Taub-Miner-Millington Holiday Update

I haven't posted one of my weekly updates in awhile and this one was full of fun pictures, so, here goes!

12/2/16

Hello everyone,

Of course, the big doings of the past two weeks have been the annual Thanksgiving, Hanukah, family-photo gathering :)

I think it’s the last time we’ll take the Mini Cooper to Sacramento though… after the three hours Cameron, who is now roughly 5ft 4in, stated, “Comfortable?!?! Comfortable is a distant memory!"

I got to visit with my sweet niece...

and nephews.

As challenging as it is for him, Cameron mostly tolerated the family photos!

After this note to a friend, I wound up nostalgic enough to make the first trifle I’ve done in about ten years. So, we had a bonus extra dessert before the holiday:

Rachel Miner Have you ever tried a trifle? They take about eight hours. You make the pound cake and then the custard and then the syrup and then whipped cream and, of course, you pick a theme like coffee (kahlua) or almond (amaretto) or hazelnut (frangelico). And you layer all the cake-y, custard-y goodness so that the flavors blend into each other over the night and are ready for a topping of fresh whipped cream of the matching flavor the next day that results in an ecstatic richness of cascading, heavenly glee... um, I think my repressed baker is rumbling. Oh dear.

Like · Reply · November 11 at 10:35am

I found the perfect snuggle bug when waiting for migraine meds to kick in :)

We lit candles and ate latkes!

We opened lots of presents and Cameron loved getting his own copy of Calvin and Hobbes!

Did I mention nice snuggles?

Andrew made the most heavenly potatoes of all time and I, um, supervised the bowl licking :)

Cameron taught some of his favorite iPad games to his older cousin. And, my dad found a cool new game for adults + Cameron called "Letter Tycoon”.

We ate… lots! There’s no way I could cover all the goodness, but it was an amazing combination of efforts.

We’ve had a chilly week back and it’s been perfect for fires and games :)

FB:I love that moment when the fire really catches and the wood stove starts dispelling the chill from a cold evening ❤️

FB: Have you ever noticed that when you look at the sun with your eyes closed as your eyelids warm you can see a shimmering cherry red or vibrant burnt orange color? I'm not sure if it's some kind of infrared trick firing your optic nerve or if it's actually some kind of visual image of the inside of your warmed eye lid... but, it's breathtakingly beautiful. I believe I've mentioned my forest love before... so besotted :)

Cameron attended his first class to become part of the “Storm Team” (Student teachers in the younger classes… he’ll try being an aid for the first time on Tuesday.)

FB: My reward! I worked hard today and now I'm going to play games with my boy in front of the fire and happily ignore the to-do list... it'll always have more; this is party time!!!❤️🎉😄

Here’s to cozy times at the end of a long day,

Rachel

P.S. More pics from the photo shoot… it really went well! We even got to tickle Cameron and capture his classic love-the-frustrating-parents face!

FB Birthday... Sweet dreams :)

Whew, break time after six hours! One more bag to unpack, but tons of laundry and unpacking and catching up done on my fortieth-birthday-morning because I got home at 10pm from Vegas! This has been my huge stretch for the last year and look what I was part of in Vegas! 

Sweet Adelines International Competition

Stretch and shine bright... I'm so glad I've gone outside of my comfort zone and embraced this! I hope it's has been a year of stretch and sparkle for you too!

Thank you for all the birthday wishes! Look what came on the plate with my dessert! Content. In love. Ready for bed at 7pm! 😄

Mission Valley Chorus... One Year Later

It's been such an amazing year! I didn't know how much I didn't know about singing and I've been thrilled to learn so much. I still feel very new among the other members that have decades of experience. But, it's less scary. Recently, we sang at the first presentation of our international package for the region... it's the first time that my balance of delighted-petrified has tipped to favor delighted :)

Check this out! This recording is from the back row of the ballroom and taken on a cell phone!!! I'd say we were doing quite the awesome job with our sound and it felt glorious!  

https://www.facebook.com/arielle.suraci/videos/1536522206373334/

I'm still so new, but I love Mission Valley Chorus!!! This is definitely an exciting stretch!

Homeschool! First Week of Seventh Grade.

It's been a great first week!  All the bumps were bumps that I could handle! For example, the first homeroom dragged for over an hour, but I was able to commiserate and fold laundry near-by and he got straight into lessons afterwards. The system upgrade is having issues that work isn't showing up as completed and then getting marked overdue. But, it's a known issue and the teachers/programmers are working on getting everything sorted out and I can sooth his worry.  Much more fun has been that he's needing my learning-coach-password less frequently, so I can support without being in his space, right next to him at the computer. It's been a mellow first week with short days and mostly success, so... I'm happy!

Over the summer, I've pondered more about how much happier his life is without the 9 hours of school and 3 hours of homework every weekday. In hindsight, I see more clearly how barely he was coping with sixth grade at the middle-school... effective (almost straight A's and learning material), but unhappy. He has so little time for anything else... chess, legos, and books were ignored.  He didn't eat while there because he needed the lunch time to feed movement needs. He lost so much play-time and I see more clearly its crucial importance. He also lost sleep. He regularly goes to sleep at 10p and gets up 9:30a... he's growing and needs that rest, not a 7:10a alarm.  So.... while I still have my misgivings, I see so much more the value of what he's gaining and I'm more committed than ever. This is the right choice and it will take more than his smattering of weekly, grumbly tantrums to sabotage. 

The boring homeroom to start the year... he got right into engaging with the material afterwards.

Friday play-day with friends

Breaking a board for his green belt yesterday. Again, the time for pursing his passions is such a huge value!

Pretty Poetry

I wrote my first poem in over twenty years... I used to play with poetry as a teen. The forest was so pretty though... I just started pondering what it felt like in words. I may tweak it, but here's my simple moment.

A Forest Walk

The dappled sunshine tickles my eyes
      while the twittering tickles my ears
and my heart rejoices and revels anew with each friendly flicker it hears.

The warm breeze tickles my cheeks
      while the earthy scents tickle my nose
and this playful symphony of sensory notes, delight, inside me sows.

For the noon-day forest is full to the brim
      with grateful joy to the sun
and I feel the joy and gratitude too as I smilingly homeward come.

Homeschooling... One Semester Down

Tomorrow,  Cameron comes home from a week of overnight camp and then we're set for mellow time until the beginning of seventh grade... and shall it be homeschooling? Our travel to Atlanta went beautifully as far as homeschooling goes. He read in the airport and completed everything he needed to for his curriculum.  The bumps were the same, but doable so I was still 50/50 about continuing.

Then the last two weeks of school were so unpleasant. He was clear that he wanted 100% to do homeschooling and that he 100% didn't want to be even slightly polite to me as part of that. It was two weeks of sullenness and snottiness and I was tipped significantly toward ending this experiment for both our sakes. It was getting worse and home was feeling tense and unhappy.

My child was adamant that he could treat me with basic respect (the way he treats other teachers). He said he'd make it a point over the summer. The first month was more of the same and he kept insisting that he'd work on it before the start of the school year, but that he "had time". We weren't making progress. After lots of father son conversations and some intense family meetings, we found that he needed more of a motivation. He wanted help caring about alienating us. So, his dad created this program which links screen time to behavior with + and - options. It feels very reward/punish-y to us, but he wanted the help and so far it's been amazing. It's not used a ton and the focus is on the feedback / motivation that my son has asked for... we'll see.

Here's his straight A report card; the issue has never been being able to succeed.

"Cameron worked very hard and made good progress. Understanding how the online school platform works ensures that he will be able to make even greater progress next year. I have high hopes for Cameron as he is an excellent student. LB"

The summer has improved with play dates and much more pleasant down time.

He loves the time he spends working through the belts in his martial arts; he's about to become a two stripe orange belt.

I loved watching him dive again at Monterey Bay aquarium. He's really able to push himself and try things with love nudges (he wanted to back out last minute).

We've taken more walks together. He helped me see the dragon head in the far left tree root and thus we named this one Smaug and friends (because he saw more monsters too).

He was able to keep a growth mindset in his master's chess camp even though most of the kids were well beyond his level. He was able to see it just like his martial art... you seek to improve and you don't worry that you're not already a black belt. He grew.

So, the interactions around home feel more normal. It's the regular tween bumps and stumbles and  grumbles and I'm ready to give it a try. This year, the involvement of the teachers is supposed to change in that they'll be doing more direct grading and offering of feedback... which should be great for me staying more on the side-lines when he doesn't want to hear from Mom.  While I'm not 100% certain it's the best for us, like he is, I'm ready to give it 100% and we'll see how things go this fall with having a seventh grader in the house... wish us luck (and patience)!

Two Months into Homeschooling

We have had some awesome times and some, um, lava pits of despair!  I'm now pretty evenly divided about the experience and I'd give it a 50/50 chance that we'll homeschool next year (while it's pretty much 100% that we'll finish 6th grade at home).

The goal of this trial was to see if we could handle homeschooling as a setting. The curriculum is one of an online charter school, so we have not tested coming up with a tailored curriculum. That would be a moot point if we can't find a way to make the logistics a net positive.

California Virtual Academy (CAVA) has been mostly a pleasure to deal with and I think we are conducting a fair trial.

Pros:

Soooooooo much flexibility! It's true that we could make it even more flexible by making our own curriculum, but he loves that he can press fast-forward on the teacher if he already understands something and that he can start when he wants and take breaks when he wants and pick the order of the subjects and do a double day of one and skip another and... lots of other tweaking.

Comfort. This is an awesome set up for academic work and for PE (and the fridge is close for as many snacks as he desires, he used to refuse to eat anything at school).

Time. Not only can he pick when he starts, he also doesn't have to wait for a classroom of kids to all get on the same page. His total academic time is roughly 3.5 hours each day and 40 minutes of PE. He usually starts around 9am and is done by 12:30p. That leaves so much more time for other interests. I've seen a reawakening of his interest in chess and reading comics and an intensifying of his love for vegging out with favorite audiobooks.

Cons:

The biggest con is hard to summarize in a word or two. We've found that he finds it hard to believe what I say as a teacher. For example, he had decided that writing a research paper meant that you take whatever the first source says and put that in the paper. He didn't believe me and he didn't believe the instructions from the online curriculum. In his mind, we were making it harder; we were wrong. Lots of yelling, crying, distress. Full meltdowns of distress have only happened a handful of times, but mini-battles of the same I-know-better-how-x-works happen a few times a week. I find myself never knowing if my pleasant day is going to turn into a thunderstorm flying at me. I'm really good at keeping my cool, but I said from the beginning that sacrificing our warm, friendly home-life for homeschooling (if he decided, parent teacher = dictator bad guy) would not be an acceptable trade. We knew that he found it hard to learn from us and that could happen. My kiddo has done a bunch of introspecting and has figured out that he finds it easy to accept directions from his martial arts teacher or the teachers at the middle school because he feels like they should be setting the rules. He doesn't know why he doesn't feel that way about his parents, but we're working on figuring out how he can learn from us effectively.

My time: I miss my blocks of me-time. At first, it felt like it was never a good time to leave. Over the two months, we've worked out most of the kinks. I'm fine with having less private time because I still get enough and he is old enough to give me more on those days where I just need space.  So, this is a mild con right now; finding the best educational option for our family is a much higher value.

Organization: As his learning coach, I'm painfully aware of his lack of organizational skills. Much of that falls to me right now in teaching and helping until he learns. Again, this is a mild con because I want him to gain the skills and that is a much higher value than the annoyance of reminding him every time to put away his supplies or water his plants for his science experiment.

So, my net evaluation is... we'll see. My kiddo is growing all the time and if he can figure out a way to learn from me smoothly, I'm glad to offer him this option and more. We have other resources to explore too for helping in that process. If it turns out that the process of homeschooling hurts our family more than it helps, we'll return to the wonderful middle school that was doing such an awesome job of helping him grow!

Sometimes, eating plantain pancakes together and figuring out a geography question is just awesome though, so we won't toss the experiment lightly!