Thursday, October 23, 2008

Larvae vs Rainbows








In our home, rainbows don't hold a candle to larvae. We went outside today to 'make' a rainbow by reflecting sunlight off of a mirror held under the water. The rainbow is reflected onto a piece of paper held above the mirror. Personally, I thought this to be quite amazing and fun. I wish I could have shared it with my lovely children, but a larva was found near our experimentation site. I'm afraid larva trumps rainbow.




We found out that the larva is probably an acorn moth. Specifically, Cydia splendana, I believe. I don't know what so splendid about this thing. It's pretty gross, in my opinion. I enjoy looking at different types of insects and spiders, but this one is just disgusting. Sorry, Refracted Light you just aren't cool enough. Maybe if you were a bit slimy looking and had creepy grasping legs you'd have a chance. :)

Seriously, though, I am glad the children like nature and want to care for these creatures. I am hoping that they will someday feel the same sense of responsibility for their Earth that I do. I hope they understand the importance of caring for the only home we have and feel driven to do what they can to accomplish that.

Let me backtrack now and start at the beginning of the day with Casey. He found me in the office, as usual, with my cup of coffee. I was printing the day’s worksheets which he spied and wanted to know what they were. So, I showed him the letter matching worksheet I planned for later. He wanted to do it immediately. I told him to draw a line from the lowercase letter to the uppercase letter. He had just a little trouble with lower case 'b' and 'd'.

I have to laugh at the fleeting thoughts I have when they want to do stuff before I planned to do it. That's when I am most grateful for unschooling. In the past I may have said, "No, those worksheets are for Language Time." (I would have said it all know-it-all-teacher-like) What if he didn't want to do it later? What if I had to make him do it and then he didn't learn a darn thing?

A few minutes later, we were all sitting together for breakfast, a rare occurrence, and Aria wanted to start reading our new “Junie B. Jones” book. Again, I could have said, "No, let's wait till we're all done eating and we can light our Reading Candle. We can go outside and read." But, why? The child wants to read to us. We're all there. We're not so distracted by our food that we can't listen to a fun story. Yet, this is what they'd have to deal with in school everyday, the compartmentalizing of each subject into block of time when they may or may not be able or willing to participate. Not my kids.

We do try to have some sort of a schedule, but if they want to do math first or science first or dinner in the morning I don't care. All I want is for us to be happily learning and comfortably busy.

We practiced our math worksheet and did a fill in the blank worksheet. I am going to move them to the next set of facts tomorrow. We did a couple of Mad Libs which came out okay, except that the children weren't very creative with their choices of words. The stories were mildly funny, but I may have to give them multiple choice answers or a big list of adjectives, verbs, and nouns. I gave them an example of an adjective, like red. They would pick blue as their word. I, definitely, think a list would help make it more fun. Aria blogged and she started one for Casey, too. I think she likes writing under a pseudonym.

After we were done, I introduced Connor to Chilly Willy on YouTube. He wasn’t very impressed, but Woody Woodpecker was a hit. Casey came in to have a look at what we were watching and he says “Oh, you guys are watching Crazy Chicken, huh?” He made me laugh out loud with that one. He says these things with such authority sometimes. As if, there can be no other title for this show. Mostly, because what Casey says is nearly always right, in him mind anyway. Yes, son, we’re watching the Crazy Chicken cartoon.

That reminds me of one of Connor’s funny quirks. If I say, “Connor you are so cute.” He says, “No, I not. I’m Connor.” I love this. I may be reading too much into it but I like that he doesn’t want to be anything but himself. He refuses to be labeled. Maybe I’ll start using that as my motto, too. I’m not lazy, fat, busy, mother, homeschooler, disorganized, smart, stupid, or temperamental, I’m Jill.

1 comment:

Ruralmama said...

Larvae vs Rainbows? Hmmmm, it's a toss-up here, because both are ubercool. Especially since caterpillars are larvae and ours just got done building cocoons! But rainbows? Hmmmm, they're pretty 'cited about those too......decisions, decisions......