Lakeside Fort: Assembly Required

Will’s school is on a ten-month school year that includes many week-long breaks throughout the year. One of the break was this week, and he spent most of it with Gramma and Granddad. When he arrived in Waco, he and Granddad got busy building a fort near the lake. Will called home at least once every day. If he couldn’t reach the house, he called the cell phones. He excitedly told me all that he and Granddad had been doing.

In Will's words, "First we got the old playhouse that was abandoned. Then we dragged it over to the huge tree. And we put a rope down from the tree. Our helper went up the tree and tied the rope at the top. Then we build the xylophone bridge from the tree to the playhouse -- you can bang on it with a stick and it makes noise.

We had to replace the floorboards with new wood. I cleaned the slide with the hose while Granddad and the helper built a handrail. We added the slide and that's it.The rope swing and the slide into the lake were the best parts. It's hard to catch yourself on the slide so you don't fall in the water."

Alike

In Allen's words, "They're all alike."

Photo taken 8/31.

Education Challenges

I have had several friends and family members ask, "How did the meeting with the school go?" so I thought I'd share. Earlier this week, Allen and I met with the triplets' teachers and principal to discuss the best ways to work with our children and their education. I was hoping to say it went really well, but it didn't really go as I wished. I may have gone in with expectations, but I tried really hard to leave them at the door.

I got the impression the newly-hired principal and the two teachers weren't on the same page. (But that's why THIS principal was hired... to do things differently.) The teachers told us where the kids were reading-wise (they still hadn't finished the math tests). Then the principal gave us the results of the reading tests they had done in library. No surprises -- they are all ahead of their "normal" age group by quite a bit. We tabled that discussion for a while.

Since the teachers had limited time for the meeting, we discussed what we needed to with them.  Basically, we want to know they (and we) can challenge our kids. Overall, we heard, "We can't meet your requests." Different spelling words? No, they don't have time to do a different test and the kids may get upset if they aren't making all As. More challenging math worksheets? No, worksheets show teachers and students what the kids know and what they've done., but the online computer math will be AT the kids' levels, so we should please be patient as that should be rolled out soon. Can my kiddo skip the worksheets/homework if he has already mastered that material. No, that's probably not a great idea because reviewing is good for kids.
 
So... the teachers made it clear they don't have time to challenge the kids, but the computers will. The principal wanted us to stick around and talk more after the teachers had to go back to class. He wants the kids to stay and us to wait it out (with 200+ on the wait-list, it isn't like they'd lose funding.) The kids ARE liking all the "extra" classes, and those are the reasons we chose this school in the first place. Each week, they have PE, library, science, social studies, and writing. They also are in art, dance, Spanish, and theater. The principal is working on bringing in some new programs, so we will wait a few more weeks before taking them out to homeschool. The end of the six week period, the kids are supposed to be bringing home their on-level reading. Soon after that, they are supposed to be getting into the new math software.

We are waiting for now, but we expect to homeschool soon. That'll give the kids a little more time with their favorite classes -- to see if any new passions develop that we can find classes for outside of school, to get all my stressful projects wrapped up so they won't be taunting me, to get one friend through a tragic death in her family, and another friend through delivering twins, and Allen (and all of us) through an otherwise potentially-stressful October with long work hours. I'm trying to just rest in our decisions, even though some are left unmade for now.

Jon's Opinion on Thursday

Some days -- and it always seems to be when Allen is out of town or on turn-around -- something happens that changes the way I've been seeing things. I knew we needed to keep options in mind for Ben and school, but I didn't see today's conversation coming. Today, Jon got in the car really upset, but as he told me on the way home about why, I figured we needed to chat without the other three sets of ears.

"I hate school. Hate it! Hate it! Hate it!"

Why?

"Its too boring! and I keep getting in trouble."

... (later)...

Let's talk about what is boring to you.

"Everything."

Spanish?

"No"

Theater?

"Yes"

PE?

"Sometimes"

Library?

"Usually"

Mrs. Sharp's class? (that is his main class - math, reading, handwriting, etc.) 

"Yes! yes! yes! two and a half HOURS of not allowed to talk or move is horrible! I hate it!"

Do you like Mrs. Sharp?

"She's okay."

Is she mean?

"Not really"

Then it came down to HIM saying this kind of stuff... it all exploded from him. "If I just stayed home you could teach me everything I learn in seven hours, but we could do it fast because I hate waiting for the rest of the class. They are all so SO slow." 

But, Jon, I don't do theater. (Before today, I thought he liked theater.)

"Well. I might miss it, but not much. We would still do library and art and we could learn Spanish together, right? And if we did it fast I could play all afternoon doing whatever I want and not having to sit still all day. I hate it! I hate Cumberland Academy!"

So... he missed one of the phonics questions, he got an answer wrong on a reading test (you can tell he was hurrying to get it done), and he spoke out of turn just once today... maybe it was a bad day because of those three things. But when he was speaking so clearly what a six-year old shouldn't know to say, I felt like that was my "get your ducks in a row" message. I've been on the brink of tears ever since then because the selfish part of me isn't wanting to give up my four mornings a week... but the mom in me doesn't like seeing a whole month of my kids' lives wasted on stuff they mastered before the were in PreK. I don't like seeing Jon hating school when he has always loved it. It was like seeing everything we went through with Will about to replay, but with a little angel named Experience on my shoulder showing me what I didn't know then.

Bucket List: African Safari

I keep thinking about blogging about my trip to Uganda, but I keep struggling with deciding which pictures to use, or whether to do a day-by-day write up, or whether to just tell a few of the stories from the trip. I still haven't decided, but I'm a tad bit frustrated that "Uganda!" is still on my list of things to write about. So, I think I'll just do a bit at a time. It may be a little of the day-by-day style mixed with some of the special moments or just a series of photos with lots or little writing. Today, I'm ready to take on the safari!

Number 4, I think, on my list of 101 things I want to do in my lifetime is "Go on an African safari with Allen". When I saw that a safari was on the itinerary for our Ugandan mission trip, I was thrilled. Then I realized I couldn't check it off since Allen wasn't with me. I have until the end of this year to decide if it was close enough that I was on the safari with my trip roommate -- Ellen (isn't that close enough?)

We headed out from the hotel super early because we wanted to get to Queen Elizabeth National Park early, but it was a four hour drive to the part we were heading to. Along the way, we passed through such beautiful scenery -- tea plantations, jungles where gorillas live (but we didn't see any), and vast stretches of dry savanna. We saw zebra and antelope along the way, and, as we approached the park, we were greeted by a troop of baboons.

We stayed on the PCM bus driving through the park. We saw elephants, but often Driver Emmy would notice the animals after we passed them. He would stop the bus and reverse it. The loud BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP of the bus backing up usually scared off whatever we noticed in passing, so it was tough to get great pictures on that part. Driving, we saw a few elephants and a couple warthog. I saw the back half of a leopard resting in the shade of a tree, but it was gone when we backed up to see it again.

We made our way down to the river and got on a boat for the best part. The boat tour got us close to many different creatures: crocodiles, hippos, Cape buffalo, and a variety of birds. We also passed some Nile monitors, more elephants, and some more Uganda kob.

One of the hippos we saw was only a day old -- the guide had seen the mother giving birth the day before. As large as a baby hippo is compared to me, it was tiny compared to the rest of the hippos!

After a few hours of exploring the Kazinga Channel between the lakes, we got back on the bus and headed back to Mbarara. On the way out of the park, we saw many more elephants -- some passing right behind the bus -- and more baboons.

At the end of the day, we counted some of the different animals we had seen. I'll save the birds for another post, but we saw wart hogs, hippos, Uganda kobs, topi, antelope, waterbuck, Cape buffalo, zebras, African elephants, bottom half of a leopard, olive savanna baboons, Nile crocodile, and monitor lizard. We also saw vervet monkeys at the first hotel, and some kind of bat hung from the power line near the other hotel. Since I'm a little bit of a bird-fan, I'll post those separately.

 

For every animal of the forest is mine,

and the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know every bird in the mountains

and the creatures of the field are mine.

~ Psalm 50:10-11

Two weeks in

The first week of school for Ben, Maddie, and Jon was a rough week. It was great in the morning, I think the kids had a great day AT school, but once they were home, we seemed to have a family melt-down. It would start with whining and fighting, then turn into tears and tantrums. Once it got to that point, I was struggling to not lose patience. Though most days I managed to seem like I was keeping it together, I pretty much shut down my mommying once Allen got home.

Week two was even worse. Ben was exhausted enough that two of the four school days that week (no school on Labor Day), he fell asleep in the car before we even got home. Week two was really hard because that is when the first-grade teachers began sending home homework. For Ben, that was awful. After snack time, I asked the kids to sit to do their work. Each day they each had a simple math worksheet with around 8 questions about sorting or counting. They were also supposed to write their ten spelling words three times each -- twice that week. I turned it into handwriting practice, but it was supposed to be spelling practice; our kids knew all the words already. So, each and every day, Ben had a crying, kicking, screaming fit about his homework. It was exhausting for him. It was exhausting for me. And it was not assigned for any good reason other than "everyone in the class needed to do it."

I wrote Ben's teacher a note explaining why I changed his assignment -- not a big change, but I did let him use different colors of markers for his words. He was still spelling, it just looked like a clown had a little fun with his paper. She emailed me back explaining she didn't have a problem with the adaptation, but she was really concerned with why he was so upset. She wrote, "I am curious to know why Ben expresses much disinterest in completing homework. Was this something that evolved last year? Is it a certain area that is not particularly engaging for him? Is it lack of motivation because he becomes tired often? I'm trying to gain insight into the reasons behind the "temper tantrums" so that we can explore other interesting options so that homework becomes fun again. Please let me know your thoughts on this matter."

I was THRILLED! Really! That his teacher -- any teacher -- cared enough to find the root cause and address it. It was another bonus point, in my book, for this teacher who already took my advice and switched Ben and Jon in class. (Ben had been assigned her afternoon class and Jon the morning. I told her Ben would be too tired to pay attention to academics in the afternoon, so she swapped them.) I may have given her more that she expected when I replied.

I explained to her that it takes EVERY bit of Ben's patience and energy to control himself at school, so he is completely worn out when he gets home. He is usually a very busy boy who doesn't like to be still or quiet, so I know he is working hard really at school if he is coming home on green (best behavior all day). That particular day, he had taken an hour-long nap, and I told her he was exhausted, but I don't think it is from not getting enough nighttime sleep. 

I further explained that Ben is not motivated to prove himself. If he knows how to spell words, he doesn't see much point in writing them again and again and again -- twice a week. He does need handwriting practice, though. As for reading out loud, the repetition of something he has mastered frustrates him (this is my opinion; I don't think he actually recognizes the cause of his frustrations). He will happily read me a story once... even twice... but, unless it is a favorite of his, he won't enjoy doing it again and again. That being said, our family DOES read a lot and my kids have shelves and shelves of great books. They are always reading. They read in the car going to and coming home school (15+ minutes each way). They read before bedtime -- either out loud with parents or each other or silently. So... he likes to read and his comprehension is pretty good, but reading the same simple "PreK book" (his words) for 20 minutes four days a week will get old before the end of the first day.

In several emails we traded, I also told her we practice spelling at the dinner table. Without having seen Will's spelling words (4th grade), all three kids spelled nine of his ten words correctly -- they missed "fiction". I told her that I hoped we could work together to find the right spelling words, reading assignments, and math homework to give Ben, Maddie, and Jon enough of a challenge that they learn. I also shared that Ben is a kiddo who needs to be running and playing outside, but when he naps and his 10 minutes of homework starts with 40 minutes of crying, he runs out of time to get to play.

In the meantime, I suggested that his teacher send me the weekly newsletter on Fridays instead of Monday. Now, we spend Saturday mornings writing out the three sets of spelling words. Ben still doesn't like it, but I have more patience in the morning, and he isn't worn out yet. Taking that load off of our Tuesday afternoons seems to have made the week go a bit more smoothly.

After more emails, Mrs. Sharp talked with Maddie's teacher and the principal. The three of them decided that it would be best for us to come talk with them and form an education plan for all three kids. I suggested we wait until after the testing is complete so we would all know where they were with their math and reading skills. I am somewhat hopeful that the meeting will bring some good changes, but I am concerned with what I consider to be useless homework. If the kids were practicing and strengthening their skills, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it; however, now, it is really just busywork that cuts into the little bit of playtime they have. By the time we have our meeting, the kids will have been in school a whole month and not really learning anything new in their core classes.

Seven: Experiment Six

After a few months of taking a break from my Seven project, I am back to it for September. Projects one through five happened January through May, then I went to Uganda in June. I decided July wasn't a good time to jump back in -- mainly because I didn't have the prep time I needed to pray though how I would do the next project. August was too busy with school starting, but I thought September would be a good time to jump back in.

The sixth project is about stopping excess spending. I spent three months trying to figure out how to choose just seven places that would get our money, but, even considering online banking as one of them, I just couldn't make it work with some of the commitments we have already made. Instead, we are doing what Allen suggested: no disposable income.

What does that mean? To us it means no Amazon purchases, no eating out at all, no grabbing coffee or a pack of gum at the gas station, no buying books or craft supplies or games. As the month has already begun, I'm realizing it also means no replacing my pillow that doesn't seem comfortable anymore, no starting on the birthday and Christmas gift purchasing, no tasting a new flavor of Blue Bell, no getting a six-pack of Coke at the grocery store just because a cold Coke sounds great today, and black dress shoes for Maddie can wait even if all she has are white ones and it is after Labor Day.

As for months one through five... it was nothing short of amazing how God used those trials to make some of my trials in Uganda a bit easier to handle. To recap, I ate only 7 foods in January; I wore 7 items of clothing in February; I gave away 7 things each day in March; I gave up media in April; and we drastically reduced our household waste in May. So how did that play out in Uganda?

Foodwise, I might have been the only one who wasn't counting the days till we could eat TexMex or have a Dr. Pepper. The first couple days in Uganda weren't too bad since all the food was a bit new and our protein bars weren't too boring yet. By the end of six or seven days, I'll admit, I did notice that everything started tasting the same -- rather bland, compared to what we normally eat -- but I just remembered how I thought the same thing in January. When we got back to Texas, I know I shocked people when I said I didn't really care where we ate. When I talked to Allen, he asked what to have at home foodwise. I think all I said I missed were salad, berries, and apples -- strangely similar to what I chose to eat in January.

Clothingwise, I started the trip by packing lightly (at least by my definition.) It turns out I still packed too much, but weight wasn't the issue. A local church donated a bunch of t-shirts that we handed out one afternoon at the Mbarara school. Sadly, there were about 350 shirts, but 400 children, so several kids were disappointed. We returned to the hotel and found more shirts for the kids -- from our own suitcases. I left five shirts in Uganda and didn't even miss them the rest of the trip. I guess God knew I'd need to pack those extra shirts. After March's giving experiment, it was easy to choose which ones to leave. I would've left a few more, but I kept the dirty ones to wear again.

Media? Yes... media...Uganda. A strange combination that often doesn't work. We started the week with wireless internet at the hotel. I was able to text or email Allen pretty easily the first day. Then there were several days that nothing worked. I was okay. I admit I was a little sad I couldn't post photos instantly to share the experience immediately, but I survived and didn't miss it much.

I'm not too sure how the earth-friendly exercise helped on my trip, but seeing how much the other projects made my trip go smoothly, it is hard for me to believe there wasn't something to it. Maybe I'll see it when I write about the trip.