Parents Get Crafty

This fall Manu took up a new hobby of making tresse, a very delicious special Sunday bread.

A close up view.

When the weather turns chilly in the fall, 'tis the time to take up knitting again. I made Zarli a soft blue wool hat and made my very first pom-pom ever. It satisfies some deep internal mother-providing thing to make my baby warm things.

Zarli sporting his new warm headwear. Sadly he does not seem too fond of it. I think it itches him a bit. sigh.

First Snow and Long Rain

December 1st brought the first snow of the year and with it the first snowman. This year Zarli got to join in the snow fun.One of the many reasons I painted my door red...so it would look pretty in the snow.

Today it is WET here, with forecasts to be WET all week.... so to get over the glummies, I forced the kids (and I mean forced -- Peter was practically crying) to go outside in boots to do some puddle-splashing. After five minutes, and having gotten wet enough that it didn't really matter anymore to try to stay dry, they were having a lot of fun and playing in a small storm gutter across the street from us. So they were actual Gutter Snipes! We all got soaking wet, but all the oxygen was good for our brains and we came in much more cheerful and ready for our Sacrosanct RestTime.

I do feel compelled to add that school-wise, today was on task but pretty boring to write about. I'll never admit to the children that it was boring! We did math and penmanship and writing and reading and practised our musical instruments, and then we watched a National Geographic video about Ancient Egypt while I folded laundry and filed old bills. Those are the days that don't get blogged about too much, thank heavens.

Peter the Gutter Snipe.

Reformation Day

Our Reformation Day party was a grand success. I had been having my doubts -- it felt sort of scotch-taped together compared to some parties I've been to. But I had forgotten just how far a little cardboard and enthusiasm can go with little people.

The day before my kids wondered whether they would have a good time. I told them that if their concern was on what they would get out of it, I could almost guarantee that they wouldn't, but if they focused on making sure their smaller friends were enjoying themselves, they probably would. We prayed that God would bless our party and help our friends feel special to be here.

School for the first two days of this week had been Lessons About Preparing For a Party. Marina wrote out lists for the order of events and what we needed for each game. We hit the dollar store for supplies. Then Wednesday morning we set up things up and tidied up the house. In all we had seventeen costumed kids and five mamas. We read a rhyming book about Martin Luther, had our costumed contest with Ted and Mabel from next door serving as judges, and then played the games. There was pin the 95 theses on the Wittenberg door, Wartburg castle where you could say a Bible verse and get a candy, apple bobbing, the fishing Pond of Providence, and sword fighting with swimming noodles.

Bobbing for Apples

Wartburg Castle - where you recite Bible verses for candy!

Fishing in the Pond of Providence

Posting the 95 theses on the Wittenberg Door.

The Winners of the Costume Contest- An English princess, Snoopy the Red Baron, Nancy Drew and a Soldier

Our Medieval Feast - we had fried chicken on bread trenchers!

In costume again for trick-or-treating, or as we thought we should call it: Bless-n-Treat. This is George Washington.And this is Heidi of the Mountains, with her Grandfather and her friend Clara, now healed and able to walk again.

Evidence of Ancient Egypt

In history we're now studying Ancient Egypt. This is a repeat for both girls and I was concerned that they would be disappointed, but judging from the amount of time they have spent building lego pyramids with Peter and planning exactly where the secret chambers are and carefully wrapping lego people up in strips of tissue, there are still mysteries to be probed here.

Sandbox model of the Nile River delta. Three model makers -- the smiles are deceptive, they were really crabby that day.
The Great Lego Pyramid, complete with grave robber stealing the golden capstone (you can see the pharoah's body lying off to the right.)

Pumpkin Patch

Last week we went on our first official-ish homeschool field trip with the Lairds, Reinigers, Jessees and Classes. Here is our passel of kids, just before the ill-fated corn maze mis-adventure.
Zarli dressed up for the occasion in the pumpkin hat Marina knit him and his cool new camoflauge boots.

Uncle Sheep arrived this morning, unannounced by very welcome, just as we were breaking out our math books. We did our main work, math, reading and penmanship and now he's taken the three older ones out for a field trip about how pizzas are made at Papa Murphy's. I got to stay here with Zarli and take care of some essential things like photograph my cherry tomatoes.

Last tomato harvest - Green Tomato Relish?

Farmhouse in the Fall

Waiting for the ferry...squished but happy

From the stern of the ferry. I've always loved this view.

We returned this evening from a Columbus Day Weekend trip to Orcas Island and the Farmhouse. I have fantastic memories of a autumnal trip in 2000 when after cool mornings we sat outside in the hot sun in the afternoon. The night was hung like a cherry tree with bright stars, near and ripe for picking. It was the stars in particular that made me want to return. Fall and winter stars work better for children, because they come out before bedtime. So I had talked them up to the children, and only as the date got nearer and the forecast begin to look ominous did I begin to have doubts.

It was cold and windy and rainy. The only stars we saw were from the deck of the ferry on the way which had been delayed long enough that the stars did come out in a briefly cleared sky. I did get to show Peter the Big Dipper and explain how to use the pointer stars to find the North Star and how useful that would be if you were lost in the woods. But the rest of it was a different sort of weekend, more involved with the effort of keeping warm and staying fed without modern conveniences. We ventured out to check on the Merry Men's hideout (still standing) and the creek (no water!) and to Olga to eat blackberry pie at the Olga Store's last day open. The remainder of time we stayed indoors, reading, knitting, cooking and feeding the fire. In that experience the iron cookstove takes on something of a personality. A large dark quiet squat person in the corner, radianting warmth, not unlike a grandmother in the old stories. Keep her fed and she'll warm you and feed you. Neglect her and you'll be sorry.

It was restful, despite the cold, despite the damp, despite the fact that the first night we slept on the bed that feels like sleeping on top of a bowl of Jello. The next night we put children there and slept in the next room. They went to bed easily at nine; it had already been dark for several hours. We retired soon afterward and therefore got a rare long night's sleep.

The entirety was quite a different experience from the crazy joy of our visit in June with all of the cousins, aunts, and grandmas and all the comings and goings and dogs and shouting. This was a peaceful and soft way to embrace Fall.

Robin Hood's Hideout -- still standing, if somewhat wilted

Chilly but happy, with Old Mother Stove in the backround

Nomads Build a Home

Two blessings today. The first was my state of mind about forty minutes ago when I had just put Zarli down to nap, sent the children outside, was making myself a vanilla latte and getting ready to sit on the couch and breathe "ahhhhh......" I looked at the microwave clock: 2 o'clock. I thought of myself a year ago, feeling that same need for downtime after lunch , but instead having to wake my sleeping baby and load him and an often crabby Peter into the van for the one and a half hour round trip carpool drive. How different this year is, and how much better it fits into the natural rhythms of our family [read 'nap cyle'].

The other blessing is the kids "playing" outside. Today's history chapter was on the nomads settling down in the fertile crescent and building homes out of the material they had on hand. There were three activities to choose from, and I was so grateful when instead of cave painting (messy!) and sewing a game bag (messy!) they chose to build a shelter out of whatever they could find in their backyard (also messy, but outside). While they wondered what they could use for building, I remembered just in time that the butterfly bush needed a good whack job -- never did get pruned last fall. What delight over their faces when I told them they could have it for their very own. Self-serving? No way! This is hands-on history lesson; this is lifestyle education.

The nomads chose a site for their shelter.

A young nomad girl mixes mud to hold up the posts of her new home.A small butterfly bush hut in the Fertile Crescent, c. 7000 B.C.Nomads no more!

les eleves

Today's homeschool lessons included making pancakes, sitting on the couch with your brother until you can get along, a little math lesson in bar graphs, staying home alone while mom takes the dog to the groomer, helping toddler-sit Raphael, creating with sweet roll dough and whatever else this afternoon will throw at us.

Here are the four students of Ecole Vieux Pin, sporting their spiffy start-of-the-homeschool-year haircuts.










Marina ~ 5th grade











Evangeline ~ 3rd grade











Peter ~ Kindergarten












Zarli ~ the Toddler Class

No School in Pajamas

After yesterday's cute pictures, here's a more realistic picture of my students in the morning. It's also a chance for me to practice uploading photos directly from the camera instead of from our home network. Notice that Peter is already breaking the first rule of Schmitt homeschooling; he's still in his PJs after breakfast.

Salmon Watching and Otters

Uncle Chip came over this morning, and after getting some math and a little writing out of the way, we took him along for Salmon Watching. King County and the City of Bellevue have a program where citizens sign up to "watch" a particular waterway and count and identify the salmon returning to spawn. I heard about it in the spring and as we had just decided to homeschool, it sounded like the perfect hands-on science program.

So this morning we went out on our inaugaral "watch". Our creek is Sturtevant Creek, small, shallow and slow-moving, running right by the intersection of 405 and SE 8th Street and right past several large office buildings,perhaps not the most promising of salmon sites. But apparently chinook salmon have been sighted there before, so we move forward in faith that they will show up again. I want the children to be encouraged, so I have prayed that God will bring the salmon, and actually this morning I asked Him to surprise us. I was thinking of a surprise in terms of quantities of salmon, but He had a surprise of another sort.

We got there, put on our special day-glow colored polarized salmon watching glasses, tried not to think about how much this wobbly bridge seemed to be rotting away, and watched. We watched water bugs skating along the surface of the water and an orange Myntz candy box sitting at the bottom, but no fish. We tried to lure the salmon by picking blackberries from the bushes along the bank, and throwing in the ones we didn't eat or squish into Uncle Chip's hands. No fish. So after our obligatory fifteen minutes we filled out our data sheet with the time, date and a zero in the box marked "# of live fish".

Then on a whim we crossed the big into which our creek flows at the north end of Mercer Slough just in case we could spy some salmon lurking there. We still saw no salmon but we did see three creatures frolicking in the water at the far end of the pond. Muskrats, beavers or otters? It was too far away to tell and we lamented not bringing binoculars. But they began to swim in our direction toward the bridge we were standing on. We got down so they couldn't see us but we could look through the slats of the sides of the bridge. They swam right underneath us so we could identify them as three wild river otters. We followed them downstream for a bit, and at one point, one slowed and came toward the bank where we all stood, trying to be extra quiet, except for Zarli who understood the pointing part, but not the quiet part. He looked right at us, and then trod water and craned his neck up for a better view before sliding after his family members. We're guessing either a mother and father and otter child, or a mother with two mostly grown otter kits. A little later, two of them stopped and did the same thing, as curious about us as we were about them.

As we walked back to the car and were all exclaiming at how this was the first time we'd ever seen otters in the wild (if you can call urban Bellevue "the wild"), I asked the kids how many wild otters they thought the kids at their old school saw today. At least we know where the salmon probably are... in the stomachs of the otters.

evangeline's refrigerator magnet poem

mother and girl dream of elaborate gorgeous luscious whisper
on summer gardens love I like a lovely spring moment
beneath still blue music

Convocation

Tonight was the Convocation Dinner for Ecole Vieux Pin, or Ecole Sous le Pin or Ecole Rouges Portes, or whatever our final name turns out to be. We all dressed up (Peter in one of Manu's ties) and there was a student processional to Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. We had white table linens and candlelight and dined sumptiously on cheese and crackers and dressed up leftovers. But the effect was real and the children loved it. As we ate we received a few words from our illustrious headmaster "directeur d'ecole" and he also announced the winner of the Logo contest - Evangeline, with incorporated design elements from the other two.

Tomorrow will be our first real official day, although I think that will only mean slightly more schooly than today. We are slowly getting into our routine. Today was to be our official start, but Grandma spent the night, and in the interest of furthering our visit, we postponed. Hey, we can do that, we're homeschooling! But we actually accomplished quite a bit, and even did not get too distracted during math when Grandma fell asleep and began snoring gently on the couch nearby. Evangeline remarked that that probably would not happen at school. Today we did math and then Peter and I worked on reading together and the the girls each worked on their writing and everyone did penmanship. We did not get to history, but we did get to the library by popular demand. Grandma (when she awoke) casually but hopefully suggested a trip to the beach with perhaps a stop at the library afterward, but the kids wouldn't have it. They are beached and summered out and ready for the library and books. I brought along an extra library bag just in case, but we filled both of them and still had to get two plastic ones.

We have American girl books, Magic School Bus books, Magic Tree House books, archeology books, Science books, baby board books, books about Vikings, and especially books about Canada and Italy. Our (new) homeschool support group puts on a World Cultural Fair in November and in the car Friday after I explained it to them there was great agonized discussions about which countries to do. Marina had a grand plan where each of them would do a particular people group in Switzerland, but she met with certain independent opposition from a certain independent corner who chose to do Italy instead. Peter wanted to do "one of our neighbors" and chose Canada. Immediately upon arrival home everyone wanted to start finding out interesting facts and for the next 1 1/2 hours while I made dinner (did it take me 1 1/2 hours? -- I don't think so...) they were on the computers finding things out. Evangeline helped Peter who of course can't read, which makes research difficult. They found a great website all about Canada for kids, and he kept exclaiming with surprise at the fabulous facts he was finding out. Even I at the stove (what was I cooking?) gleaned knowledge and understanding. I learned that the Canadian province of Nanuvut was formed in 1999 and the name means "our land" in Inuit. So there, did you know that?

So we're off. And so far it's great. The one challenge is that my computer chose this week to collapse and so I am living computer free for the time being. At least computer on my counter top, which while it feels like losing my arm, is perhaps a blessing and aid from distraction. Valiant Manu is rebuilding it for me at this very moment.

does this count?

My blessing of today has to have been writing lessons with Evangeline. I told her to meet me out on the patio. When I got out there and got out my notebook, she was swinging in the sunshine. She came over eagerly and we mused on the fact that it was 2:15; the kids at school had another half hour to go. I explained about paragraph outlines and then we did a couple together. She caught on quickly and decided that tomorrow she could do it on her own. Then she played in the sunshine some more. I couldn't escape the feeling that somehow this isn't real; it doesn't count if you learn outside on your deck in the sunshine in between swinging sessions. Peter and I also did his math today as well as reading. I'd blocked out an hour a day for math. I know see it will be about 15 minutes. Not too bad for a day where we're not yet officially "in school."

Beginnings

We will only begin School in Earnest next Monday, but the slide into our new routine is underway. Each morning this week we've broken out our math books and yesterday the children asked if please couldn't they start in their penmanship books as well? Well, yes, they could. This morning we're moving a little slower due to late night celebrations last night (my birthday and Antony and Laetitia's engagement and last evening with us) and ensuing headaches this morning (mine). So after playing with Zarli outside a little bit and taking some photos of our inspiring pine tree (Le Vieux Pin) for the masthead, I've begun this new blog. Hopefully it will serve as a place to record some of our daily activities to aid my frazzled memories, a place for photos of our academic achievements (playdoh sculptures?), a place for the children to start making some of their own recordings and experiments with technology, and a place to share all this with any friends and family that may be interested and that don't bore easily.