Sylvie Starts Kindergarten

 I am definitely in the better-late-than-early camp of education. The time, however brief, I spent as a Montessori teacher telling parents their six-year-old OUGHT to be able to read left an extra wrinkle between my eyebrows. It wasn’t hard to find the writings of dear John Holt and Rebecca Rupp and Charlotte Mason and Rudolph Steiner and David Elkind who all, to one degree or another, thought it best that children have a bit longer to play and grow and pretend  before being set to learn the alphabet.

When Ezra was kindergarten age, there was a new baby in the house, and it was easy to recite nursery rhymes and sing songs and tend house very purposefully to support his further unfolding. When Phaedra got to be kindergarten age, she wanted nothing to do with our “school” time and went off to play with her toddler sister in the simple land of early childhood. So, I deliberately did “kindergarten” things with Sylvie, like singing seasonal songs and doing simple crafts and taking walks, which Phaedra and Ezra also enjoyed.

Now, Sylvie is five, and she just wants to do whatever we’re doing. She has more friends than her brother and sister did at this age and she’s more socially aware than they were. She wants to do what she knows some of her friends and almost all of her cousins (there were 5 born in 5 months that year) are doing. And the cousins and friends are starting kindergarten and her siblings are back in their school routine. Sylvie wants to do that, too.

The problem is that Sylvie is a bit of a butterfly. It feels wrong to encourage her to sit quietly when I would even prefer she go off to play. Fortunately, I could see all this coming and I’ve devised a plan. We’re only one-and-a-half weeks into this plan, but it’s working so far.

I keep a lesson plan book, because it makes me feel good about myself, and in that book I’ve devoted a line on each page to Sylvie’s school work. If the book says we’re supposed to sing a song and recite a couple of poems and read a chapter out of Peter and Polly, then that’s what we do. Then I say, “You’ve finished your schoolwork! Would you like to dry dishes for me?” And she happily gets on with her day. Some days, like today, she ends up doing a page or two out of a workbook I got last year when I was at sixes and sevens with occupying her during school time. And that’s okay, too.

So, she can count past 100 and identify all her capital letters and copy words to send a brief letter, but she is satisfied with that. She has a day every now and then when she wants to learn to read or add or use the big chef’s knife. I make room in our school time to give her a lesson on these things, but if she wanders away, I let her. Five is really little, and this five-year-old is really airy. I think she and I will both enjoy more focused academics when her feet are a little closer to the ground. I like watching her fly for now.

Happy Anniversary

Fifteen years ago, Jason and I got married. There were the normal family dramas and the mix up with the bridesmaids’ dresses and all the false importance of each and every moment. But then, after a two-minute ceremony, we were married.

We had lived together for a few years at that point, and our finances were already joined and we had already had “The Fight” in which it was determined that we were in this in a forever kind of way. But the real dreaming did not start until after that day.

There’s the dream in which we open a cafe or a hostel, and we enjoy the life that passes through our doors. There’s the one where we somehow vanish into the wilderness and live on berries and love. There’s the one where we live in a funky loft apartment in an urban area. There’s also the one where we get some land and we figure out how to be farmers.

Tonight, as we sipped our cocoa and watched the moon rise with a thick ring of moisture and  talked about the weather, we toasted our anniversary. We celebrated this dream we’re living.

Then Jason said, “ What if we...,” and I knew I made the right choice so many years ago.

I Am Not Agoraphobic

I just like to be at home.

I can even see how it’s unfair of me. I can see how many of the people I love share this trait of liking home best of all. But when I weigh pottering about in my garden- or reading in my blue chair or rearranging the garage or hanging laundry or running the mower- against standing around at someone else’s house, I am often sorely tempted to stay home.

I have a couple of friends whose houses are easy for me, because I can do little jobs in their houses or I can knit without seeming rude. But when I meet new people (and I’ve met many in the past couple of years) it feels like I ought to visit with them in a having tea kind of way. A surprising number of people want to watch children playing when we get together. While I love my children and delight in their ways, I think we all enjoy ourselves more when they do not have an audience. Heck, I’ll even admit that I quickly get bored just watching them play.

It was easier for me to go visiting when I had less work to do, or when I was nursing a baby and therefore confined to a chair many hours of the day. Now, there is always something I could be doing, and I like almost all of it more than sitting still with a polite smile plastered on my face.

However, that polite smile is worth having old and new friends. Invite me over, and I’ll come, but if you haven’t heard from me, just assume I’m in the garden.

All I Don’t Know

Part of this life we now lead is the almost daily confrontation of all we do not know. We both grew up in the suburbs, so there are things like cow and chicken care that neither of us learned as children. Those sorts of things do not much bother me. (It does bother me that things like this seem to be slipping from common knowledge.)

What embarrasses me is my complete ignorance when it comes to knots or plant identification or simple plumbing skills. We are learning, and I have gotten very good at admitting when I do not know how to do something that I really ought to know. Still- I ponder why we don’t know.

For my part, many of these skills were not valued. I guess no one in my immediate family ever needed to tie down lumber or tighten a clothesline. One of my grandfathers was handy, and he stepped in when there were small repairs that could not be ignored. I think repair people were called in otherwise. 

In my childhood, the intellect was definitely favored over these skills. From where I am now, looking back, I wonder if too much got neglected.

Don’t get me wrong- I love it when Ezra tells me in a dreamy way about the nature of time or black holes or when Phaedra is completely captivated by the travails of a period in history. There are just some other things I want for them.

I want to help them feel confident they can at least approach any problem whether it’s a flooding basement, a trigonometric equation, or a thin larder. I want them to know how to get the information they need when an electrical outlet quits working or there is too much milkweed or they’ve missed their flight. It’s good to walk into a kitchen and know how to set it to rights and then use it to warm bellies and hearts. I hope they all learn how to get a window to open or a door to close, because then they’ll never get stuck.

Another Thing I Like about Hardwick

Today, the local coop celebrated its 35th birthday, and we all went to the party. One of the things they organize for the party is a clothing drop and swap. We took a few things the children had outgrown, and we came home with many, many things. I normally run a tight ship regarding clothes because storage is such an issue. With the chill in the air, I was able to remember how cold the house can get, and I picked up a few extra sweaters for everyone. And some boots to replace the ones I had to get rid of. And some socks. And a few things that I'll sew into something else.

It was wonderful in so many ways. These are clothes that would probably go into the waste stream, even though they still have plenty of life left in them. It's a way to save money in a place where you need vastly different clothes in different seasons. It also was quite social. As people (and let's be honest- it's was mostly ladies) sorted through the clothes on a table, they would talk with the other people there. We talked about what sizes we were looking for and whether something looked good and what our kids were doing and the weather and so on. Most of the people there pretty much knew each other, and we knew many and now know more of them.

After the clothing swap, everyone put together a potluck and different people provided live music. I sat on the grass marveling at the beauty of the day and the people we have chosen to live among.

A Few Lessons about Chickens

1. Do not move their coop too far, even if it would work much better for your grazing plan. If you move it too far, and they cannot see it and you think they'll go there when they get ready to roost, you're wrong.

2. When your chickens cannot find their coop, they just might "roost" on the ground in the last place they remember it being. They might indeed be quite attached to the place their coop was the last time they slept in it.

3. An eight-pound cat can kill an almost grown rooster that comes close to outweighing the cat. That is, if the rooster has decided to roost on the ground because he couldn't find his coop.

4. It is REALLY unpleasant to look for chickens in the dark when it's raining.

5. Even if you have never had a predator problem, a chicken sleeping on the ground outside the electric fence MIGHT get eaten by a fox.

6. If you look at your ten-week-old meat birds who only waddle when they want to move anywhere and think you'll easily herd all 60 of them to a new spot across the road, you're in for trouble.

7. Even really fat meat birds can move fast when they are frightened of the strange surface of the road.

8. Yelling at your children because the meat birds are all over the place on the wrong side of the road will not actually get the chickens where you want them.

9. If you chase a meat bird until it's flapping its wings in fright, you'll be able to catch it sooner because it will get tired.

10. A fishing net is an excellent tool for catching chickens.

11. Once enough chickens are in the fence, the other chickens will want to join them, so you can just get some in the fence at a time. The others will follow.

12. It could actually take five people one-and-a-half hours to move 60 chickens 20 feet. You do the math.

Fashion Plates?

Before Sylvie was born, I decided to sew the diapers we would use. After tears and screams of frustration, Jason decided it was time for me to have a new machine. That's when this entered my life. It changed my sewing life. When it died a couple of weeks back, I replaced it with the same model. The children wondered whether they might use this motor-less machine as a crank machine. I said sure, and Phaedra set to work.

She has sewed and sewed, spinning the wheel that drives the machine, making a doll many new outfits. I have been surprised by her innovations as she figures out how to assemble clothes. She asked almost no questions once she figured out how to thread the machine and fill a bobbin.

As I watched her, I remembered a toy my grandmother kept for us to use at her house. It was these plastic shapes that you set over a doll form. You could then make paper dolls using these shapes to create paper outfits of different textures. Anyone else remember Fashion Plates? Anyway, I thought about how much she might enjoy that. 

Fortunately, I watched a little longer and realized she was doing something much better. She's learning how buttons and buttonholes work. She's learning how clothing COULD be assembled. And how different fabric acts. And how seams can look. And how to ornament clothes. And a thousand other things. She is not limited to a set of six textures and designs, but instead only to the dribs and drabs of my sewing box plus what she has collected. It's a pretty good selection.

Also, she's feeling empowered to actually sew. There's no pattern telling her she's right or wrong. She's learning the mechanics of sewing with only her doll to please, and the doll continues to smile contentedly.

I'm glad I curbed my impulse to "enrich" her activity.