this is from last year, but it's bike season again, I'll take some new ones soon

Recent Smila activities

Wow, we haven't posted in a long time! What has Smila been up to lately?

Smila lost her first tooth in February, hooray! Then one more in March!

Today we are in the middle of Spring Break, so she has class at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center.

Monday was "slime & Scales" about herps & reptiles, they learned about herps, got to watch & interact with some live animals (snakes, lizards, frogs, toads) they made a booklet with some things they learned, when I picked her up they were watching a native Bull Snake eat a mouse.

Tuesday was "What Comes First" about eggs & nests and animals that lay them. They studied eggs and nests, found 3 eggs in a nest that had fallen to the ground, saw a hawk eat a dead bunny, made a nest and colored an egg with natural dye that they made from plants. They also examined the remains of a goose that had been eaten by a fox. Those nature hikes are pretty exciting!

Today, Wednesday was "Animal Habitats" - they went dipping in the pond, the teacher found a stick with a mass of frog eggs on it, they built habitats in the prairie, hiked through the marsh, by the river and through the forest where they found a stick fort from last month.

Last week Smila went to her first SciFi Convention, OddCon, here in Madison. We played some cooperative kid games we brought from home, and learned some new games like Pirate - vs - Pirate. Momma got to try some new table top games as well. We swam in the pools with the other convention kids, made sock puppets, saw a fantasy metal band Medusa's Beard perform, hung out with our friends and had a great time.

Smila got to try her first LARP, a fantasy boffer weapons game where she played a rogue / thief, picked some locks, walked over a chasm on a balance board, solved some puzzles, role played, and had quite a few live-action combats. It was

fun, we're working on costumes for next time.

Stubby Pencil!

Not as cheap as made-in-China stuff on clearance, but cheaper than mainstream supplies at Walgreens, Stubby Pencil is the best site I've found for general art supplies. They have some awesome cute things like rock-shaped crayons designed for learning the pencil-style grip, nice! (not vitally important to have, but fun) Also all soy crayons for 1$ - the mainstream "non-toxic" ones are still made of petroleum, the natural soy ones give a really smooth and pretty line. These are the standrad 8 packs that we carry in the coloring purse and break out in multiples for play-dates.

Speaking as an artist myself, the pleasant feel of a good crayon or pen sliding over the paper is a big part of enjoying drawing enough to stick with it. Cheap art supplies make art a lot less fun. Good art supplies make it more fun & more successful too. We really don't need cheap art supplies, and don't use them. I'd rather pain in plain water with a good brush than do anything with a really cheap-o one. Good brushes last and last, we don't need cheap ones.

I didn't get any of the school supplies we bought for kindergarten back, so we're buying all that stuff again. I'm thinking to get a bunch of those DIY cars too, for play-dates indoors in the bad-weather months. Another thing we'd love to get is any set of the recycled color-them-yourself cards. They have specific and generic ones, Lily really likes the dinosaurs, garden, barnyard, and space sets, and the Thank You's and Get Wells would be most appreciated too. We've gotten a few from this shop, the quality was really nice.

Thanks for looking!

HomeSchool

So we tried kindergarten, we liked the school, but decided 5 is too little to be inside 7 hours at a time, too little to eat lunch without help, go for 7 hours without cuddles. As much as we like Glendale, we're back to our previous plan, homeschooling. We found a group of super awesome homeschoolers, that made all the difference. I'm still being slowly ground into a miserable paste through basically 24-7-365 childcare with zero assistance or time off, but school didn't give me the promised respite, so that's a lateral switch for me, and an upgrade for the Bun.

Anyway, if you want to help, come and baby-sit for me! No? OK, didn't think so. Here are some secondary wish-list items.

Ladybug &/or Click magazines. These are non-commercial age appropriate magazines, the first a seasonal fiction magazine with craft projects, the second a science focused one. We already get The kid-sister magazine of Ranger Rick magazine, it's called Big Back Yard, it's great - no advertisements, lots of fun with nature topics. Contact me if you want to renew that one for us for next year.

Curriculum. We're doing the Oak Meadow program of Waldorf for HomeSchoolers, and like it so far. I haven't bought the kindergarten package yet, we need that. I have the Preschool Heart of Learning book, so I don't need the elementary school one, but could use the Teaching Process one for elementary. I'd be happy to get Growing, Growing Strong too, we already have the basic book for the bear yoga. (we call it spirit bear, we don't do angels) I'm pleased to say we also have everything in the Kindergarten craft package already, so no need for that. Look at the quality too, it's good stuff: we don't need cheap art supplies, they are just frustrating. Having a good result from artwork takes a lot of effort, and there is honestly no use expending effort with low-prices / low-quality supplies. Good tools give you the chance to do good work.

Other stuff we could use? We have loads of books so we don't *need* more, but if something really catches your eye, go for it! You can also check out my Amazon wish list, linked over there on the right hand side of this page, for loads more things - mostly books but also some toys and other stuff we extra-especially want. Actually there are a few links there with wishes! Check it out, & Thanks for reading!

Rainy October

So... It's been quite a while since I posted here.

I got about as fed up as a person could get with being hit, nearly hit, honked at, sneered at, and screamed at by motorists while biking or walking in Chicago. I love Chicago, but I don't want to be hit by any more cars, so we moved to Madison Wisconsin. Madison is a great place to live: I hope I'm not contributing to ruining it by moving here; it would be the first time I was on the ruing-the-awesome-by-moving-into it side rather than the forced-to-move-out-of-a-place-I-love-by-clueless-and-careless-new-residents-ruining-it side of that equation. Wish me luck there.

Anyway, we signed up for school here because we didn't know anybody, much less a bunch of homeschoolers. School was OK, I think it was a pretty good school as schools go, but it wasn't a good fit for us for a bunch of reasons, mostly related to food, health, and lifestyle. Most of the kids were bussed into the local school, so we still weren't making friends in the neighborhood by going there. Then after less than a month of school, we met a really wonderful group of local homeschoolers, so we quit kindergarten. Now we're doing roughly 2 days a week of playdates, where the kids play together in a public park, and one more day of group outings; so far these have been things like apple picking, watching a parade, attending a theater production with juggling & a visit from the medical helicopter, and going to the zoo. (We missed some of them in the transition period, but hope to do better there now that we're formally withdrawn from public school and officially Homeschooling.) We're also signed up for twice monthly classes at a local nature center, they have some in the middle of the day specifically geared to homeschoolers.

More later, I'll post a recent picture, some links about Homeschooling, and our Homeschool curriculum wishlist.

Science Fiction

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. We're settling in to the new place OK, I'll try to write a little bit about it later.

Anyway, a short note this morning, we are on our way to see the new Star Trek movie, bebe's first real introduction to Star Trek. Pretty exciting. Gave her a shower, sent her upstairs to get dressed. She came down naked, I made fun of her outfit "That skirt's kinda short, I can see your butt a little." had a laugh. I told her to be happy, this is a special occasion for a family like ours, who favors science fiction. Brief bit about grandpa Ken who is an engineer and loves sci-fi, grandpa Del who, although I'm not sure he ever read any sci-fi and didn't study engineering but went ahead and invented a curb machine to make his job easier, and made a lot of curbs and a lot of money with that. Using your intellect to deal with the world rather than looking for rote answers from some book or authority, creativity is the essence of sci-fi, and we are an inventive people. Blah Blah. "so today is special, put on something cute and comfortable to wear today". "Like this?" she says pointing to her birthday suit. Ha! Pretty funny for 5.