This morning

n8k99 is loading books into the house. I wonder when he will ever stop doing that for a living? Then I will take the kids to Toys R Us in Times Square, because there’s a UPS in the lower level and I need to return a clothing purchase. Then we’ll all go out to Westchester to visit a fellow MAWDAH family. (Moms At Work Dads At Home). We’ll have pizza and salad for dinner. Hmm. wonder what that’s like? We only ever have macrobiotic organic home made meals here at our place.

Haha! TheBubster just asked to go to school today - Saturday!

on our way to normalcy

as drawn by a student

When I say normal, I do not mean some mythical mean person (mean as in the mathematical average not demeanor) rather I intend to say that our family has shifted to a place that our collective emotional status occupies the greatest amount of time. We are certainly well within one standard deviation of that emotional standard. One of the greatest indicators that we are doing things properly, is that when I go to pick up TheBubster from her new school, yes we decided to enroll her, she is not ready to leave; She really does want to keep doing what she is doing.

Today, it was really really cold, almost Boston cold, so when I dropped TheBubster off at school I was not looking forward to rebundling LittleBud and myself to make the return trip up and down the numerous stairs between the classroom and my desk. So the two of us stayed and joined in the festivities. I immediately began to update and upgrade the desktop computer the kids use; these kids have an Ubuntu desktop that was one upgrade cycle behind. You know, I am all about upgrading.

Then looking around the closets in the Studio, which is labelled as the Crazy room, I found a small violin case which had a child’s violin. I opened up the case and found an app on my phone to help me tune the instrument and proceeded to give a teeny, tiny lesson in playing the violin to the interested kids. TheBubster was first in line and quite interested. It looks like I am going to be doing some internet research about violin playing so that these kids can get a start in using this instrument.

After lunch, which was wonderful lentil soup made by the school director, a guitar player lead a little jam session for any kids who wanted to participate while other children, TheBubster included, went to run around the in gym. I played the recorder during this session. It was a cheap plastic soprano recorder but it was fun to be a part of this; LittleBud was asleep in the stroller the whole time.  At the end of the day, TheBubster was completely exhausted and unwilling to tear herself away from the learning environment and “What is she learning?”, you might ask.

Good question.

Her vocabulary has exploded. Her self-confidence is vastly improved and her artwork is developing very very well. Her interest in Batman is continued and she has added an interest in Mario from Nintendo. She has a strong narrative about characters that she plays with including a green dinosaur stuffed animal she has named Curly Shirley. I’d say she is doing perfectly for her age, and in a few more weeks I believe we will have reversed the effects of the public school system.

Tags: education, Manhattan Free School, MFS

In the cab home from my actor-friend’s birthday celebration at a trendy hotel bar

Thebubster: I don’t like this taxi. It’s yellow.
Mummy: Well did you like the party?
TheBubster: Yes. But where was the cake?

Trial Run

This week, we have put TheBubster into Manhattan Free School on a trial basis. This is a democracy school where the kids have an active voice in planning the curriculum and agenda. She is responding very well to the environment and seems to enjoy the freedom to make her own decisions. When I went to get her today, she was intently reading the Batman comic book that was included inside the case for a Playstation Portable video game disc. Very intently. We are fully engaged in the Batman phase. I have a couple seasons of the Animated series on the Apple TV and she loves to watch a couple episodes a day, actually she’d love to watch more than a couple but I do put some restrictions on things.
Many people have been a bit confused by the concepts of the democracy school, I think most of them go off to some imaginary extreme where the kids really are on some island divorced from reality and separated from any adult supervision whatsoever. There are teachers in the school, and they help the children learn the things that they are interested in. TheBubster is obviously very interested in learning to read.
There is also a complete disciple plan. When there are problems with behavior, it is taken to the Complaint Committee. The Complaint Committee consists of a teacher and three children, which rotates on a daily basis. The complainees and the complainers explain the problem to the Complaint Committee and the solution is discussed, planned and implemented. There are also rules such as, an hour limit on playing video games or something like that.
At this point, I have to say that its not everyone’s philosophy to accept that children will learn, especially if they are curious, but we, TheWife and I, believe that a very curious child who is forced to sit in a desk and perform exactly the same task as everyone else around her is going to go to waste quickly. If she plays video games in school, or reads comic books or plays computer games while other kids are making puppets or playing hockey under special rules that they have created, and she returns home just as curious, or more, as she left in the morning, then the school is wildly successful in our book.
We haven’t made an official decision and frankly it is her decision to make, but it looks like she will be returning to MFS full time, that is as long as the other students vote to accept her into the school.

Tags: Democracy, MFS, responsibility, School, TheBubster

Bud Floorwalker and other tales

Our toddling boy, we transverse far distances by himself. He will turn around and come back or turn around again and continue happily stomping off. He falls, boom. He gets back up and off he goes again.
I had started this post a week ago, but then something happened. Our house turned upside down and our eldest, who had been a well behaved and communicative young lady turned into this horrible monster. She started chewing on our skulls trying to get to our brains, she clawed our eyes out and nibble on the nerves that were holding them in place. Basically, we experienced a violent regression which stemmed from her not wanting to go back to school. There was wetting of clothes several times a day and refusal to answer any questions.
We spoke to the School’s Social Worker because this was a trend we saw coming before the holiday break, but the end of the week I had an appointment with the Teacher.
That did not go well.
TheBubster hid in the closet when the Teacher spoke to her. Everything the Teacher told me had teh affect of, “Well, she’ll adjust…” or “She’ll change…” When we had been teaching our child to make decisions in her life; big decisions sometimes; several times a day, and suddenly she is in this place where its only what the Teacher says and only when the Teacher says, there was bound to be some revolt.
What did it for me was this story the Teacher told me about an exercise which was about teaching the kids to follow directions. The kids were going to learn how to draw a bear, TheBubster did not pay any attention to what was happening for half of the exercise, and when she was corrected, she looked at what the other kids were doing, and drew a bear. The Teacher said, “And you can’t tell from looking at her picture that she didn’t do the exercise.”
TheBubster is four. She wants to sit and read books. She wants to sit and read books. She won’t take a nap at naptime because that is the only time they will let her sit and read. She wants to play. She wants to paint and draw and basically be a kid while she is learning. We have fostered that in her by sending her to Montessori and Emilio Reggio style Schools. When the Teacher complained that TheBubster “wants what she wants when she wants it,” she was complaining about something we encourage in our child.
TheBubster will not return to that school. If we have to teach her ourselves, we will, however being that this is New York City, someplace with a population greater than the entire state of Connecticut, we will be able to find ourselves a nice little school that has the same sort of philosophy and that we all fit into, especially TheBubster.
Bud is still walking and has not stopped since he decided it was time to start.

Overheard on the couch

Bubster: why can you draw colors quicker than me?
N8K99: because I am better than you.
Bubster: Well, I can, can, kinda, reach apples from the tree, when , I am, uh, six.
N8K99: well, I can tickle elephants when I am….forty.