Team Gray!

Can you imagine your closest sibling being your best friend, too?

Manijoy/IMG_6726.JPG

They share a room, they giggle, play dress up together all day. . . feel the love

I am flunking convalescence. It has been raining for the past few days, and I thought I’d go nuts sitting in the house waiting for the baby in the name of *cutting back.* In

English, I didn’t want to cancel park day in vain hopes of having a baby today.

So, I sent out a blog-like email to my peeps, and we scheduled a nice day at Miriam’s.

Bless her heart.  They had just returned from a family trip to Vancouver on Monday, and were ready for visiting. Miriam has a beautiful house that her husband  THE BUILDER made on I don’t know how many acres.  The best part is that she used to live way across town, a good 15-20 minutes away, and now it’s just 5 minutes to get to her house.  I could ride my bike if I weren’t 39 weeks pregnant.

So, anyway, Juile and I were the two that could make it, and we sat in the kitchen reading homeschool and Christian magazines, eating chocolate zucchini cake and turtle cookies, and drinking chai tea.

The children are drifting in and out, eating, sharing toys, petting the dog, losing shoes, etc.

It’s pretty idyllic.

Then, it’s time to leave.  I glanced at the clock around 2:36, thinking, I could still make a late nap time if I leave now.  But it was so comfortable. . .
Around 3:15, Julie and I told the kids “10 minutes.”

Around 4, Sage and Simeon brought baby mice in the house.  “Look what we found!” They excitedly exclaimed.  This prompted us all to troop onto the back porch and see where they came from.  The mommy mouse was nowhere to be found, but there was a large dead mouse close to house.  Miriam’s cat had brought that by as a welcome home present. There was conjecture that the dead mouse was mommy to the babies.  Nobody wanted to put the babies back where they’d found them.  “Did Mani touch a baby mouse?” I interrupted the hubub to ask.  Miriam winked at me.  “Why do you care?” Her 6 year old was holding three in his bare hands.  At least Sage had the presence of mind to hold his mouse in his baseball mitt.

Simeon and Issac begged Miriam to let them keep the babies.  She gently resisted.  They urgently persisted.

Julie was down on the ground with all the children at this point, her hands cupping mice babies, and in quiet conference with Sage.  “We’ll take the mice,” she said.  Miriam jumped at the possibility.  “Oh, you see?  Mrs. Benner’s going to take the mice home,” she told her boys.

I laughed at her relief.  “Darn it!  We can’t keep the mice!”

Julie called herself a sucker for animals, taking home the mice babies to add to her menagerie of 7 pets.  She assured Miriam that she had every conceivable cage, terrarium, aquariam, whatever she would need to house an animal.  She didn’t think these babies had much chance for survival, though.  “We’ll see how far we get with this mouse experiment,” she said.

I found myself admiring the whole homeschoolness of it all, but grateful I wasn’t pressed into bringing home vermin.  I asked Julie to keep me abreast of the whole development.

Speaking of, these ladies and Maureen and family are going up to family camp next week.  It coincides with my due date, so we won’t be joining them.  Annette doesn’t do camping, so they won’t be going either.
I wonder when our next park day will be?

There are lots of homeschoolers who get their children tested, just to see how they’re doing as educators and students.  There are homeschoolers that obsess about outcomes, levels, etc.

I am not one of those homeschoolers.

I am more likely to get upset about things like randomness, and what happened to the day than am I educating the children as well as the schools.

Call me cocky, but I see no comparison. It really is apples and oranges.  I have eschewed all the school hoops, because I think they are artificial, and after two years of going by the book (curriculum), I decided to more or less fly solo.

So, it was more out of curiosity (and pride) than insecurity that I allowed Mani to be ‘tested’ by a reading recovery specialist the other day.

After having spent the summer working on reading–Mani finished two reading contests in the process, I was very confident that she would do well on the test.

A lady by the same name as the KPS (Kalamazoo Public Schools) Superintendent came over Wednesday night. She was studying to become a reading recovery specialist, and needed to work with a child between 5 and 7 y/o.

First Mani was to identify a sheet full of letters.  I knew she would do well at this, and she got a couple letters confused.  I didn’t appreciate how the sheet had tricks on it, such as the lower case g with the fancy curls on it, as well as without.  It also had a couple versions of lower case a.  And the point would be?

Next, the teacher read a book ‘with’ Mani.  The thing is, as long as the teacher was reading, I knew Mani wouldn’t even try to read it.  What’s the point?  So, when this book had tricks in it, like one page had the print upside-down, Mani wasn’t sure what to do with it.  She knew it was upside down, but didn’t know how to answer the question, “Where do I start reading this page?”

There were other pages with sentences like:  the gate was closed. After the goat came back

Imani, who wasn’t reading the book, remember, was supposed to notice that this sentence was backwards.  The teacher read it the right way, so Mani believed the teacher.
There were other pages with blatant misspellings.  I reminded Mani to pay attention, and she did catch the word *folowl* as a misspelled word.

The evening dragged on.  Joyous and Esteban were sent to bed.  Mani is still struggling over this endless assessment.  She was presented with simple books to read.  They all had pictures and very simple patterns to the story, and she did well.  I remember the struggle we had reading those ‘I can read’ books from the library and thought how much easier the school books are to master.

Then Mani had do dictation.  She wrote adorable sentences like:  I HAV A BIG DOG AT HOEM,

and TOOWDAYE I AM GOWEI(I can’t spell ‘ing,’ she whispered) TOO TACE HM TOO SCOOW

I was utterly charmed.  The reading teacher was very positive, speaking in syrupy tones, and marking her sheet furiously.

The big ‘treat’ at the end was that Mani got to write all the words she knows in marker on a piece of paper.  At this point, I’m mildly surprised that she has put up with the length of this session.  Maybe there’s something to be said for syrupy tones and redundant praise.  So, Mani’s writing Joy, etc., everything she can think of, and the teacher is urging her to write more, while Joy is upstairs whimpering because she wants her roommate.

The teacher told me I’d done a good job with her, and she was right on schedule.  She also gave Mani two prizes:  some sidewalk paint(!) and a sucker.