stretching time

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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…:)

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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.

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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
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little boxes

Telescope Kitten by my girl

If someone had peeked in our window this morning, they might've seen something that looked kind of serious, maybe even a bit schooly.

NO!

Yes, it's true!

We were having a Morning Meeting. Well, the kids were finally sitting down to munch on their cereal/toast, having slept in, read, drawn, written until 10am, and I sat across from them with pen in hand and some paper. The kitten was jumping on the table to try and eat the kids' breakfast and the chickens were squawking for food at the screen door.

Yeah, your regular sort of Morning Meeting :)


Anyway, at this, our special kind of meeting,

I talked to the kids about our days.

About finishing projects they've started

(and I asked, did we want to keep going with AstroMonday? Yes! the kids said.
And did my boy want to finish his report on the Land of Kyre? Yes! he said.),

about remembering projects they want to do

(and my girl said, Like get my hair cut today! And look for that toy cat!
And my son said, Like finish reading The Princess Bride!),

and about trying to manage our days a little more, so

we can fit in all the things
we want to do

and,
I have to confess,

the things we are "supposed" to do…


At this meeting, I mentioned to the kids something that's been on my mind quite a bit recently. And that's how, soon, I have to give the Powers That Be (aka the State) a report on all the things we're learning and how they fit into all the prescribed boxes.

I haven't had to do this before. Two years ago, as a newbie, an Official Person visited my house. I showed him the kids' stories, their art, talked about self-directed projects. The kids and I chatted and it felt real, organic, like our life.

But this time I have to present a Report. Show samples. Put everything into categories. I can't think how to fit our sweet learning into these boxes. So I've felt pulled and swayed and scared. I've felt drawn into the vortex of Should.


I described the boxes to the kids (called simple things like Maths, Literacy, Science and curious and strange things like HSIE and PDHPE).

I mentioned them so the kids could understand a bit more why sometimes I get all fidgety and say, Howabout we do some maths? Or, Let's write a report on something, shall we?

I mentioned them because I'm still figuring so much out.


But as we talked, the kids and I kept thinking of all the ways our learning totally fits the boxes
(especially the box called Creative Arts—the kids snorted when they heard that one!).

And as we talked, we agreed we're definitely (…well, sort of!)
fitting into the boxes
(in our own delicious, free way)…

So then,

a sort of ease came over me, because I'd told the kids something that secretly kind of worries me,

and

they listened and understood.


And when I asked the kids if they'd like to set up some goals for themselves,
and manage their time more independently—

to have a sense of what the day was going to bring,
and be in charge of laying their goals out (like clothes on a bed)—

they thought that would be lovely.



So we talked about our goals for the week.

I mentioned mine, and did those goals work for them? Yes!
(Well, mostly yes. Some will probably not make the cut!)

Then they mentioned theirs, and we wrote them all down on a piece of paper.

The kids then wrote the goals they wanted to meet for the day on the white board,
with,
yes, you guessed it:

little boxes to tick on the side!

(They used to love doing this, when I was the one setting the agenda, two years ago. Now they get to tick boxes of their own making. Boxes of a positive kind, I think)

And just like that, the meeting was over…

and it was time to get busy!

Together we picked AstroMonday to start with.

We laid out all our Space books from the library, got the kids' space journals out…

then together wrote a list of all the questions we wanted to answer.

The kids kept wanting to answer the questions as we thought of them and I kept saying,
Wait! Let's think up some more! We'll answer them in a minute! 

My boy wanted to know where water went when it went into space, and how did satellites work, and what was the Moon made of? 

I said, Great questions! And I smiled as I wrote them down because they are so very him. Then I suggested we might like to start with the Big Questions first, then work our way in. So the more detailed questions were easier to understand. And I asked him, Does that make any sense?

Yeah, my boy agreed, that actually does.

So, we finished our list,

called it brilliant, then 

answered the first, totally simple question (not!) of 

What is the Universe and how did it Begin? 

By the time we were done, an hour or so later, we'd searched through books, read countless paragraphs to each other, researched on the internet, talked about different religious beliefs, drawn cute pictures of kittens looking through telescopes (my girl), learned how to quote from sources and discovered it is possible to summarise the Big Bang Theory in one page. 

Yes. We were AMAZING. 

And we were 

so pleased to learn together, set goals together, figure out how to tick (some) boxes together (of the self-made kind and the Government kind), and dream together… 

And
I guess the day was kind of schooly,

and kind of not…

But
whatever it was, and whatever box it did or didn't fit in,

the day was

ours.

And we were happy.  

(AND my girl got her hair cut,

and my boy finished The Princess Bride,
and there was story writing
and happy maths-ing
and music playing
and drawing
and dog walking

and kitten cuddling.

All of it Yum, and True, and Us.

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first day

So what did the first day of a brand-new school year look like in our house?

Well, it started slowly… 

with 

a sleep in (by a boy)

a cuddle with a kitten (by a girl)

and some breakfast.

And then…

the day revved right up. 

With some storywriting by my girl

and illustrations drawn on Paintbrush

and a replica of Mittens the Kitten 

made by my girl with pipecleaners

and many photos taken by my girl for a book she's planning

by which time a slow-waking, book-reading, breakfast munching boy and his very busy sister 

were ready to do some

Maths.

In the form of Life of Fred for my boy

and chatting about numbers for my girl

as well as a few good rounds of Zeus on the Loose for all of us.

The Maths left the kids a little bit wide-eyed and panicky at first. My boy who'd been learning a'plenty the past two months, thought he'd forgotten EVERYTHING about fractions. 

He (who's nearly done with Life of Fred: Fractions) tried the Bridge, panicked, and put himself back 14 whole chapters to revise. Then he took himself to bed. Then he brought himself back to his desk and wept a little. 

And I said, Hey. I think it's going to be okay. You've had a big break and you're feeling rusty. I totally know what that feels like. Wanna do this together? 

Well, the first couple of questions were like starting an engine which hasn't been turned over in a while.

The next few questions had him going, "Oh, yeah, that's right, I remember!"

And then…he was flying. 

I sat with him and we did two Bridges, to confirm he was running well, no engine trouble—all was checked and okay. At the end, he beamed. 

My girl thought the world was ending, just a little, when I asked about numbers bigger than 170.  But we just talked about them, talked our way up to 300 to see how the numbers traveled and how that felt. And we noticed that numbers bigger than 100 don't actually grow two heads then bite yours off. Kind of a relief! 

Zeus on the Loose was fun. Just that. 

Then it was time for 

ASTROMONDAY!

and space journals had to get title pages

and stickers on the front.

And we asked ourselves:  What IS Space? 

And the kids wrote their ideas down and we looked through some books and they wrote some more and we discovered that

Space and the Universe are actually just a little bit different. Who'd've thunk it? :)

And then all the delicious space books from the library had to be pored over for a long while!

THEN

it was time for lunch 

and  

time to swim.

Because it's super HOT here! Summer has come in with a beautiful bang! 

I love love love summer, even the baking days. 

Everyone else in my family sweats and says, "I can't wait for winter." 

I just take in the heat like a snake on a rock. Try to store it up for the cold months ahead. 

We did laps,

we played,

and my girl ate an apple beside the pool side as my boy and I frolicked.

And

THEN?

Well, we went to the library of course!

To research for this week's Fun Writing Challenge 

It was already 3.30 and I said, "Are you sure you want to do this now?"

"YES!" said the kids. "OF COURSE!" said the kids.

The writing challenge is this:

"If you could live anywhere other than Australia, where would you live and why? Do some research and write down some interesting information."

Well, that turned, via my enthusiastic kids, into: 

"I'm going to research Country X, write up my notes in a special notebook that I'll cover and when I'm done with this country, I'm going to do another one!"

Which means "This week's Fun Writing Challenge," may take us an indefinite, glorious, open-ended amount of time. Just as we like it. :)

So we went to the library and I introduced the kids to the Reference Section. The kids picked a country and they bent their heads over their notebooks and they wrote things down, right then and there. My girl is doing the U.K. and my boy, who is addicted to all things Italian, is doing—you guessed it—Italy!

And they were so happy.

… 

Oh,

you thought we were done?

That's crazytalk! Because

THEN

we zipped off to my son's first band practice

where he saw some great friends

and played timpani and the tom-toms 

and 

while my girl and I waited 

there was doodling on the grass with friends

and flying of paper aeroplanes with cats drawn all over them.

AND then,

we went home…

to cuddle kitten and cat, and feed the dog and draw some more, 

and read more and more about space on the couch

and have dinner.

Then a boy and his dad walked the dog  

as the sun set and the crickets and cicadas and buzzy things began to sing

and my girl drew

and I played with a kitten.

And

then…?

It was the end of a first day and an always day. 

A day the kids leapt at with both hands and 

with their whole

hearts.

A day they could dream about as they slept. 

Good night, all. Happy dreams!