Fenugreek Tea & This Week’s Blog Excuse

I am still getting the hang of blogging. Obviously I have let my blog languish too long without new entries. Partly the fault lies with me – I have to get into the groove of setting myself regular, frequent deadlines. Partly the fault lies with the bugs my body has been trying to fight off all week.

Pinecone Art, Crummy Neighborhoods, and Other Elements of a Successful Reading Lesson

The Southwest Homeschool Network asked me to give a presentation for parents of Reluctant Readers for their conference last weekend. I don’t live with a reluctant reader anymore (he turned into a book-lover, grew up and left home) so I am lucky to have one who comes and visits me to remind me all about it. J is a first-generation American 12-year-old from a Spanish-speaking home, and he recently had to make the switch from a bilingual program at school to all-English. He told me once how discouraged he felt with it, so I said he could come once a week and we’d see what we could do.

J spent the whole evening here last Wednesday. A lot of that time didn’t seem to have a thing to do with reading, but as I recalled that evening in the light of preparing for my presentation, really it ALL had a lot to do with reading. For example, when J’s mom drove him to my house, she had most of the family with her – four kids and her 80-year-old father. She and her teenage daughter needed to talk to me in the kitchen, so Grandpa stretched out on the grass under the mulberry tree in the front yard, and J ran off to the back yard with his two little sisters. There they found our granddaughters’ abandoned makeshift sandbox, their plastic containers, and a bucket of water. So they made a fancy cake out of wet sand in one of the plastic containers. They smoothed it and decorated it with pinecones – very artistic. And then of course, they had to show it to me when I finished talking to their mom. And of course, we conversed about it.

That’s where the first reading connection came in.

Bladder Moments

I was telling my hairdresser today about our visit with our granddaughters. “You can tell that Tweety (age 4) has two scientists for parents,” I told her. “I was taking the two little girls to the back of the property to sit in Great-Grandma’s glider, and I told Tweety we had to slow up for her little sister because I can’t pick up Doodle (almost age 2).”

Tweety: Why can’t you, Grandma?

Me: Well, the doctor told me I shouldn’t pick up anything over 20 pounds, and Doodle weighs more than that.

Tweety: Why, Grandma?

Me: Well, my bladder is in the wrong place.

Hairdresser: So she asked you what a bladder is?

Me: No, she didn’t. She knew. I just said my bladder was in the wrong place and the doctor tried to fix it with surgery, but the stitches pulled out. She didn’t say another word about it, but she must have been thinking about it through the afternoon. That night at supper time, we were all sitting at the table eating and talking, when there was a little lull in the conversation, and in the silence Tweety asked in a worried tone, “How do you pee, Grandma?”

How many 4-year-olds would know what a bladder does, and then put two and two together that way? Scientifically informed or not, though, all 4-year-olds do seem to have an exquisite sense of time and place for asking really personal questions.

Cheap Fun at Grandma’s: Makeshift Sandbox

Playing in the rocks in the driveway or messing around in a little makeshift sandbox that Dennis made for them in an old plastic drawer are other activities that keep our visiting 4-year-old Tweety and 2-year-old Doodle absorbed and happy for hours. I bought them some little trowels and rakes at Wal-Mart, and it was money well spent. But if I hadn’t made the trip to Wal-Mart, they would have stayed just as happy with old spoons and plastic containers. They got pretty dirty, of course. That’s one thing about pre-schoolers…the activities that keep them happiest seem to be messy.

I remember when my own kids were preschoolers, on rainy days I used to let them play in an indoor “sand”box, which I made by pouring 5 or 10 pounds of cornmeal into a plastic dishpan. It kept them happily occupied for long spells. When they finished playing in it, I had a little sweeping to do to clean up, but I thought a little sweeping was a small price to pay for the luxury of being able to focus on my own project for a half hour without interruptions. Later, after my kids had outgrown indoor sandboxes, a friend showed me her version, which used unpopped popcorn kernels for the sand. Running my fingers through that popcorn was a tactile delight. I think if I had small children around a lot today, I’d go for the popcorn sandbox.

Cheap Fun at Grandma’s: Water Painting

Our two granddaughters (ages 4 and 2) are visiting from Colorado with their parents. The weather was warm, so I let them paint with water outdoors. I found a couple old paintbrushes to give them along with a bucket of water. They were happy all morning painting the sidewalk, the trees, the old rusty wagon, and the big plastic water cooler. The next day a 3-year-old friend of ours came over, and they had just as much fun water painting with her for a second morning. We added sidewalk chalk to the mix for a little variety, and they really enjoyed washing off the chalk marks they made. Water painting is wonderful, cheap entertainment for preschoolers, and it doesn’t require much adult supervision. You just set up the materials, and the little ones find things they want to paint. They will spend hours at it, contented, satisfied, and absorbed.

Over the years my family has enjoyed many fun water activities.