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2006-12-21 - (Mamma)

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�tis the season!!!

Happy Solstice, everyone!!

Here we are at the end of 2006. I am still trying to figure out where 2001 went. Rod tells me that it�s �Old Timers� disease. Probably so�

This has been an extremely busy season for us � since, oh, Samhain at the end of October.

Jack and I have been spending a lot of time up in the craft room painting and creating � what with Yule Cards, gifts, and wrapping paper to make, it�s been a busy time.

A week ago, Rod and Jack did their annual Santa gig. Last year they volunteered at my company�s holiday kids party and this year they were at Fantasy Forest, raising money for Food Gatherers. Rod wears the Santa costume and sits with the kids on his lap, while Jack runs around in his elf costume. This year, I got to take a more active role, too, in that the folks at Fantasy Forest graciously allowed me to play photographer. I loved that, and we�re seriously considering having costumes made for Rod and I so that we can volunteer more.

Of course, when you sit with a hundred children who have waited eagerly for months to sit with Santa for a few minutes, the odds are good that you�ll catch something, and this year was no different. Rod and Jack both came down with the Norovirus within a couple of days of the Santa gig. And we all came down with colds. And now Jack has conjunctivitis. Oh well � it was well worth it to see the kids, including Jack, having such a good time.

Rod just amazes me; he makes a fantastic Santa! This year, there were far fewer children than last year and everything was much more relaxed, so Rod was able to take his time with the kids. He chatted at length with many of them and even managed to win over several children who were completely horrified in the beginning so that they hopped into his lap eagerly by the end of the day!

This is great! Not only is it fun, but it gives us an easy way to deal with the whole Santa question. I could never bring myself to lie to my kids about Santa and pretend he was �real�. This way, Jack is getting to see the Santa thing from behind the scenes and it will make the eventual discussions much easier. He won�t have any trouble understanding the ways in which Santa is real � as the spirit of generosity and contribution - -and the ways in which he is �pretend�. It makes for some really cute family photos, too!

We also tried our hands at making a gingerbread house this year. That was a spectacular, but hilarious, catastrophe!

It all started when I stopped by Ikea to buy some Anna�s Gingerbread house kits. Then we invited some friends of ours to come over and play after work one day. It turns out that shipping gingerbread from Sweden to the US is not without its hazards, and both kits had several broken pieces. (Note to self � next year get at least one extra kit) We gamely gave it a go anyway.

As you can see, Nerida and Connor had a reasonable success, but Jack and I clearly don�t have the knack. In my own defense I will point out that Nerida is an engineer. Yup, that�s it. She�s an engineer, that�s why their worked! (Well, ok. Maybe not.)

Our next big adventure will be on Saturday when a dozen dear friends join us to call back the sun, and then on December 24, assuming we�re all healthy, we�ll bring cookies to the folks at the local nursing home. A lot of the people there are all but forgotten all year. It takes so little to give them a reason to smile on a day when they have had little else to smile about! One day I�d like to have a big enough group to carol while we�re there, but this year that may work out anyway � we�re told that another group is also having an event then and perhaps we can join them in singing�

It�s funny. For years and years and years, I *hated* the winter holidays.

I suppose it started in late childhood, when I used to be so disappointed that reality never met up with the expectation nurtured by the popular media. It took me years to realize that it wasn�t reality that was �wrong�. By then I had two children who always spent the holidays with my ex. While that had been my idea, because he celebrated the holidays and I didn�t, and I never really minded, it certainly did nothing to make the holidays more appealing. Any glimmer of interest I might have felt was quickly squashed by the fact that I�d be spending the holidays alone anyway. It was a great time for catching up on my reading.

Gradually, as the years past, and I spent more and more years away from the popular media, I went from extreme irritation at the fuss to finding some parts of it appealing. Many of the carols really are lovely, and anything that familiar from that far back has to be wonderful, right? And many of the decorations � especially the Victorian style ones, really are utterly gorgeous!

When Rod, and then Jack, entered my life and I had a family with whom to celebrate, I found that I gradually got more and more excited as the winter holidays approached. I started sending out holiday greetings, and baking cookies. Then I started to do some minor decoration � basically only the mantle, but it got a little more crowded every year. Then we started taking cookies to the nursing home, and then doing the Santa gigs. As Jack has gotten older, the holidays have grown and grown and have seemed ever more fun.

Jack

Jack continues to amaze me!

When Rod and I first started discussing how we would go about educating Jack, neither of us was particularly taken with the idea of unschooling. I had read some of John Holt�s early works, and am certainly influenced by them, but Rod and I are both more inclined toward the Charlotte Mason and Classical Education styles.

But the longer we have watched Jack, the more I have come to understand that unschooling really is a viable alternative. Because we planned from the beginning to homeschool, we made an effort to remain alert to Jack�s interests and to talk to him about everything. Without any formal �schooling� at all, Jack taught himself to read before his third birthday, taught himself to tell time by the age of three and a half, taught himself to count and is in the process of �inventing� addition. All we have done was to answer his questions, and when he expressed an interest, we have provided the tools to explore that interest. That�s what unschooling is.

To clarify, I didn�t have anything against unschooling. I know that kids can�t express an interest if they�re never exposed to an idea � and unschooling isn�t the same as ignoring your child�s education. Parents work hard in unschooling to expose their kids to a vast number of things they might like to explore. I understood that. I guess I just didn�t really grok how beautifully it works!

Whatever one�s educational philosophy, unschooling is the right approach for a three year old, and we�re going to stick with it for now. Later, when it�s more suitable, we�ll concern ourselves with copybooks and narration and transcription. But I am truly amazed how fertile a young child�s curiosity is, if it�s always fed as soon as possible after it�s expressed.

Jack is also showing a lot of interest in ASL lately, signing to me about a lot of the things we do together � I�m doing my best, but I think it�s probably a good idea to find someone more fluent so Jack can learn properly. (He�s also very interested in Swedish, and we�re using Rosetta Stone and my memory for that � but I know he�ll get a lot of stimulation and built-in correction when we visit with Bella and Leo, so I don�t worry so much about that.)

It�s been a quiet day at work, but I see that the work day is over. Happy solstice again, everyone! Maybe with a week off and few plans, I can manage a few more blogs in the next few days!


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