better

I'm better. At least I think I'm better—I got some sleep last night!

And we had a perfect, happy day of adventures yesterday (with my husband driving so I didn't fall asleep at the wheel).

Happy Adventure + Sleep = Better. It's such a simple equation, isn't it?

Where did we go? Well, we went to a little town an hour from here that has more book stores in one street than in my whole city! Can you imagine the bliss I felt?

Plus the drive was so pretty.

Plus we spent the day with great friends. Talking, laughing, perusing, eating, all those good things.

Plus my kids were with two of their best friends. They hung out for almost 12 hours and never stopped being delighted by each other. Isn't that the best kind of friendship?

Plus we looked at toys, and art, and got art supplies.

Plus the kids stopped at every opportunity to write stories and draw.

Plus we spent hours surrounded by books. How lovely to be with friends who love books. My boy walked into the store and did this massive breath in. He said, "I love the smell of book shops!" He is my boy, all right.

Plus, and finally, we went on a moonlit night hike to see some glowworms in the National forest.

We met up with a group, and trip-trapped along the dark path together, looking up for possums now and then. The guide trained a red-cellophane-covered torch into the trees, so the light wouldn't hurt the possums' eyes. We think we saw a Greater Glider (which is special, the guide said). I saw two yellow points of light, blinking at me from high in a dark gum.

Down down we went, the air getting colder and damper, down steps and stairs to the bottom of a valley, ending up on a platform beside a rock wall with a creek burbling past.

And there it was: a wall of light.

Glowworm Glen.

Hundreds of little glowworm bottoms, shining in zig-zag lines. We had turned off our torches, so the glowworm light was all we could see. It was like being in a ballroom strung with fairy lights. And then, if you listened closely, you could hear the ping ping sound of microbats calling to each other through the dark (they sounded like little bells).

We stood for ages. I wanted to stay for hours. But the tour was heading back, so we wandered back up the path, our torches dots of lights through the trees. Like we were our own little glowworms, zig zagging up out of the valley.

We stopped to hear the guide tell us all about glowworms (did you know they're not worms at all? And they spend pretty much all their lives as larvae? And that they make traps for insects out of silk and mucus? Yum!)

Then on we went, past the wombat holes and the possums, through the night damp, past the ferns and wizened tree roots, looking up now and then to see the moon smiling through the trees.

It was magical.

And then it was time to say goodbye to our friends.
Time for hugs and "See you soon!"

Time to drive home, along the freeway, heads nestled onto pillows, chatting sleepily with my husband (whose head was not nestled on a pillow).

Home through the dark and through happy.

Home to sleep and sleep so deeply that before I knew it, it was morning.

And I was

rested.


.

worn

Sick is what I am. Tired all through, achey all through, hard-to-keep-eyes-open sick.

I think I've worn myself out. I've been going non-stop, busy busy busy for days now. Not sleeping enough. The kids have even said, "Mum! You've got to get more sleep!"

In the past four days I've written a resume for a job running Creative Writing Workshops (yes, more workshops! Can't get enough). I returned lots and lots of email and wrote one long one—wrangled with it for three hours in the pre-dawn before I called it done (and I have yet to send it. Waiting to see in my heart if I should). Spent days (it seems!) listening to music. Played and laughed and talked with my kids and with friends. Stayed up watching movies with my husband. Went to see Rio in 3D (my girl's first time). Hiked up a mountain to a waterfall in the cold without a jacket. Wrote an article about homeschooling (that should get published soon!). Couldn't sleep, worrying over the words of my article, because I wanted it to not just be good, but to SHINE. Stayed up. Stayed up. Stayed up.

At 4pm yesterday, my Tired got so big I put myself to bed. I've been in bed, sleeping mostly, for almost 24 straight hours.

I suppose that's a sign I should slow down?

But there are all these things to do! So much, so much.

I will get to them, soon. But right now, I'm going back to bed.

Hoping you all are well and wonderful out there, in your own busy worlds, finding time to rest, finding time for slow and still and good.

:)

jazz boy

Today I said to a friend, "It's like my boy goes to homeschool Music School." And it's true!

He spends the equivalent of a school day (minus free time) at our local Conservatorium of Music every week. Plus he practices. Plus he has jam sessions with his dad, plus there are concerts on Friday nights and workshops on the weekends. Perhaps you could fill him up with more music, but then he'd start leaking notes. :)

Last night was another whole night of music—the end of term Jazz Showcase. Kids ran around, going off to hear or play in various bands, laughing and talking on the grass. An espresso van came and served coffee and hot chocolates, and there was a sausage sizzle (such an Oz icon!). You could hear music at three different venues around the Conservatorium. Sound literally poured out of the windows.

My girl watched from the grass outside and danced. We held hands and spun in sweet, grinning circles. It was magic.

My boy played jazz piano for the first time in concert! He soloed on every song, along with the other kids in his beginning Jazz Band (the only band where he doesn't play drums). I wanted to post him playing here, but you'd be listening for about 10 seconds, the solos were that short. Next time maybe they'll stretch further. After all, they are just testing their wings right now.

But I got a video of my boy playing drums in his Jazz Combo. Trading 4's, as they call it, with the rest of the band.

It's just beautiful. And he's beautiful. And I'm proud.




Guess what we're doing tomorrow?

Another concert! My boy playing drums.  And maybe some more dancing on the grass…

not taking the Sad home

My girl got hurt yesterday. It was kind of scary.

One minute she was sitting backwards on this big old seesaw thingy, and getting bounced a lot too vigorously,

next second she had fallen backwards and become stuck between the seat of the seesaw and the hard metal bar for your feet.

Kind of like she'd been folded in half and wedged there like a doorstop.

not the actual seesaw but it looked a bit like this

I saw the whole thing from the other side of the playground 

and RAN. 

I don't normally run. I actually can't remember the last time I did—I'm normally the calm, purposeful one who strides quickly over. But she was totally stuck (and totally screaming) and I totally wanted to get her out. 

Running over felt like one of those dreams…you know, the one where you're running and running and just. not. moving? I thought, I'm a galumpher, with my big old legs and arms and body that won't move fast enough. I felt like I was swimming through treacle.

When I finally got there, I had to crouch and pry my girl out. With help, because she was stuck-er than a doorstop. 

After my girl had finished sobbing and heaving and clinging to me, I looked at her back. 

Four grazes along her spine. The beginnings of four bruises. My poor thing.

But otherwise okay. Which makes her lucky, don't you think?

She did not feel lucky. She kept saying, "I want to go home!" And, "I never want to come to this park again!" And even this: "I never ever want to come to homeschool group again!"

I know that sorrow. And wanting to be as far from the thing that caused it as possible. I know the feeling of wanting to run, to blink yourself somewhere soft and safe and quiet. 

What did I do? 

Well, I wanted to lift her and carry her about like when she was a baby. I wanted great soft wings to fold her and hold her and keep her close. I wanted to pull her back inside my own skin. 

But I said, "I'd like to stay, if we can? I'd like, if we can, to try and find the Happy. If we leave now, we'll just remember this moment. And we'll be sad. If we could just stay a bit longer… maybe you'll feel better. Maybe we'll find a little Happy… Could we try?"

She agreed, but stayed close. My boy (he of the too-vigorous bouncing and now massive guilt), stuck close too. I sat at the park bench with a girl on my left and a boy on my right. I wrapped my arms around them both. 

We sat and I talked with the other homeschool mums. My girl had a chocolate egg, a gift from a friend. Then another egg. At some point she said, "It doesn't hurt any more, Mum," and smiled.

The day didn't suddenly go crazy with delight. It's not like the circus came and distracted my girl; it's not like she suddenly leapt up off her seat and played and danced. 

But we didn't leave and bring the Sad home. 

We waited, and calmed down, and found something small and good to bring instead.

A chocolate egg.

A cuddle by a lake with the wind at our backs.

Hugging my boy close. Saying, "I love you."

My girl turning to me and saying, "It doesn't hurt any more, Mum."

My girl smiling.

These seem such tiny things.

But in a life where it's so easy to carry Sad around

(and I do. I may not show it very often, but there are times I carry sorrow around in my bones. Stuck there for days sometimes, sorrow wedged into my ribs, resting on a hip-bone, lodged near my heart),

I make a point to find the Happy.

Look for the impossible, glorious, spangled light. 

Try and find something small and good to bring home. 

stretching time

credit

Our days are flashing by.

Days are whistling by our ears;

time's like a blizzard, whipping past sideways,

while we stand

in the middle,

grinning.


Our days look different every time

There are not-schooly moments and schooly moments

ever-changing moments and moments of Still

Days that, as they fly by,

stretch out, and fill up

to the brim.


Days like Today.


Where my girl had to tell me, first thing after she'd woken up,
about her incredible dream where she was a lion cub.
And her chair got stolen so she had to go in a van (with a chimpanzee called Michael sitting on top), to the robbers' underwater cave,
where the robbers had magic watermelons, oh no!
but luckily she was saved by a friendly mouse…

And when my girl was done describing her dream (and the other one where she was on a pirate ship), we had to go downstairs to type it up, and my girl had to start illustrating it with Paintbrush

…while my boy read Tintin on the couch and the cats chased each other through the house.

But then my girl did some maths too
kind of to keep my boy company… 'cos a little after breakfast, he started slogging through a really tricky chapter in Life of Fred.

At some point I went to help him
and thought, Oh, man. This is HARD! Impossible in fact!
We almost gave up, but then… we started talking the New Concept through together,
began to wrap our heads around it
until we had it! We figured it out.
And we high-fived.

Meanwhile my girl had been ambushed by her 4 times tables on MathsBuddy . They'd sat on her until she called a time-out. Together we worked through the last few questions and when we looked at the results, she'd got 2 questions wrong.
She said, "I don't like getting questions wrong."
"Yeah," I said. "Me neither." We smiled at each other then.

And she said, "I want to get a Platinum certificate on one of these levels one day,"
which is the first time she's mentioned wanting a certificate. I actually forgot they offered them.
A Platinum certificate means she has to get every single question right on one of the levels. I think: if that's something she wants, and she reaches for it, then I'm sure she'll get it.

After all, that how it's supposed to work, isn't it? You want to learn, you learn. You want to achieve, you achieve.

So much better than being told what to reach for. Reaching only because you think you should.

So then we decided to do Astro—um—Wednesday because we'd been way way too busy two days ago to do Astro-Monday!
In fact, we really should call it Astro-Whenever-We-Feel-Like-It, because that's more our style…:)

credit

We sat together and talked about Planets
and what they were
and we looked in books together and the kids summarised information and wrote it in their own words…
and we found out that the word Planet came from the old Greek word for Wanderer,
which led us to look up Greek to English translations,
and my boy pulling out his book on Mythology with its ancient Greek alphabet…

And then I found an awesome experiment where you put a saucer over a candle to see the carbon deposits from the flame and the kids were
spun out! I read out that when a star explodes it leaves carbon clouds that drift through the universe—wild. We drew with our fingertips in our very own carbon clouds, our homemade solar dust.

Then we found another cool activity where you go outside and hold binoculars up at the sun—you direct the light onto white paper
and voila! You see the sun and a whole bunch of sunspots!
Which was stunning, but we only saw it for a second because
the sun went behind a cloud
and stayed there.
It probably felt a bit self-conscious. I mean we were kind of staring.

So then we ate our lunch surrounded by books on space.
The table was so crowded with books, and drawings, and notes, and coloured pencils and paper,
that I ate my lunch with my plate on my lap.

Then it was time to walk the dog
because even though it has been raining for two days
it wasn't raining now.

So we got about 15 minutes in, we were just across the big park,
when the rain CAME DOWN.
It was a total downpour, like walking through a carwash.

We hid under someone's avocado tree,
my girl, the dog, and I,
…while my boy danced in the rain.

After a while, we kept on walking.

Loving the thrill of it, getting soaked, splashing through puddles…

and we walked past our local school

where the kids were standing by the windows looking out.

They pointed at us,

and I grinned back.

credit

When we got home, we dried ourselves off, changed clothes. We washed our feet in the bath. Standing in the bath with my girl as we ran warm water over our toes? Bliss.

Then it was time for Pole to Pole,
a documentary from 20 years ago, with Michael Palin. We love it, just as we loved his first documentary, Around the World in 80 days.
In this episode we went across Turkey and the Mediterranean. Michael had already traveled on ice over the Arctic, listened to Finnish football songs and drunk home-hewn vodka with Russian film-makers. We learned about Soviet history and Lenin. This time, he was checking out Turkish minarets and English tourists, and talking to an ancient tomb-guide in Egypt.

We looked up where he was on the atlas, and where he was going. He's following the meridian of 30º E, so we traced it with our fingers.

We sat with our feet warm, munching apples, side-by-side and cosy on the couch.

Then my boy had band
so outside we went again,
and while my boy played jazz piano,
my girl and I read for a whole hour in the carpark.
Just us
and the silence.

And then dinner came, and more sitting together happened

with another movie called Fox and Child
which was beautiful but we left unfinished
because we decided it was bedtime.

And cuddle time and smoothing hair time and kisses time and last few waking words time. The end of day time.

And, just like that,
the day was over.

A day that was
in fact
just a single day, no more, no less.

Where
Time had flashed past
constantly,
unstoppably.

Perhaps feeling kind of special
and kind of speedy.
A bit like a superhero, a bit like a shooting star.

Perhaps it wanted us to be flustered? All White Rabbity and overwhelmed? Amazed at how fast it could be?

Not us.

We sat on our day like it was a suitcase.

One we'd crammed full
with joy and fun and learning and meals together and talking and walking and dancing and writing and drawing and playing and cuddles.

We said,

Let time flash by
and the days pile up behind us.

Those days are our treasures.

And time?

It is

bendable, extendable.

It sings with Possibility.

M.C. Escher
credit

bye bye maths fear!

The fear has gone.

YES. I'm not kidding. It's gone. 

I've been looking and it's not anywhere.  

And what has been left in its place?

Learning. 

Great grinning gobs of it. 

I don't think I've ever posted anything more beautiful!

After enduring almost a year of math phobia—which was becoming crippling and filled with such sadness—my girl has made her way out. Slowly, carefully. With a "one-step-forward, sometimes a few back, bit-by-little-bit" approach that has literally drained the fear from our days.

What did it take?

Well. Stories, and lots (and lots) of talking, for one!

I remember a big talk we had about a month ago, with my girl on my lap. She just could not see the purpose of subtraction. Near tears, she said, "What's the point?" So we talked about when you might use it, or need it. We imagined how she might need to use it, for example, if one of her dreams—of running a pet shop—came true. 'Cos you need to know, when you've sold 5 bags of kitten food, don't you, how many bags you've got left? That led to a big old talk, about pet shops and bags of kitty litter, about stocktaking and kittens! and my girl began to smile.

I also remember another talk in the car the other day, about perpendicular lines. My girl said she just did not get them. What were they? So I described two dudes, Fred and Bob, two perpendicular lines. I did a whole conversation pretending to be them—with the two of them talking and planning to get together. The cool thing was, Fred and Bob COULD meet (at right angles, of course) because they were perpendicular! Whereas Sally and Mary, two parallel lines could not. They'd NEVER meet. They were destined to travel side by side forever, calling out sadly to each other across the gap.
Ah. There I was at the lights, gesturing wildly in the car, doing voices, both of us laughing. It was glorious.

Then there have been all the games.

Games like

Duck Duck Bruce
Zeus on the Loose
AddEmUp
The Sum What Dice Game (and others!) from Family Math

Mancala

Chess (just learning!)

and
our very own, home-made Kittenworld game :)

There's also been

a whole lot of computer learning on MathsBuddy 

which is uncomplicated and simply good. There's nothing flashy about it, and it doesn't use competition or prizes to get you motivated. It gets to the point, but it's also kind of sweet—we love the guy's voice who teaches the lessons. He sounds like someone who smiles a lot. :)


Then, there's the thing that seems to have clicked everything into place.

And it has been one of the simplest things of all.

Addition Practice.

A while ago, I realised my girl's fear boiled down to not comfortably knowing her addition facts to 20.

When you don't know your basic addition facts, it means when you get to harder maths, you don't have the building blocks to do it. You can't do big subtractions, you can't do big additions, you can't do multiplication, and you start to doubt yourself.
You start to believe you don't know things. You start to believe you will make mistakes and never know the answer. And the fear finds that simple, ordinary hole, and creeps in.

So what did we do? We started at the very beginning. Which was a very good place to start!

And we went to an unbelievably simple tool on mathsisfun.com called

Math Trainer: Addition.

How does it work?
Well, it's just a little bit of practice. It's something my girl and I talked about doing and decided would help, so it doesn't feel coercive. Just ten minutes, most mornings, never any longer. It's a tiny part of our day. Just like brushing your teeth, or practicing a scale or two on the piano. Ten minutes, sitting together at the computer, then it's done.

Then you go on, if you want, to whatever other maths thing you feel like doing for the day (like Games! More games! Mathsbuddy!).

When you go on it, you get to choose how long to "train." They suggest 5 minutes 3 times a day. We just do the ten minutes once, in the mornings. We don't do it every single morning—sometimes other things feel more important (like story writing! Sewing! Pottery class!).

You get to pick how hard the questions will be.

You can take your time. If you write the incorrect answer, you get that question again, just a few more times than the rest, to make sure the learning comes.

The idea is to eventually make your answers automatic, so in the end you don't have to count on your fingers or use a chart. Right now, my girl is using our beloved Penguin Theory for adding nines to things, but you can tell she doesn't have to think for long.

Things are popping straight into her brain, and the other day she did the Trainer by herself, for the first time.

She whizzed through! When we began practicing a month ago, my girl managed about 50 answers in ten minutes. On Friday, she answered 135 questions. All correct.

How big was her smile then? Out of this world.


My girl knowing her addition means

we've now gone right through year 3 addition and subtraction on MathsBuddy and are now onto multiplication!

(and shapes, lines, and angles and more!)

It means she isn't afraid of something new when it pops up. We talk every new thing completely through, and she trusts that it will be okay.

It means she wants to play games that have maths in them,
read books about maths,
and use the maths she knows to figure out something she doesn't know.

Like: "Mum, I knew 8 plus four was 12, so 8 plus 5 was just one more—13!"
And, "Mum, I knew 5 times 3 was fifteen, so 6 times 3 would be 18!"

And it means when we're out getting ice-cream at the harbour on a beautiful sunny Sunday,

and she finds out the ice-cream is $3 each, she says,

"Mum, 4 times 3 is 12. So it's twelve dollars."

Right?

RIGHT!

Yeah.

Right all the way through to your bones, my incredible, tenacious, beautiful girl.

I am so, so proud of you.

ps and such:

• the other thing about the Trainer is you can use it for multiplication, division and subtraction too. My boy used it two years ago for his multiplication—this was his big maths block when we took him out of school. And within the month, he was cruising happily along and hasn't looked back. I know, I know; I sound like a knife salesman on t.v. but Yes, the Trainer could do it for you too! See how it cuts through cans? And I'll throw in a paring knife for good measure. Call now! :)

• Finally, I've heard that when you tout a product on your blog you're supposed to say, "No-one paid me to write this, etcetera". So, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I am so unpaid it's crazy! 

DIY Democracy

We had an election last week!

It was a busy, heady time. Candidates were stating their positions, polling stations were being prepared, and you could feel the electric buzz of democracy in the air. The whole family was invited to vote, children and adults alike…

wait. How could that be?

Well, it could be, because the whole thing was set up by my son.

It was our very own, Do It Yourself Federal Election!

First the family was guided to the section where you picked up your ballot slips.

"What's your name?" my boy asked us, imperiously. He marked us off his list, then handed us a ballot paper, one by one.

Then the Master of Election Cermonies took us off to the polling booths.

"But we don't know who the parties are!" we chorused.

Not a problem. Laid out on the table were the Party names and platforms.

First you had The Puss Party. Who stated:

We are firm believers in monarchy and slaves should have a good sense of discipline and bring LOTS of food. 

Vote 1 The Puss

Then The Doggies Party said:

We strive for peace and green living. 

We look for non-violent solutions to problems and are strong environmentalists.

Vote 1 The Doggies

There was also The Superdoods [not dudes, 'doods'] and Spies Party, who said:

We strive for a future with better protection from !!EVIL!!

We also strongly support The Doggies

Vote 1 The Superdoods and Spies

There was The Chickens Party:

We've had enough of those horrible birds that steal our seeds all the time!! TO WAR!!

Vote 1 The Chickens

And finally, The "Awesomes" Party had a simple picture of a kitten.
Innocent enough?
It would have been, but for the:
*BWA HA HA!!!!!!
at the very bottom of the page!

Hmmm. There were a lot of Party positions to consider! Interesting candidates. Powerful and persuasive arguments. And a bit of sinister rhetoric thrown in for good measure. Got to love that in an election!

So, we all took turns voting. First we scritched our names off the ballot papers, because, as my husband pointed out, you never put your name on a ballot paper.

Then my son explained we could just put a number 1 on our preferred party, or rank them from 1 - 5. Or, if you wanted things to be even more complicated, you could rank each individual party candidate by number as well. Just like in a regular election. It made your head spin.

But we made it through to the other side :)

At which point…
I had to race off to Book Club without knowing who won!

Ah, the suspense!!

Later that night, I crept in, and there, taped to a door, was the verdict.

The Doggies! Now I could sleep, and sleep sweetly, knowing the country's future was settled for the next few years.

Ah.
What a great election that was. I hope we have another one soon!

postscript. 

We really did have a State election the other day.

For the first time, I brought the kids in with me, to see how it all worked. They watched the whole process and were fascinated. There were things they didn't know and things I didn't know I could explain until I tried!

The next morning, I told the kids who won, and how the government had changed hands for the first time in 16 years. The kids didn't know that the elected people would physically sit in parliament, and what majority seats meant and so on and such. So I explained some more! Boy I sure learned a lot.


And now, our learning is cemented by our very own home-made election!

The result being,

we will now be led for the next few years

by the family dog.

WOOF! 

translation: 

"Go in peace, friends, and may you find many pleasant-scented things
to roll upon!"