Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Vacation ends on a high note

We've been off-line and out of school for a few weeks having an amazing vacation here in New Paltz. Our friends, R & her daughter A (L's "twin"), visited us for a month while the kids went to summer camp. Not only do we love R & A, they're the kind of people who are totally game for anything. So we've been hitting the neighborhood hot spots -- Lake Minnewaska, Split Rock Falls, Sliding Rock, Saugerties Light House, Freestyle Frolic dances, and finally today, the Trapeze School.

God, what an experience! You drive down this country road, and in the middle of a field is a huge trapeze set up. L, A & I took today's class: put on safety harnesses, crawled 30 or 40 feet in the air on a small ladder, leaned out over a long, long drop to grab a trapeze bar, and then......jumped. It was incredibly frightening, and (as soon as my feet hit the ground), exhilerating. Watching these little girls swinging in the air, eventually getting their courage up to hang upside down by their knees and do flips (which I did as well!!!) really made me feel so proud and happy. I'll put photos up as soon as I can.

But R & A's departure means we start school up again. I want to focus a little on France, since we're going to be going there in mid-August for 2 weeks. Maybe borrow some books from the library (Madeline? What else of French-themed?), and cook French food and try to learn some french phrases. It will be hard to get back into the swing of things (see, nothing but swinging on the brain today) after such a long and delectable break, but it was worth it.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Summer vacation & writing

In case you haven't noticed, dear Reader, we've been on a break. After all, even homeschoolers get to have vacation....whenever the hell we feel like it.

L has been going to a summer camp which I guess I would describe as "nature immersion", or at least as much immersion as a 5 year-old can handle. The kids spend all day out in the woods, rain or shine, learning about their environment in a very free-form playing sort of way. She's been climbing trees, wading in a stream, getting painted with mud, learning what plants taste good (and hopefully simultaneously learning which ones don't) and many other amazing things under the gentle guidance of camp counselors who don't boss her around as much as Mom does. Her best friend A is with her, and in fact A & her mom are staying with us for the month of July. T has also been in the same camp, but with me and only a couple of days a week. Not quite the dive-into-nature experience his sister is getting, but it's letting me spend quite a bit of time focussed exclusively on him, which is quite a treat for both of us. And I've learned how to build a shelter out of tree branches and leaves, so the next time you think you might need to fight for survival out in the wilderness of Central Park, invite me along.

So school has been shelved till the end of camp, and even then, while A is visiting I know it will be hard for L to really focus on anything (although maybe I could get A to "do school" with L....hmmmm, will have to think about that one). But I'm marking these three weeks down as Nature Study, so maybe it does count after all.

I had a conversation with one of the other parents in the Parent & Tot camp that I've been thinking about a lot. He is in the magazine business and I had been complaining to him about the difficulty of writing now that children absorb all my energy and focus. He commented on this blog, which he had found it by checking my email address (something I myself always do if I don't recognize the url), how great it was that I could write about a subject I was so deeply involved in and passionate about, i.e. homeschooling my kids. It's strange, but I had never thought about this blog as writing. It was just a place to unload all the things in my head at the end of the day which maybe a few of my friends would visit occasionally. I never wrote with the thought of anyone else reading it, which is totally insane, I know. I don't know how I feel about this idea. On one hand, it makes me feel better about not having published anything for past few years (I've been "collecting material"....yeah, that's the ticket!). On the other, it's not actually very well written. I don't think about the crafting of it, I don't check for cliches and run-on sentences, and half the time, I don't even know what I'm saying till I hit Publish and re-read it. Like this paragraph I've just written. It's crap, and that would be okay if I didn't think about it as anything else but an unloading of accumulated mind-crap. And why you're reading it, I really don't know.

So, do I start taking this more seriously and try to write as if I mean it? Or do I continue to take the satisfaction I get from banging this out whenever I can and simply focus on where I am right now, raising and teaching my kids? The age-old problem -- too busy worrying about tomorrow to enjoy today. Ah, shit, I should just shut up and go to bed already. Actually, I'm going to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog online. Who needs sleep when you can watch Neil Patrick Harris in a musical?