Ho-hum Housework- a short post

Housework isn't particularly difficult, but it is so monotonous and tedious and I'm just sick of it. I want a RESET button. I think it was my friend Sonja who introduced me to the the magical reset button. The one that's hidden somewhere in your house and you just push that little button and "Bzzzzt!" it's all done. The laundry is all washed, folded, and put away. Every dish is in the cupboard. The toys are decluttered and neat. The floor is mopped, carpet vacuumed, sinks and counters wiped down, windows sparkling, wall smudges gone, bathrooms shine with polished toilets, fixtures, and shower walls. You open the door and the home is airy and fresh and clean. Not just the entryway or front room, but as you travel from room to room to room it is all lovingly in order with no piles anywhere.

I need to stop fantasizing about the button.

Jason fantasizes about the Lottery. I guess to relieve him of financial burdens. I fantasize about this button.

A random kvetch about weather and how we're taught

Why do schools insist on teaching that Winter means snow and mittens and snowball fights and ice skating and Spring means new growth and April showers, and Summer means hot, hot, HOT, and Autumn means rain and wind and leaves falling off of trees? I believe that this universal teaching of "How seasons work" has put us poor Californians in a constant state of being surprised and disgruntled with our weather because our weather is rarely what it's "supposed" to be. Take right now for instance. It is November and all last week it was hot. It was absolutely beautiful, but it got up to 95 degrees. We did have several consecutive weeks of rain, but now we're back to warm/hot. We had a very mild summer this year and I don't recall that it ever got scorching the way I've experienced it in the past. I also don't recall ever experiencing April showers, but June Gloom and scattered June showers I think happen almost every year. And yet we're always surprised by it! Like "Hey! It's June! It's supposed to be hot now!" Well...no it's not. It'll get hot in July. But June is overcast. Of course it never snows here. It does get brisk, but it also tends to be sunny even when it's our version of "freezing outside". This is of course, part of why the Rose Parade is such a success.

I really feel that we would all be more content and relaxed if we were taught "California seasons". Wouldn't it be nice to know, "Hey, this is what happens in New England, this whole snow, new growth, hot, rain/wind thing, but over here, this is what you can expect to see throughout the year as a Southern California resident so that you don't spend the rest of your life complaining when it is hot in November and chilly in June."

I've heard of several people who suggest that we should label California not by our weather seasons but our natural disaster seasons. Fire season, flood season, mud slide season. That's an idea. Sort of negative, but at least more accurate. In my Southern California Gardening book, the author discusses that in many ways our summer season is our "winter" in the sense that it is that harshest season for our plants to endure. While folks in New England are reading gardening books to learn how to protect their plants from winter's frost, we have to protect our plants from the intense summer heat. There are so many plants that simply will not grow here because the life cycle of the plant depends on a dormant frost period to then trigger new growth when it warms up. Because we go hot/rainy/hot/cold/hot/hot/hot/HOT all of the time, it really limits the variety of what we can hope to grow. I'm convinced this is why so many people think they stink at gardening. It is simply that we are taught nothing about our local climate. So people don't know that our summer is really our "winter enduring season" so they stick their delicate plants outside and wonder why they've burnt to a crisp. Or they stick something outside that requires a cold dormant season and then wonder why it stopped growing.

So when I see my daughter bringing home her little Kindergarten weather drawings where she's coloring a little boy's mittens and snow hat with twiggy trees and a snowman in the background...I get a little irritated. Not a lot irritated. Just a little. Why is it so mandated that we hammer home the New England bias? Must we forever be in discord with what our actual surroundings present to us? I'm all for learning about how things are in other places, but SHEESH!

The Halloween Peeps

This picture was probably taken 1 hour before the stomach-flu did its thing to Frannie. But flu aside, I want to mention that we spent this holiday with my wonderful nephew and niece, Nicholas and Catie. Jason took the kids to a "Trunk or Treat" event at the Church of the Open Door on Saturday afternoon. The church members decorate their cars and the kids go from trunk to trunk "trick or treating".

The kids were here from Friday to Sunday morning. They had fun just being together as always.

Gotta throw this pic in of the sweetie on the other side of the table. 

So even though it was a sick Halloween, it was a Happy Halloween too!

Sisters

"Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters..."

We had a pretty wild Halloween what with every member of the family (including Grandma Bobbie) acquiring a vomit-inducing illness. Frannie, unfortunately, got the worst of it. Here's Natalie trying to help her Sissy. 

Homemade Thomas the Tank Engine Costume

For the trainiac in our lives I wanted to make him a Thomas costume. 

This is very easy to make and only requires a cardboard box, 5 paper plates, paint and glue. 

It's really fun to watch Thomas cartoons while sitting inside your very own train eating pretzels!

Here's the whole Halloween crowd. 

(Note: Even when I offer to make her something, Frannie still wants to wear a princess dress up. This is fine by me!)

Happy Halloween!

From the Archives

Bringing the Homeschool Philosophy into the Public School

Welp, my Frannie has been in Kindergarten now for about a month and a half and so far so good. I like her teacher and especially like the way the staff works together as a whole. Everyone is really friendly and I feel like they care about the kids. Frannie is enjoying school and everyday I get to hear about some silly thing that happened on the playground.

Deciding on where to send her to school or to homeschool was a very difficult decision for me. For now I'm happy with my decision because I can see that she is learning and that she is getting enough activity every day.
Although I'm not homeschooling I guess I still think of myself as a homeschooling parent. I like that the school is providing the curriculum and the pacing for what she learns. (I had a tendency to push her too hard with things and then back off completely. I was never very good at doing just a little every day.) But I still feel like her education is my responsibility and it is my responsibility to supplement what the school is doing with lessons geared toward her specific needs.

For example part of her homework is to trace her name 3 times a day on a laminated paper. Through watching her do this activity I can see that she often forms her letters in wonky ways, even though the end result looks pretty normal. So in addition to her writing her name, I have her practicing writing the letter of the week that the class happens to be working on. I can see that this is helping her to learn to trace the letters in the right direction and order so that she doesn't have a problem later on when trying to learn cursive.

The other thing we've been doing is making little books using her sight words. Since Frannie likes to take pictures I developed a bunch of pictures that she's taken. Then we take two of her sight words to make sentences. Her first book was I See (I see my baby sister, I see my mom.) and the second was This Is (This is my hula hoop. This is a flower. etc..). When I did the first book I just had her tell me what to write, but in the second one I had her write the sentences herself and just do her best with the words. There are lots of misspellings but I'm really proud of her because I can see that she's spelling phonetically and that's an important part of learning to write.

Here is a link to the tutorial where I learned how to make the paper books. 

Simple Books Children Can Make

Anyway, I'm actually having a lot of fun helping out with her school activities and doing other projects. The school schedule has definitely provided a structure to our day that was pretty badly needed and it provides her with a lot of activities that I don't have to think up myself.