Author's Fair 2014

Well, they did it:

After many, many, MANY hours of work, the girls finished their "Book of Months" project. The final book is very sweet, with words & illustrations showing our life as a family over the course of a year. They finished it just in time--as in about 30 minutes before I needed to go help host our school's table at the annual Author's Fair!

This year the table was almost embarrassingly weighted towards our family's contributions.  For some reason there were far fewer families participating this year--and so Terry, my wonderful E.S. asked if they could have all our previous years' books, as well as the group projects I led for the Vintage Homeschool kids (most of the families attend our charter) to show, to ensure the table display was well filled.  It was a good thing we did, because the girls counted--and 11 out of 21 books on the table were from our family/my leadership!

 

 

 

A sweet book Sunny made this year for her sister Merry, for her birthday.  (The sticky-notes you see on various books are from nice comments people can choose to leave on the books for the young authors. : ) Below that, one of our older but favorite books, in which my and my dear Becky's girls created poetry in response to the trees at a local state park filled with majestic redwoods.

On top, the "Wild Cats of the World" book the girls made together a year or two ago, full of facts and drawings.  Under that, "The Life of Our Trash," another collaborative project from last year or the year before.

One of my favorite Vintage Homeschool kids projects--"What's Above and What's Beneath."

Another favorite Vintage Homeschool kids project--a book of sensory immersion guided poetry, with watercolor collage artwork.

 

In this picture: Seven Evans, the first chapter book Sunny wrote.  Then a very early book we made about a visit to a California Gold Rush town.  Then in the back the very first book we ever wrote--what we call the Preamble Book (in which Sunny interpreted the lines of the Preamble as they might look lived out in our house).  Then, on the right middle, the Vintage Homeschool kids book from last year, "What Is It? A Book of Nature Riddles."

I must admit, it was really fun to see the progression of the kids' writing and artwork displayed together, and be reminded of how much I love to lead the group book projects.  I'm already looking forward to next year's ideas!

Book Week

OK, so it is technically a school week. But mentally I'm finishing Spring Break!  So we are having a relaxing week, with a theme: Book Week. 

The first part of Book Week is a project we started over a year ago--our Book of Months. Each girls is making a book that walks through each  month of the year, describing what is special about that month, our family traditions for events that month, etc. The books may end up in the heirloom category--certainly for the amount of time the girls are spending on each highly detailed page of illustration!  But now the annual county-wide Author's Fair is upon us, and even though we started this project about 16 months ago, the girls are FAR from being done. I'd say they are only 1/3 of the way through their illustrations, with even less of the writing done.  This is with the project getting at least 30 minutes of work almost every school week since!  I am so glad my girls are engaging with the project so fully, and that they are making such meaningful illustrations--but I refuse to let the project go on another year!  Esp. because they have grown as people and artists over the course of the time we have worked on the project, so that they have started being dissatisfied with the drawings they made earlier and have then discarded them and started over.  A fine artistic choice, but one that could well lead to this becoming a perpetual book project!  So, forcing my children to labor over their drawings for hours at a time is the first goal of Book Week.

Perhaps it is appropriate that we just finished learning about illuminated manuscripts and the monks that made them--the children can at least be thankful they have a warm room to work in, they don't have to grind up their own coloring agents, and they are allowed to speak while working. Heck, they can even suck on some Easter candy while they work. Whatever will keep them happily working on it!

The second part of Book Week is even more fun: reading, reading, reading!

We do not own many pieces of furniture (understandable in a house our size!) but we have two big cherry bookcases we bought when we first got married.  One faces the front door, and holds more "school-y" books.  (I'll have to show you in another post.) This one faces the living room, and holds mostly fiction, with some non-fiction picture books mixed in. 

Sunny asked a month ago if we could spend Spring Break reading through the bottom two shelves of this bookshelf--the favorite picture books she doesn't really get much chance to read anymore, but which still give so much pleasure.  I thought that was a great goal! 

These are the two shelves we are reading through this week--most of our picture book collection.

 

This is starting at the right of the top shelf, which has picture books geared to a slightly older child (or the taller books that don't fit on the bottom shelf). Normally I enjoy keeping the shelves somewhat organized first by genre, then by author, with size variables accounted for--I know, I know--but with the crazy reading going on this week, they are currently a happy, disheveled mess.

Favorite titles from this first pic:

Homeplace

The Biggest Bear

The Scrambled States of America

Small Beauties

A Child's Calendar

This version of Snow White

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

Lion

Yes, I am such a book nerd that I am going to show you ALL the books. Some of them are special friends, which is why I'm introducing you by name.

The Tale of Three Trees

The Fourteen Bears Summer and Winter

The Long and Dangerous Journey

Moses

A Time to Keep

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch

Of course if you no longer have kids in this stage of life, you will be glazing over at this point. But if you love books, or memories of when your kids were young, or if you just want to snoop at my bookshelves just like you would if you came over sometime, here you go!

The Velveteen Rabbit (I'm not sure my edition is the best out there--so many versions of this story have gorgeous illustrations!--so I didn't link it)

This version of Little Red Riding Hood. I'm a fan of this author's work, and have quite a few on the shelf  by her.

This edition of Beauty and the Beast (alas, out of print and highly collectible--sounds like the affordable paperback is a shortened version)

The Maggie B

A Fairy Went a Marketing

Hiding over against the bookshelf wall to the right are the fragile antique books my mother has passed down to us from her own childhood. I keep them tucked away behind Stuart Little just so little hands don't grab them automatically. Out of sight, out of mind. ; )

The Kitchen Knight

The Water Hole

Now we get to the bottom shelf, with the books geared more for the earlier readers, and the books shorted in height.

George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends

This version of Mother Goose

Tuesday

The Giant Jam Sandwich

The Adventures of Mole & Troll

The Little House

Cookies: Bite-Sized Lessons

Norman the Doorman

Mama, Do You Love Me?

The Marble Cake Cat

As you can probably guess, a lot of these books are from my childhood.  : )

The Frog and Toad Treasury

Let's Look at the Jungle

The Fire Cat

The Best Loved Doll

Bears in the Night

The last books on the shelf to the right are not in the picture because they are large and have to lay on their sides--mainly Smiley's collection of Richard Scarry books. Those are favorites of mine just because they occupy him for good lengths of time while I'm helping his sisters with school. : )

Child of Faerie, Child of Earth

The Hat

Eloise Wilkins Treasury


Some of these books made me smile just reading the titles.  : )  I am only specifically mentioning my favorite favorite of those on the shelves.  But all the books on the shelves have to meet at least two out of my four criteria for what is worth the precious in-house real estate:

* The story has to be well-written.
* There should be something the child learns from the story, or it should broaden the child's mind, or ignite imagination in some specific way.  In other words, it has a greater meaning beyond the story itself.
* The illustrations should be exemplary.
* Or the book should be especially nostalgic for me, or someone special gave it to us.
* Bonus points if it makes me smile or cry every time I read it.

I have a loathing for pointless stories and silliness for silliness's sake.  I abhor twaddle.  It makes me so sad when an excellent story is printed with lame, uninspired artwork.  Yes, I'm a book snob.  But that does not mean I'm too picky--there are some books I love that have very silly elements (The Giant Jam Sandwich is a prime example)  but there is something about them that is clever and whimsical too. And condition does not bother me either, as long as pages are not falling out (and I can't just tape them back in) or the book is molding--what's inside the book is way more important than the outside. Often, the best books are no longer in print, so I am perfectly willing to put up with ragged old books if need be! 

There are a lot more excellent books on our shelves I'm not specifically mentioning because they are considered childhood classics (like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Where the Wild Things Are, and Madeline's Rescue.)  I just wanted to share with you some of the titles that you might not be familiar with. 

I also have a LOT more books in bins under the house. Most of them are more educational in nature, so have been separated and stored according to subject.  But there are also just a lot of good books that were not *quite* worth the in-house shelf space, but which I can't quite part with.  And a bin of broken books that require serious mending, but which I am sorry to part with (or can't replace). And a box of books to take to add to our little homeschool library we are starting at church. And a box of books to eventually give away. Ahem.

Have I mentioned that I love good books?

Happy Reading everyone!

(And if you have a favorite favorite picture book you want to recommend, please share it in the comments!)

am i?

After our first Musical Monday Morning today (thank you, Willow, for coming to hang out and play : ), I stopped by Starbucks to get a chai, since the Abbey is not yet open on Mondays. I hate ordering my chai at Starbucks, because when I use their lingo I sound SO high maintenance:
"Yes, I'd like a grande, two-pump, no-water, non-fat chai please."
I always imagine the baristas are rolling their eyes at me, even if just in their minds.

At the Abbey, where the same lovely young people are working every time I stop in while G is in martial arts, they know what I want and I don't even have to say it. In fact, on Sunday mornings when I send D in to get it for me--he gets a quad espresso, which sure sounds like it would say a lot about him, although I am not sure what--he just has to ask for a "Lisa chai" and they whip it up with a smile.

Basically, it is a large chai with about half of the usual chai syrup/mix so it is less sweet, and with all milk, instead of milk and water, so it has more protein, and skim milk so it has less fat. See, it is logical and better for me, and so tasty!

But I think I know another reason why I squirm internally when I order my chai. C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, says is so much better than I could, as the demon Screwtape instructs his nephew Wormwood on how to get the human to whom he is assigned enslaved to himself through gluttony:

Chapter XVII

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great, achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient's mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sign and a smile "Oh please, please...all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast". You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, "Oh, that's far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it". If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.

The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things "properly"—because her "properly" conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as "the days when you could get good servants" but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table. Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn't mind what she eats herself but "does like to have things nice for her boy". In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years.

Now your patient is his mother's son. While working your hardest, quite rightly, on other fronts, you must not neglect a little quiet infiltration in respect of gluttony. Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the "All I want" camouflage. Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really "properly" cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence—it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes—"puts him out", for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.

Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity. On that, as on every other subject, keep your man in a condition of false spirituality. Never let him notice the medical aspect. Keep him wondering what pride or lack of faith has delivered him into your hands when a simple enquiry into what he has been eating or drinking for the last twenty-four hours would show him whence your ammunition comes and thus enable him by a very little abstinence to imperil your lines of communication. If he must think of the medical side of chastity, feed him the grand lie which we have made the English humans believe, that physical exercise in excess and consequent fatigue are specially favourable to this virtue. How they can believe this, in face of the notorious lustfulness of sailors and soldiers, may well be asked. But we used the schoolmasters to put the story about—men who were really interested in chastity as an excuse for games and therefore recommended games as an aid to chastity. But this whole business is too large to deal with at the tail-end of a letter,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

High maintenance. . . or enslaved to my tastes?

ouch.

Something to think about next time I am sipping my Lisa chai.

Loving Acts of Service Pt 3

Marc Chagall. The Birthday. 1915. Oil on cardboard. 80.5 x 99.5 cm. The Museum of Modern Arts, New York, NY, USA

This is one of my all time favorite paintings, which I first saw in person at the MOMA while visiting during college. I don't even know why it caught me so instantly when I first saw it so many years ago, but I had a little revelation today about why the image has stuck with me all these years.

I have mentioned already a couple of times in this blog some phrases that I meant to get back to and explain. This past Christmas D's grandma bought me a copy of the book by Gary Chapman called "The Five Love Languages." I am sure many of you have heard of this idea (the cover proclaims that it was a NYT bestseller), and some of you have read the book. I had heard about it for a while, but scorned the idea that a book that sounded so trite and simplistic (which it is, in a few places) could offer anything of lasting significance to my marriage.

Oh, how the proud are quickly felled. I read the book and not only needed to hear some of what it had to say, but will go so far as to recommend it to any of you readers. Don't run out and buy it or anything, but you can borrow mine! I did not really learn anything new, per se, but I saw what I already knew in new light, with new implications for marital harmony. There are too many interesting thoughts to note here, so I will just mention a few. I think my two primary love languages are "Loving Acts of Service" and "Words of Affirmation." Oddly enough, I am hesitant to declare these unequivocally my love languages, because I have wondered if the first one is more a result of our current lifestyle (no bathroom sink for 2 months = unlove, no matter what your love language! anything D does to improve our home does make me feel loved and taken care of, but would I feel it so strongly if we lived in a house without so many things needing work?), and if the second is really true or just based upon the assumption that since I am naturally verbose and give words of affirmation to my friends, then that must be what I desire in return. You know, we tend to show love to others in the ways we want to receive it.

Anyway, I guess it does not really matter what the two main ones are. I do feel loved when people do something to show love for me.

And this brings me back to the painting. Now I wonder if this is a clue to my love languages too. Looking at it today, I think it demonstrates the husband loving his wife through "Loving Acts of Service," literally "bending over backwards" to show her his love with flowers on her birthday. For me the bending emphasizes his actions, not the gift itself--getting her the flowers was the gift, not the flowers themselves, if you can see my subtle distinction. It is clear his heart is full of estatic love at that moment, and he wants to DO something to show her his love. And for some reason I like that the moment is not necessarily mutual--that she is surprised by his outpouring, even a little taken aback. She is receiving, not reciprocating, and the warm blush of love will come later.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

This idea of love languages is also helpful when thinking about parenting, of which I have doing a lot recently. I will quote now from the book:

Dr. Ross Campbell, the sypchiatrist who first told me about the emotional love tank, says that in his many years of treating adolescents who have been involved in sexual misconduct, he has never treated such an adolescent whose emotional need for love has been met by the parents. His opinion was that almost all sexual misconduct in adolescents is rooted in an empty emotional love tank. . . .

Do the parents, in fact, love that teenager? In the majority of cases, they do. Then what's the problem? Very likely, the parents never learned how to communicate love in a language the child could understand.

As probably all parents do, I fear I will somehow "mess up" my kids "for good." So now I am trying not only to figure out what my children's emotional love languages might be, but also to gear my parenting (including discipline and comforting) towards that child's recognition of love. Since I am not sure, I am also trying to show love to the girls using all the love languages: Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Loving Acts of Service, Quality Time, and Gifts. So far I think G is reached most by words and gifts, M by touch and maybe quality time, B . . . probably quality time? and E seems to definitely demand quality time (I don't just mean because he is a baby--he really wants eye contact and physical attention). And so far it seems this awareness is helping the atmosphere here at home. For example, when M is acting out and being purposefully annoying to her sisters and not heeding my warnings, instead of allowing the negativity to escalate to the usual consequence--one swat on the rear, which must be emotionally painful to a child who receives love through physical touch, even if the swat itself is not hard--I am trying to view her acting out as a sign that her emotional love tank (like a gas tank in a car, in the book's lingo) is empty, and I try to fill it with a moment of positive touch (cuddling, tickling, etc.). At least for that child, it seems to be working.

And if you can figure out your child's love language(s), then in theory you can also stave off the negativity altogether. The idea--which comes from an excellent video we rented from Netflix called "The Happiest Toddler on the Block," by Dr. Harvey Karp--is called "feeding the meter." Dr. Karp says that you should give attention to your child briefly but frequently throughout the day, to help the child feel loved and connected to you--because a child who feels loved and connected to you will not act out. I think Dr. Chapman's love languages would fit really well into this idea, since a parking meter in Canada would not accept the same coinage as one in Santa Cruz. Paying the meter is the specific purpose--but what you put into it depends on where you are. So I will feed M's meter differently than B's, etc.

Another horrendously long posting! But these are things that float around in my mind for weeks at a time while I am processing. . . and if it sticks with me for that long, I figure it might be worth sharing.