THE FIELD TRIP

On Wednesday, Jan. 25, Phoebe and I took Faith, Abby, Bede, and Gilbert on a field trip to the Bedré chocolate factory. The excursion had been planned by Phoebe’s Yahoo group, Oklahoma Natural Parenting Homeschoolers. Quite a few families participated, and all the children seemed to have a good time, so the event must be judged a success.

It was educational, too. At least, I learned a few lessons.

Frankly, none of us knew what to expect. All we knew was: this was a chocolate factory, and they offered public tours. Since chocolate is a topic in which our offspring have a demonstrated interest (sometimes bordering on devotion), we hoped it would be a good introduction to the world of industry, commerce, and free enterprise. It was all that.

And yet, I have to say it was a disappointment. I had hoped to be conducted on a tour of the facilities there. But the only two rooms open to the public are the gift shop, and an empty narrow hallway behind the gift shop.
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“Mama. It’s like this. ‘Today on Jakers: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.’”

Snort. Indeed.

The lovely statuette pictured above is Faith’s Christmas gift to Annette. This marks the first time Faith has ever had the idea of giving a gift for Christmas. She said she wanted to give Bugga a present. She picked it out at the store, and she boxed it. On the Day, when it was time to open presents at Bugga’s house, Faith was more excited about Bugga opening her gift than she was about opening her own! It was an Epiphany of sorts.

The work of learning never stops, not even on Christmas. Among Faith and Abby’s presents were a dinosaur picture book, and a big box of a wide variety of toy dinosaurs. They’ll be absorbing paleontology as they play. Or, maybe they’ll just make the Mommy Dinosaur and the Baby Dinosaurs go shopping. It’s up to them, really.

For three months now, Faith and Abaigeal have been taking weekly ballet classes at Everything Goes Dance Studio, 1721 NW 16th Street. Tonight their hard work pays off, as they take the stage for the annual Christmas program. The show will start at 6:00 this evening, in the auditorium of Northeast High School, 3100 N. Kelley. Admission is free, so come on down if you’re not busy.

 

These photos are from the dress rehearsal, earlier today. I apologize for their poor quality, but they are the best I could get with my camera from where I was sitting. Shown above is my own personal favorite routine — aside from my daughters’, I mean — the Christmas belly dancers! There are also tap, flamenco, and hip-hop numbers in the program, performed by students of all ages, mostly women and girls, with a few dudes on stage from time to time.

  

Here is Faith, dancing in her jammies to “The Night Before Christmas.”

The girls are very excited to discover that tree.

  

And Abby dances gracefully to “White Christmas.”

May your days be merry and bright, etc.

Faith: Abby, polar bears don’t lay eggs!
Abby: Yes dey do.
Me: No, they don’t lay eggs. Faith is right.
Abby: Hmph. Well, I’m pretending dey do.

“When two vowels go out walking, the first one does the talking”

Right.

Except, as Faith pointed out to me today, in “out” and “does”, both of which are in the stupid rule.

How astute.

My sister-in-law came over today with a gift for Faith - a Peter Rabbit book. She had spent quite a bit of time on the selection of the book because she wanted something that Faith would really enjoy. It was a perfect choice. Faith was very happy to get it and immediately plopped down and started reading it to her.

Faith’s reading has been completely learner-led. She is read to every day, we have provided a reading-rich environment for her, and we have answered all her spelling and ‘what does that say?’ questions. After a while it just gelled.

She’s been writing her own books for a few years too and learned to read and write as a sort of seamless whole. Just in the last few months her reading ability went from a halting stop/start/guess to fairly fluent on ‘grade level’ (actually about a 1st grade level.) I’m pleased that she’s doing this now but I wouldn’t be worried if she wasn’t, either. Some kids read later than Faith, some earlier - whether they are homeschooled or institutionally schooled.

She writes well-formed letters, choosing capital letters most often (like her daddy), and they are even and the same size. She prefers marker to pencil or crayon and likes to caption her own illustrations. It’s been especially interesting to see how her spelling has changed as she gets more and more fluent with written English.

So, anyway, thanks for the book Aunt Shari!

Here’s a reading assessment you can do, if that sort of thing interests you or your kid.

Edit: Faith’s favorite reading resources are Starfall, a free self-directed learn to read website, the Leap Frog Letter Factory and Talking Words Factory DVDs, and the television show/website Between The Lions.

Here are Faith and Abaigeal in the Halloween costumes. They’re fairies. (Not entirely unlike angels, really.)

Faith conceived, designed and made a Memory game tonight. We played a few rounds, it was fun!

Today we went to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, more fondly known around these parts as the Cowboy Hall of Fame. We went with our friends R, S and Z and man did we have fun! I didn’t bring the camera because I knew I wouldn’t get any pictures (I was chasing Mr. Bede) so you’ll just have to imagine:

the girls and S building a near life-size ‘log’ cabin out of giant foam logs

Bede excitedly saying “Cow!” about 45789 times

Z being alternately scared and bold in the just-post-sundown frontier town of Prosperity Junction, hereafter known as “oooh! Mama! The darkness!”

the kids all decked out in cowboy clothes and boots cooking us old time cowboy food over the campfire by the chuck wagon

and various other good times.

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted. But man that was fun!