Skate Break

This week we took a beautiful break in the middle of the day to go skate around Lake Morey.

Going ice skating here ranks pretty high on our family's list of winter priorities. One reason is the skates. Here, we've discovered nordic skates. I used to use figure skates. I was timid, afraid to fall, and I couldn't wait to get them off and feel firm ground again. But nordic skates consist of a long blade that attaches hinge-like onto the front of our cross-country ski boots, leaving the heel free to lift up. I feel so much more stable with these skates; I don't "feel" rough ice as much, and can usually just skate through the bumps. They're also more comfortable. W used to complain of his feet hurting in hockey skates, but has come to like skating a lot more since he started using these.

The other reason the skating here gets us stoked is they plow a path on this lake that they say is 4.5 miles around. I find it really exciting to be on the open lake with trail stretching far ahead, mountains around, and to really go somewhere on skates. It is an incredible feeling to get a rhythm going and imagine oneself a speed skater, bent over, arms swaying this way and that. We can do this loop in a little less than an hour, but I see many skaters there who do it much faster.  Skating like this is its own special sport.

And yet, ice skating is very weather dependent. Besides the magical combination of weather that makes for smooth ice, cold temperatures are best so they ice doesn't get soft and marked up. There is a relatively brief window of time for skating each year. We've learned to seize the day and forego other winter activities when we hear the ice is good.

The day we went last week perfect-- not yet ten degrees when we arrived. We layered up and knew that once we got moving we wouldn't be cold at all. W and I walked down to the edge of the lake, clipped on our blades, and skated the big loop around, pausing occasionally to rest simply by standing up straight for a moment. There were a few bumpy sections here and there but huge swaths that were super smooth. W, who is often a bit ahead of me, would double back to come tell me the ice was great and say, "Watch this" as he took off.

Sure, I did feel a little conspicuous as to whether the three other folks we passed while skating around the trail in the middle of a Tuesday wondered why this kid wasn't in school. I certainly wasn't ice skating in order to teach physics. (Though similarly, cooking involved bits of reading, math, and science, but that isn't why I found it so worthwhile. And I certainly didn't pretend we went on hikes this fall for the purpose of using map skills, though we used them.) But we'll both remember our skate break last week because of the rosy cheeks and fresh air that was in our lungs the rest of the day, for the awesome one-on-one time outside of our usual routine, and because we grabbed a beautiful opportunity rather than letting it pass by.

Homeschool Cooking Lessons

I built a few hours into our week for W to spend on things he wanted to learn or work on. We've used this choice learning time lots of ways-- worked on homemade Christmas gifts for family members, binged on war research online, played chess, worked on intricate coloring pictures, put together a Tinker Crate walking robot-- but his enrichment choice for the first two to three months of the school year was cooking...or rather, baking, as he chose mostly desserts.

I really like food myself-- eating, cooking, reading about it. I try to grow a lot from our garden. I've always believed it was important to feed the kids good food and involve them in the making of it as a life skill. So I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen with my kids since they were little and it wasn't a huge leap to cook with W as part of homeschool this year.

W likes food, too. He prefers a Cara Cara or blood orange to a navel, and gets much more excited for homemade mac and cheese than boxed. He likes the tradition of seeing how long his muscles can last stirring super-thick pfeffernut cookie batter at Christmas time. Potato gnocchi (that we learned to make once upon a time in Italy before he was born) is his favorite food and he helps make it every year for his birthday dinner. He gets a kick out of novelty jobs like using the cherry pitter or juicing oranges with the mixer attachment. But even though he is an appreciator of good food and he participates somewhat often in the fun stuff in the kitchen, there was plenty of room for learning about working in the kitchen.

It was all the non-romantic details and know-how that I realized he needed to master to be more independent and capable in a kitchen. He had never really on his own done all the little tasks necessary to make a dish or a meal come to fruition. Finding and getting out all the ingredients. Greasing the pan. Preheating the oven. Reading the recipe and deciphering it. Figuring it out when he needed to make a substitution. Determining when a cake is done. Washing the fruit, doing the peeling, the grating, the wrapping in plastic wrap, the chilling, the thawing, the setup, the cleanup.

Normally when I cook with one of my kids, I set them up with a space and the tools to do a finite task or two while I do several other things. Then we put our work together. It's a combined effort and they have favorite jobs, and there are jobs we are most comfortable with them having. I generally let them be involved for as long as they want and then wander off when their interest fades.

I approached his homeschool choice-time cooking from a different angle from how I had previously cooked with my kids. Having daylight, a quiet house, and one child to focus on helped and was nice. The goal I kept in mind was not to get dinner on the table (as it so often is), but rather to help him learn to be as independent and confident as possible. I tried to let him really go his speed, make the messes he needed to make, and do all the jobs himself, even when it took a long time and I started to feel like it was time to move on to math or social studies. I hung back so that he had the chance to make something in its entirety on his own. I tried to keep busy opening up pieces of mail or loading the dishwasher to convey my faith in his ability to complete his chosen project while being close enough to interject tips where necessary or answer any questions that came up. There was a whole bunch of valuable learning...

Perishable vs. Non-perishable. He asked once while getting out ingredients, "Where do we keep the heavy cream?" We talked about the key relationship between the refrigerator and all dairy products.

Where Things Are. I wasn't doing my usual quick gathering and organizing in preparation for his help with the fun parts and he had to ask where a lot of things were. (I also added "put away groceries" to his very short list of household responsibilities and that has really helped him learn where things are kept.)

Focus. I actually noted early on the time it took him to get out a handful of ingredients for a recipe without me interfering, and it took about fifteen minutes! (This was partly due to overall distractibility and partly because he would bend down to pet the dog, who was underfoot, every time he walked by him. We came to an understanding that he should focus on cooking for now and save the cuddles for after, since he didn't want to wash his hands dozens of times. He just hadn't thought about it like that.) I shared my observation with him about the time it took to get ingredients out not to give him a hard time, but just to let him know, and to see if he could beat his time a little bit the next time. Cooking was a non-academic time for me to see the challenges he had with focus, and to try to gently help him be aware of that. I knew he wanted to cook and had chosen to cook; the time it took him to do certain tasks was just how long it took him. He got more focused and efficient in the kitchen over time.

Growth Mindset. He would occasionally muse that I would be much faster if I was the one doing the task at hand, as he worked hard to scrape a bowl or roll a pie crust. I told him that might be true but that's only because I practice this type of task every single day and that he'd get better, and quicker, too, with every time he practiced.

Kitchen Decisions. I started to be mindful of vocalizing some of the little decisions and thinking I previously had wordlessly done for him when we cooked: Hold the measuring spoon near but not directly over the bowl as you pour vanilla extract into it. When you are about to measure 1/2 cup of two different ingredients, measure the dry one first so you can use the same measuring cup again. Use this pan instead of that one because it has a rim around it. Read through the whole recipe first and visualize what you're about to do and make sure the order makes sense, rather than blindly obeying the directions sentence by sentence or phrase by phrase only to realize an important detail too late.

Tricks of the Trade. He got really good at separating eggs, and recognizing soft and stiff peaks, as a number of the French desserts we made in the beginning required these skills.

How to Whip Cream. One moment that will stick with me was when he followed a recipe's instructions to pour heavy cream into the mixer and turn it on and whip to stiff peaks. As he realized it was turning into whipped cream, he said, "I didn't know you could make whipped cream just from heavy cream!" I was almost embarrassed; we cook all the time-- how could he not know that? I asked him how he thought I made whipped cream...or what he thought heavy cream was used for, and he said he didn't really know; I guess he'd never physically been in the kitchen during those moments, or been the one doing the whipping, in the past.

Stories and Memories. He made chocolate mousse one day because he thought it looked good in a French cookbook for kids we got from the library. I told him about a restaurant I used to love going to as a kid for special occasions where I always had the chocolate mousse. It was sooo good and because of that I still think of chocolate mousse as The Ultimate Dessert.

Tackling New Motor Coordination Tasks. Opening all those containers! Holding the mixer bowl up in the air while scraping it out. Icing a cake without digging into it. Perhaps the trickiest of all: holding a can of cooking spray with the right amount of pressure on top to make it spray while also keeping the can the right distance and angle from the pan. Using a can opener. A mandoline. The apple corer and peeler. He was so pleased with himself as he halved the peaches from our own tree this September one afternoon, popped the pits out and then neatly, slowly sliced them first one way then another while keeping the diced bits all lined up. He wanted to demonstrate for his dad the next day, saying "Watch what I can do!" I could just see that his hands were moving a little faster, a little less fluidly, a little more precariously as he tried to perform this dicing amid the activity when we were all in the house and with the adrenaline that came with trying to perform. It was neat that I'd seen and he'd seen for himself what he could do when he was fully focused and mindful with that peach dicing.

Organization. One day he was inspired to improve the alphabetizing of our spices after his difficulty finding something on the spice rack and having to search and read every bottle. I let him go for it.

Math. He had to deal with fractions in cooking even before we'd dug into fractions in math this year-- reading them correctly, and doubling when necessary. There were also conversions of tablespoons to cups, and ounces to pounds, and realizing there was a difference between ounces of weight and fluid ounces. Paying attention to units, period, was a learning curve. I had to remind him to be careful of whether it said teaspoons or tablespoons, and all those little abbreviations.

The experience of supervising yet turning him loose to cook was just a different approach than I'd had before in the kitchen. It made me think about other skills my kids have become independent and confident at. For example, W is a really capable cross-country skier now. But he didn’t learn it when he was being pulled in the sled watching us ski. He learned because of all the times we were patient and let him do it when he was little: he'd scootch along on skis at the speed he needed to, struggle a bit, and figure it out for himself, making it a little bit farther each time. We went his speed and covered limited territory for a number of years until it really clicked for him. (Now we are at that stage with M, so we often split up so that both kids can have the fun and challenge of their own pace and ability.) There are so many pieces of skiing he had to put together and get comfortable with, from the intimidating uphills and downhills to the frustration of falling and getting up. Frustration and wanting to give up is a very real piece of learning anything new for W. With skiing we came to have a pretty good sense of when to keep quiet when he was in the throes of impatience with himself, and when to do a little cheerleading. It’s the same with cooking or swimming or ice skating or knitting or any complex skill set. They need time to do it themselves to own it, however long it takes, and they need us to show that we know that they can do it (or at least do a good job of holding ourselves back and keeping a smile on until real trust is there).

Cooking wasn't time off from learning during our school day. Cooking has been a great way to build independence, confidence, ownership in a final product that he saw through from start to finish, and handling frustration. He felt so proud to surprise the rest of the family with his creations at the end of the day or to share them with guests or bring them somewhere and say, "I made this."

Some Pictures:

Coconut Cake: this is a favorite cake I have made several times. He requested to make it and it was the first cake he'd ever made.

Peach clafoutis: this was from a cherry clafoutis recipe in a French cookbook for kids, because we had abundant peaches from our tree.

W loves the light, sweet semifreddo (frozen mousse) at our favorite gelato place. So we found a recipe and made peach semifreddo with more peaches from our tree in September:

Serving it up:

Making chocolate lava cakes with raspberry sauce:

Making a Julia Child apple tart:

Making apple pie:

Making sloppy joes for dinner:

Making sweet potato chips using the mandoline:

10 Things We've Done in Art

In school W didn't love art. He was often too drawn in to the work and conversations around him. He'd miss the finer points of the directions or make mistakes, then get frustrated. He'd run out of time and rush and then dislike the finished products he brought home. I don't think he had bad art teachers; a busy classroom was just a harder environment for this learner to do art in. At home, while I have no qualifications in art instruction, I have been able to create a space and time for the art we do to be fun and without pressure, where I can coach him on taking his time, practicing, being patient with himself, and accepting mistakes as part of the process. I've come to see our art time as more valuable for the opportunity to work on those larger goal areas, than for the learning of new techniques or media or artists. I think he was disliking art and music in school because of the feelings and behaviors that came with those subjects, in school. Low-key art at home seems to be sort of therapeutic, helping him like it and gravitate to it more. "I LIKE this kind of art," he has told me. We both look forward to our little art exploration sessions. There is no direct teaching in the way we do art; in this area in particular we are learning together, usually both creating something. He gets pretty absorbed, whether it's making a mosaic or drawing battleships, and art sessions always seems to run extra long because I hate to interrupt the zone when he's in it.

At the start of the year I thought I'd make a plan for the scope and sequence of what we would study in art, the way I plan everything else. I researched online. I found a few different schools' fourth grade art curricula. None of them felt like something I could fully undertake. And I wanted W to have some choice of what we did in art, more than he could in some other subjects. My research did give me some art concepts and terms to keep in mind as reference points. But I never did come up with an ideal plan for the whole year. I've instead fallen into a pattern of planning art time week to week and often at the last minute. I tend to go with the flow, doing activities based on his interests or things that come up. We started this year with some fun activities to practice some elements of art in isolation and have expanded into various other projects.

Here are some of the things we've done so far in homeschool art:

1. We played with texture. 

We drew three apples and gave each one a different texture by drawing different types of lines on it. I found a really useful, free web site of art lesson plans by a high school art teacher:  https://juliannakunstler.com/index.php . It is full of focused little lessons for beginners on specific elements of art. The lessons weren't written for elementary school kids, but it works, and I've learned a lot, too, doing the exercises alongside him. This and the next two ideas came from that site.

2. We made wobbly lines that looked 3-D.

It was cool to see the effect and took a lot of patience.

3. We colored landscapes to create a particular mood.

We colored the same scene in various color schemes to give it different tones or feelings: sunny, spooky, sunset, cloudy, etc. (I got to do a couple of these sessions with both kids on days preschool was closed.)

4. We carved bars of soap. 

This was inspired by a book we'd recently finished reading, The Tiger Rising, in which the main character whittles. I found a Metropolitan Museum of Art how-to video (https://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/metkids/metkids-create/create-a-soap-carving) and plenty of other online inspiration; turns out we aren't the only ones to ever carve a bar of Ivory soap! Naturally, W tried to carve a pug...

5. I taught him to knit.

I know this might not be technically considered art. I'm still so proud of him that he learned! This was two-handed coordination that can be pretty frustrating in the beginning. And while I was really excited to try to teach him, I wasn't sure he'd be able to do it-- motor-wise or frustration-wise. He knit the first few rows over several sittings and they were really lumpy and bumpy. After he had dropped and added many stitches accidentally, he wanted to start over. I was thrilled he wasn't giving up. He ripped the whole thing out and started over and continued till he'd made a whole scarf that got ever smoother as he went. During the whole project he kept asking me questions about my grandmother and how good knitter she was. 

6. We made drawings with 1-point perspective. 

I consult with my husband a lot for ideas of what to do in art and how to do it. He was a fine arts minor and has some ideas about techniques that might help demystify art. He has pointed me to some good skills we could tackle, like perspective, which was inspired by a cool picture he took of our daughter on a trip to Washington, D.C. this fall:

7. We draw soldiers and battle scenes.

This is a special interest that has become apparent this fall. He's fascinated by wars. It has inspired him to want to work on some seriously challenging stuff like drawing people (soldiers) in action poses. We look up how-to videos or he tries to copy war scenes out of books he reads. I was trying to follow some of the drawing instructions with him in a soldier-drawing book he got for Christmas and found myself needing to work on my own growth mindset.

8. He made gifts. 

For a few years, my kids have given homemade gifts of some sort to some family members for Christmas. This year W's ideas were more ambitious. It was nice that I had the time to help him see the ideas through. The gift making caused him to look into things like how to draw birds, which we would not have done except that he knew his grandmother liked birds so he wanted to make a mobile out of them. He worked on his gifts for weeks here and there, but we took an entire day in late December as gift-making day so he could finish all his projects. He was so excited to give them away.

These last two fall into the category of art appreciation...

9. We played Masterpiece. 

This is not the most exhilarating of board games I realize now as an adult, but I liked playing it with my grandmother when I was a kid. You bid on, buy, and sell famous paintings, hoping not to obtain a value card stating "FORGERY" (similar to getting the old maid in a card game). It is mostly from this game that I learned to recognize the few paintings I can. I got the dusty box out of the attic recently and W really enjoyed it-- I think mostly because of getting to work with large sums of cash and the excitement of winning, but there was definitely some collateral memorizing of famous pieces and artists that happened too.

10. We discuss works of art connected to our other studies. 

We are deep into a study of the American Revolution. It has been cool to look at some images of artworks online that shows the people or events or time we're reading about and discuss it as a piece of art as well as the historical significance. These are a few we've used:

George Washington portrait 

Paul Revere portrait before the Revolution

Paul Revere's engraving of the Boston Massacre