"Okay, turn on your shoe."
Saying that has yet to get old for me. I only wish it would stay in the elegant realm of 007, or even come to a comfortable stop at Maxwell Smart, but every stinking time my brain carries it right on through to Inspector Gadget. Inevitably that addictive tune irritates me until I have to get some relief by opening my mouth and irritating the rest of the family. That's what families are all about.
We have started our running club. We head over to the park, The Sister turns on her Nike+ system (she has a chip under the insole of her shoe that's linked with her iPhone) to measure our distance, and we run. The Sister was on the track and cross country teams for the past couple of years, so she is good about motivating the kids, reminding them to keep their elbows in and their hands loose... She has taught them about finding a pace that can be maintained rather than shooting off and then wanting to walk too early. My role is to gasp and pant and stumble -- and I do it well -- in order to make them all feel better about themselves (learning a sport really is about building self-esteem).
We have a little chart that has a marathon -- 26.2 miles -- broken into quarter mile cells. After each quarter mile run they get to color a cell, working towards "finishing a marathon" and having a celebration.
The name of the running club was actually more drama than a Glee episode. "Brainstorm and come to a consensus," is a phrase that I won't say again without proper preparation (e.g. a candy bar stashed in my bedroom closet with enough space cleared on the floor for me to go fetal after the last sweet bite is gone...)
I've gone back and forth about whether or not to run as a pack, or let them go as fast or slow as they want with individual charts. For now I've decided that this is a team activity. We run as a family to both encourage and annoy each other. Because that's what families do, and dammit, we're all going to like it.
Aside from a clock game, and reading, and writing some poems with our words from the farm yesterday we basically did two new things worth recording: 1. we started our running regime (more on that some other time), and 2. we made copious amounts of treats. It is about finding balance.
One of the plans that the boy and girl came up with when discussing the scheme was having a monthly party/play-date in order to maintain their school friendships. On tap for September was the Back-to-School party (irony may or may not be part of the curriculum). The plan: meet in Sheep Meadow and eat caramel apples and run around and play games. Fine by me, but we live about 20 blocks south of most of their school friends, and I didn't get around to sending the invitation until just a few days ago, so I didn't anticipate a robust response.
Do you know what else I haven't anticipated? The enormous amount of support we have been given. The word that floats to the top of my head is generosity. It makes sense that people who have tinkered with the idea would be supportive, but it's those who know that they will never home school -- either because they don't want to, or their situations don't provide the room -- and yet have shown such generosity of spirit that have made me feel connected to humanity. Surely it was that generosity that inspired some to schlepp the 20 blocks in the heat today, for there was a lovely turnout. It was fun to catch up on school gossip, see the moms that I really like and respect, and watch our kids run themselves into sweaty, droopy messes. They played like so many tumbling puppies.
But back to today's lessons. We watched two youtube clips: Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, and the I Love Lucy episode when she and Ethel work in the candy factory. We talked briefly about assembly lines and then we made one of our own. We washed, and dried the apples, covered them in caramel circles, stuck the stick in and baked them at a low temp to melt the caramel. We then wrapped them in wax paper and twine.
The kids are part of this weird take-away-gift culture which I have mixed feelings about. Sometimes when they go to birthday parties the loot they get for being a guest is way nicer than the gift we bring. It's all very indulgent, and I especially feel bugged that my kids have been conditioned to look around at the end of the party when we go up to thank the host/hostess. It's one thing to really like goody bags (that's where the mixed feelings come in -- I understand that kids really like little gifts), but it's altogether different to expect them... Alas... Anyway, to strike a compromise we made fortune cookies -- inserting little fortunes that said, "May your homework be light and your recesses feel long." And: "You have a delightful school year in your future." We put two in a little paper bag, secured it with Japanese Washi tape and called it good.
Fortune cookies are pretty easy to make, but you have to fold them and bend them while they are still fingerprint-destroying hot because once they cool they break. This is where our assembly line fell apart. As the words, "Come on. It only burns for a minute," left my mouth I realized that I might be breaking a child labor law, so I set the kids free to go change out some bobbins... As it was, the humidity wreaked havoc on our cookies and they ended up looking more wonton than fortune cookie.
Today, because of the baking, we were in the apartment until we left to set up at the park, and it made me realize that it's going to take some time to hit our stride. When we are here and doing more mundane things Judd the Red Chicken ever so subtly sneaks off and slips back into vacation mode (i.e. laying on the floor of his room with is feet propped up on the bed, clutching a measuring tape, and daydreaming), so rounding him up and motivating him to think about academics is tougher. Of course I don't want every minute to be scheduled... We will keep working at finding balance.
