad, but certainly far worse than what we have become used to. Yesterday I also noticed a FB memory pop up from last year which was a post in which I moaned about having another totally sleepless night with R. Two years in a row of extreme behavior on the same date screams traumaversary to me. When I get home to my records I'll start digging to see if I can come even close to figuring out what could be the trigger. I may not find it, there is so much we don't know about her life before us, but I do have records of when she had some major surgery and when she switched foster families. Those would be big enough events to warrant the behavior we are seeing. It caught us off guard last night, but we are more prepared tonight. I would like to sleep, though. With some cooler weather we spend more time inside than out, though some people did go...

 Some of us are now up here in Michigan at our aunt and uncle's beach house. So far the weather has been wonderful even though it is end of September. Packing and leaving were relatively calm... for us. We only left an hour and half later than our estimated departure time. This is pretty good for us! Apollo the kitten, having had an eventful day at this first vet appointment, has also joined us on this trip. G. packed up his food, crate, litter box, new medicine (for ear mites and things), blankets, and what not. He is rather doted upon and loves to lay on his back in G.'s arms. I don't think it matters much to him if he has extended play time being hovered over by G. followed by naps in his crate here or at home. If you are wondering what the appropriate number of books for a three day beach vacation is, if my packing is anything to go by, the number is nine. Yes, I brought nine books with me, many I am currently in the middle of. I also brought knitting and coloring books...

K. has entered the phase of growing up where he collects bottle caps. He has quite a collection now, which he uses as his clone army when building space ships with the blocks... or Legos... or whatever is at hand. None of this is a problem. You never know what configuration of blocks and bottle cap armies you will come across when you pass through the toy loft. And since the configuration changes at time hourly, it is sort of like having a constantly evolving art exhibit in the middle of your second floor. What does become a problem is when the clone army (AKA massive amounts of bottle caps) have been decommissioned and are waiting for their next assignment. Decommissioned bottle cap clone armies are merely piles of bottle caps littered across the floor. This is potential painful, and you must tread carefully especially if you have bare feet. Every time I run the bottle cap gauntlet down the hall I think of Flanders and Swann. If you don't know who Flanders and Swann were, then we ...

Usually Tuesdays are when I post our meal plan for the week. This week, though, it isn't much of a plan. We had split pea soup tonight and tomorrow night we're having chicken mole. That's it. This is mainly because some of us are heading to Michigan for a long weekend. The older people staying at home (jobs and school can be inconvenient things) will fend for themselves, and we will cook at the beach house, but I'll figure out what we're having when we get there. There is an Aldi nearby, so we'll be set. I wanted to share a couple of successes with you instead of menus today. Normally, homeschooling (or parenting) children who have learning challenges is a slog. Concepts take a long time to be understood with a lot of repetition; in the middle of it all it can feel as though no progress is being made. Slow progress is like that. Even slow but steady progress can be difficult to see. I mean, a person moving forward an inch every hour would not appear to be moving...

 At least, I didn't know I needed to read it. The book is Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United State s by Liping Ma. I came across the title in a discussion of teaching math in homeschooling, and on a whim I put it on hold at the library. I didn't have huge expectations for it as math is not usually what I read about. Not only that, but it is actually Ms. Ma's doctoral dissertation. Dissertations are not usually exciting reading. (My apologies to anyone who has ever written one or is writing one, but you'll probably agree with me.) This had all the markings of a book I skimmed a bit and then returned to the library.  Given all that, this was a surprisingly compelling book. Really. Much of the book centers around four math problems... a subtraction problem involving regrouping, multiplying a three-digit number by a three-digit number, dividing a mixed number by a fraction, and a geomet...

I'm getting very close to the end of the new Louise Penny Inspector Gamache book, All the Devils are Here . I get completely drawn in and find it difficult to close the book and go to sleep, so I've had a couple of late nights in a row. I just need to finish it and find out what happens. And be able to go to sleep at a decent time.  So instead of a blog post, you get animal pictures. Here is Olive, sporting her look for autumn. Don't you think every do needs a flannel shirt?    Next is Emmy. This is P. introducing Emmy to M.'s car. Emmy is not always sure about new things, and in the second picture you can see that she is very tentatively trying to decide if the car is okay. What amused everyone the most, though, was the size difference between the horse and the car. M.'s car is just not very large. And that's all I've got for right now. Inspector Gamache and his family are in peril, and I have to see what happens next.

The evening starts out somewhat subdued with the news of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. One can only hope the Senate will do the right thing and postpone voting on a new Supreme Court Justice until after the election and the swearing in of the (oh, please, please, please) new president. Since the Senate has failed to do the right thing far too often over the past four years, forgive me if I'm feeling pessimistic over them suddenly deciding to do the right thing now. And with that... The kitten, Apollo, continues to do well. He seems to have figured out the whole litter box-thing, which is big in my book, and pretty much tolerates G. toting him about everywhere. Earlier today I watched him prowl around the block city that people had built and were playing with. He has his first vet appointment next week. G. is still in love. We finished reading The Winged Girl of Knossos by Erick Berry earlier this week. I highly recommend it. It is set on Crete during the time of the Minoans...

Our co-op that we love is not meeting in person at the moment, but some teachers are offering online classes. One of those teachers is our wonderful art instructor whom my children adore. She is recording her classes so we can watch them as it fits in our schedule, and Thursday after lunch is one of those times. Today everyone was learning how to draw feathers. K. L. L. L. Y. Y. Y. G. H.

We have now survived two full days of our school schedule. Well, 'survive' might be a bit over-dramatic as they went fairly well. 'Full days' might also be taken the wrong way as we finished everything each day in under 2 1/2 hours. Our first two mornings of school have gone well is perhaps more accurate. One reason we have finished so quickly is that I am not assigning a huge amount of math. I like to work into it slowly, doing some review as everyone finds their math brains again after a summer off. Having now reviewed fractions with one child, borrowing with a second, and long division with a third, I think those skills are starting to resurface. Grammar we jumped into with a bang, tackling the difference between the use of 'well' as an adverb and 'good' as an adjective. I am happy to report that this was easy for most of them as they have the words in their ears correctly. I also was able to spend individual time each morning with H. and R. Yeste...

We had our first real day of school today. It went far better than some have gone, though having to think about math and grammar can be a shock to some people. Happily, some of those people had a therapy kitten to help. Two and half hours to do handwriting, science, math, grammar, history, and for me to work individually with H. and R. Not bad. It was also grocery store day, among other things, which means a new menu. Tuesday, Sept. 15 Vegetarian lentil soup      We were supposed to have this on Sunday, but we came home with food from the wedding, so had some of that instead. This got pushed to this week. French bread      Store bought Wednesday, Sept. 16 Ham      I had one more ham in the freezer, but there will be another side of pork arriving in the next month, so I needed to make room. Cheesy potatoes      Also leftover from the wedding Sauteed zucchini      Because every plate should h...

In a small bit of normalcy, we (including J. who was able to take the day off from work to join us) headed out to a museum for our first day of school. This year's choice was The Field Museum in Chicago. For various reasons, it had been quite some time since we had been, which is unusual, since we usually visit a couple of times of year, this was highly unusual. It was nice to be back. One of the reasons that we start school with a museum trip is that at this time of year they are virtually empty. Schools have started but they aren't doing field trips and tourist season had slowed down so that the usual people in museums aren't there. Today we had an empty museum to an unusual degree. If you have ever been to the Field, you know it is a very large museum. It can hold a lot of people without it feeling too crowded. It takes an very high number of people to feel as though you need to fight crowds. Today it was eerily empty. When we first got there at ten, there might have b...

We had a lovely weekend helping to celebrate my niece's wedding in Iowa. She was married on the family farm where my brother lives. She was a beautiful bride and they had all created a beautiful setting. It's not easy to host a wedding during a pandemic, but they made it work. Everything was outside, masks were provided, plenty of social distancing was able to be done, and people were careful. Yes, the whole this (like life these days) feels a little odd, but it didn't detract from the beauty of the wedding or the joy of the celebration. On Saturday we were able to spend time with my mom and other friends, and today we stopped back by my brother's and were able to help with some clean-up. Having fourteen willing and able hands means that cleaning up can happen a little more quickly. It also meant that G. had a lot of time to play with the barn kittens. Did you know that G. really wants a kitten? I might have mentioned it here a time or two. G. has felt the nee...

That's a date that will never be comfortable to write, isn't it? We celebrated P.'s 20th birthday yesterday. M. took this very cool picture of the pasture earlier this week.  R. is recovering from earlier in the week. We've certainly weathered bigger storms. Her black eye is also looking significantly better. Our weather does not seem to believe in moderation. The extremes are a bit tiring. I got to spend a few hours sewing yesterday. It would have been a little more exciting if I had been sewing something other than masks, though. Fourteen people require a ridiculous number of masks. Since masks tend to be in short supply around here much of the time, I have a slightly embarrassing story to share. I was getting in the van after having run an errand and noticed a fabric mask on the ground in the rain. I look a little more closely and see that it is actually a fairly nice mask, so I pick it up and throw it in the van. When I wash it, I realize that it had b...

It's that time again where I find myself writing the same thing over and over again, so decide I need to write a blog post about it. Today's question? What is the best thing you can do to help a young reader? It's not buying an expensive phonics program. It's not adding in more worksheets. It's not even forcing a child to sit and read for longer periods of time. It's easier and far more counter-intuitive than that. Ready? It is reading good books out loud to your child. Yes, you reading to your child is going to help make your child a better reader. Here's why: 1. Reading aloud puts the sound and rhythm of literary English in your child's ear. Think about it. For the most part, we are all lazy speakers. How we communicate with each other on a casual basis is very different from what we read in books. If a child never or infrequently heard a book read out loud, trying to read a book themselves would feel a bit like trying to read a foreign lan...