Lauren's first day of (home)school

Well.

I got an inordinately high level of interest on the puking bloc of the blog. The final outcome was that Lauren was sick, but nobody else caught it. Hmmmm.

Addison was taken to the vet and shot up with another dose of Cortisone, which is meant to calm his stomach and keep him from throwing up. It "fixes" irritation, so to speak. After looking carefully at one of the spots where he threw up, I was VERY forcibly reminded of how Lauren's diapers looked when we were trying to figure out her dairy allergy. Little brown flecks in the baby's stool are actually tiny bits of blood from the intestines. They're being torn up by an allergen of some sort. So here's the cat, throwing up little brown flecks in his bile. Is his stomach being torn up? Is he allergic to something in the canned food? Heaven knows his weight has dropped like a stone, and he's suddenly developed puking episodes every three months which don't involve him ingesting crap to block him up.

So now we're testing the theory. We've got both male cats back on the raw food diet (much to their ecstatic joy!), but Paige refuses to eat it. Natch. Addison already seems less bony; we'll give it six months and see what happens now. 

Today was Lauren's official first day of school. We decided we were going to homeschool her this year in literally about a 20-minute discussion. Much like David, she's too young to attend school this year, but she's got absolutely no patience for sitting still or paying attention, so we thought maybe a little practice would be good. 

Found this gem of a desk on a reseller's list. The copy that goes with it trumpets, "Ideal for homeschool!"

Er...no thank you! I found the idea of sitting at one of these things even to do homework absolutely repellant as a child. If I'm going to stay at home instead of going to school, why carry around the trappings of school with you? It's like erecting a sterile cubicle in your living room for the days when you telecommute. Half the joy of telecommuting is the fact that you get to sit in your own comfortable surroundings. Some people sit on the couch, others have their own little home offices overlooking the backyard, others hit the coffeeshop or maybe have the opportunity to grab a little wi-fi and sit outside at a park. Productivity is not limited to either the cubicle nor the school desk. I get why the large institutions use them both, but please...how many of us yearn for that work setting in our own homes? Let's set up some florescent lights, drop ceilings and mud-thick coffee, and away we go! Adults aren't that insane, why do they try to do this to kids?

Anyway. Lauren's been pestering me to "do school" with her and she's taken to telling complete strangers "I'm homeschooled!" They think it's really cute, and then they talk to the big brother who replies the same and suddenly it's not so cute anymore. Now they're really worried that they've run into a pack of warewolves or something. 

We found some cheap little swivel chairs at OfficeMax and picked them up fairly cheap, since they were the display models. One is black, one is purple. I attempted school with David all of last year in the living room and the dining room, with limited success. I seem to lose EVERYTHING, most of all his attention. It's been pretty frustrating. I finally cleared off the desk in his room and made good on my threat to get him up EARLY (6:30 a.m. or so) to do school. This was supposed to be a motivator for him to realize how good he's got it and to light a fire under his arse. To my total dismay, he LOVES the new schedule, he's eating breakfast by 6:45 a.m. and is all chirpy and happy. By 7 a.m. he's hopped up in his chair sitting at his very own desk (a big red one, with black trim and a white drafting table top. Room for a computer later on.), usually saying, "Let's do math! That's my best subject, right Mom?" This morning was a really light load, and he was done by 9:30 a.m. He was doing a little happy dance all around the room in his star-print footie pajamas. 

Shortly thereafter Lauren wanted me to do "do school" with her. I needed to do some setup for David's stuff for a few days hence, and instead I worked with some clay. Lauren dove right in and got herself covered with it, but we did talk about clay, slag, and how to form simple bowls. I then did some dishes while she washed up. She showed up in the living room stark naked and wet. "I'm hot," she announced. Sigh. So I decided to sneak in some school. I took her back to mom and dad's Big Bed and read her the old-fashioned version of Cinderella. To my amazement she PAID ATTENTION. Could have knocked me over with a feather. Got through the whole story, then I told her I had a coloring job for her. She got downright sparkly over the prospect (David  despises coloring), so I pulled out a sheet of paper with before and after drawings; there were eight of them total. The idea is sort of a "This is Cinderella before the fairy godmother, and now which of these is Cinderella after the fairy godmother showed up?" I had her cut them apart first, thinking I would explain afterwards. She plunks her happy, naked butt on the chair in the dining room, (I moved their tiny desk from the living room to the dining room. It's got a lot of natural daylight there and is tucked into a bright little corner.) cutting away. After a few minutes I hear a little gasp of recognition. "Mom! It's the STORY! This is the STORY!" 

Ah!"Ok, why do you think that?"
"See? This is the pumpkin, and this is the cart, and this is Cinderella...."

So I revealed the rest of the project and told her she could glue them down and then color them, or color them first and then glue them down. 

"Glue first!"

Ok.

The poor thing doesn't know how to glue.

She held down the first piece and ran the glue stick around the outside of the paper. Uh....

"Hey, sweetie, you've got that on the wrong side. See, you'd have to turn it upside-down for it to stick."

"Oh."

"Try this."

She was blown away and thrilled at the whole concept. ?? I guess I take a lot for granted. 

She already had her crayons out and I asked if she wanted me to get her paint pens. 

"Paint! I want to paint!" she shrieks joyously.

I hate it when she paints. If she breaks out the watercolors, I end up having to scrub the floor because it's covered in blue and green paints. >:-(  Her last paint set she mixed all the colors together and it all ended up mud brown...so I'm REALLY reluctant to see this happen, but I relent. 

I get out the new paint set I bought her for school. (And new crayons, a new ruler, some pink pencils, patterned erasers...) We get water into all the colors and she immediately starts to stab her brush into the nearest color. I grab her arm.

"What are you going to paint?"

"Um..." she starts looking around wildly at the various pictures. She had no idea; she's just going to load up the brush and then look for a target. Well. No wonder your pictures don't look like you want them to! 

"Ok, what you do is you look at your pictures and you decide where you want to start. Which one do you want to paint first?"

"The pumpkin!"

"Ok, now decide what color you want the pumpkin to be."

"Orange!"

"So what color are you going to put your clean brush into now?"

"Orange!" 

"Ok, orange. So dip, and now paint."

We go over cleaning the brush, but this time I tell her the brush is covered with paint, so it "needs to have a bath, get all clean, and then dry off with a paper towel." This works incredibly well. 

"Is this picture all done?"

"No!"

"So...I bet you're going to paint the leaves or something, right?"

"Yeah."

"So you pick what color you want them to be FIRST, and THEN you get that color."

For some reason this whole concept is foreign. ??? I wonder if that normal for a lot of kids. 

She is thrilled. I'm out in the kitchen, I'm not paying a huge amount of attention to what she's doing, though she wants me to sit there and watch her paint. (Oh, fun.) She asks how to paint "little." I get it, she wants to get into small spaces. I tell her to tap the brush in those spaces instead of drag it. She's further delighted. 

I swear, the child sat there for a hour and a half, not only perfectly content, but actually humming happily. I come back after awhile, to this (well, more than that, really, but this was the best one):

The pumpkin is probably an inch high, so the vines are actually quite small; this one hell of a steady hand for a four year old kid! Plus she decided to make the stem brown all on her own, I never said a word or attempted to coach her. I was quite surprised. 

I let her run around a bit, then snagged her later for a little bit of Phonics and a little bit of Math. She got bored during Math, so didn't listen to the test questions and fouled up everything but the first one, because she applied the criteria from the first question to ALL the questions. 

"You're too busy humming to listen to the directions!" I accused her. 

She looks at me quizzically. 

"Was I really humming?"

Oh, boy.