Photo updates

I've been posting on Instagram (http://instagram.com/homeontheridge) photos I take throughout the day, so that's a good place to check or follow us if you want to keep updated in a visual way. But I'll share a few good ones here.

Liam looking up a friend who works for UPS to see if we could arrange a tour of the warehouse.  He was going crazy asking- when will my package be here! and tired of saying, 'i don't have any effing idea!' I suggested we see if we can go down there and find out how the whole thing works. It's an outing still in the making, but we have a call in.

Raelin received a calligraphy kit for Christmas. She practices.

Family jam! This was Raelin's first try at just playing along with Kevin. I have a little recording. So sweet! And at times, so good! :)

Last week we took the new cross country skis out to Pineland Farms in New Glouster, knowing that the rains were coming this week. An awesome outing! Great groomed trails and the kids both did fantastic on the skis. We did about 2.5 miles, up and down lots of hills. They were champs.

We've been going to Sweet Tree Arts in Hope for Monday open studios. This week they had a monotype printing station.

Soft- dodgeball upstairs at Sweet Tree

still life drawing of airplane

coding, take one

Researching 'how to build a laser' 

In which Liam finds his flow..

Yesterday we joined a few other homeschool families for skiing at our great little Camden Snowbowl. The Snowbowl hosts 4th grade classes during the school day, and many schools join in the group program afterschool which offers discounted tickets, rentals, and lessons to students and their families. In the past, we have taken part with the school; this year we're going on Wednesday mornings as part of the homeschool group.

Liam took up snowboarding the winter he was 4; we put Raelin on skis when she was 3. She's been skiing all over the mountain for a couple of years, while Liam has been paying his dues on the little MiteyMite, taking the tow up a gentle slope and trying to hone some snowboarding skills before heading up the mountain.

The progress from his first to second winter was huge- last year you could see how much more confident and strong he was in his body. I felt pretty sure that this was the year that he would make it onto the lift. Of course, I planned to sign him up for a lesson. The morning we arrived, he refused the lesson. What? What do you mean, no lesson? To me, he needed more instruction on his turns, being able to slow down and move around other skiers. And stopping- important stuff. But nope. He absolutely did not want a lesson. Er, uh, ok. Fine. No lesson. I didn't want to make a scene, and I thought, hey- maybe he'll realize himself that he could use a lesson.

I could sense a place in myself of needing to let go and trust him to make his own decision. But of course, I still thought that what he would experience would deliver him to acquiesce to my own opinion: you need to be taught. As I watched him during the morning, his progress was obvious. He fell a lot, got right back up, was able to maneuver around obstacles and cruise in control to the tow line.
Ok, fine, i was happy. But surely... before he went up on the lift, he would need a lesson?

This week, we arrived and my intention was to work on my own snowboarding with Liam on the MiteyMite, but a strained wrist relegated me to skis. Liam was fine to do his MiteyMite laps on his own, so I took the lift up with Raelin to ski down. As I watched a beginner lesson of snowboarders on the hill and skied the terrain myself I thought... I think he might be ready to do this! Surely if he took a lesson, an instructor could give him just a few pointers and he'd be fine! I greeted Liam at the bottom and shared my thought.
What do you think, Liam? You ready to go up?
Yeah!
Ok, well, how about next week we get you a lesson and I bet the instructor will bring you up.
No, i want to go today.
Look, Liam, you've gotten much better, but I really think that you need an instructor... I'm not a           snowboarder...I don't think I can give you the best tips as you come down.
I don't care, I want to go today.

At this point, I thought, what's the worst that can happen? He scooches down on his butt? he falls a couple of times?

Ok- let's go!

We got in line for the lift, hopped on without a hitch, and managed to exit with little mishap.
As we headed down, I cautioned him to go slow- slower that you think you need to, I said, remembering his straight-down approach on the bunny hill. It was the longest continuous stretch he'd ever been on his board, and he fell often, wobbling and overcorrecting. But he stayed in control, and when we reached the final steep slope, he edged his way down without a problem.

He headed straight back to the lift line. Up again!

What happened between the first run and the second was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in one of my kids. He found his flow- that sweet spot between challenge and skill set and energized focus. It was clear that on the MiteyMite, he wasn't progressing because he wasn't challenged. He had to stop before he found his flow and get back on the tow again. With the whole mountain to ride, he could get continuous feedback to correct and experiment and put his skills to work.

It was awesome, and it blew me away.

Not just because it turned out that he's a way better snowboarder than I thought or had seen, but because *he knew what he needed.* Here I was, harping away at how someone else needed to teach him,  needed to tell him when he was ready to move forward, and to give him tips along the way.

He didn't need that at all. He needed the space, the time and then the opportunity to follow his own understanding of what he was ready for.

We finished off the day with a total of about 7 runs, most of them going through the mini-terrain park. He rode the lift with his buddies. He commented on his own success.

This is an experience that I will carry with me through our homeschooling- particularly when I find myself going back to that old standby 'But you need someone to teach you that!  Sometimes, it may be true. But it doesn't need to come from me. If I am supporting and allowing, then the kids will know.

To distract myself from thinking about confined whales...

I will post a bit about our first day. Seems like I should; there were a few sweet moments that I took careful note of, and there rest of it was just a nice, mellow flow.

Before the snow started in earnest, we made a trek down to our lovely Appleton Library.  We haven't been for months.  It gets back to that time thing. The Rockport and Camden libraries have more open hours, and being in town for afterschool activities, it was more convenient to stop there. It was great to get back to our local library, though, and Angie is so helpful. Liam is a great reader, and he loves books, but I have realized that he doesn't know how to choose one. How to meander the shelves, pull out one that looks interesting, and either accept it, or put it back. We talked a bit about that. Mostly he went for his old Star Wars graphic novel stand-bys. Which is fine. I put a few on his pile to take I thought he might like, but I am trying to hold back from this, honestly. If I keep feeding him books- how will he learn to do the browsing and choosing? I took out The Theif Lord by Cornelia Funke because they didn't have InkDeath (3rd of the InkHeart trilogy).  By mid-afternoon, Liam had me reading it aloud to him and so that was a win.

Raelin goes for the old books. She hauled over about 4 big guys about 2 inches thick apiece, each a treatise on an ancient civilization. I pointed out that it seemed a tall order to get through all 4 of them in three weeks, maybe. Maybe not. The final stack was a mixture of books she's read, Babysitter's Club, an Italian dictionary, and several old books on various non-fiction subjects.

Then she spent the afternoon beginning her study of Italian on a free kindle app she found. The coolest part of this was what I heard about it. She told me about why she liked this app; what was more appealing about it than the website she found earlier, and how she preferred to learn phrases over the vocabulary she had been learning in Spanish. And then she translated beginning Italian phrases for the better part of 2 hours.

One of the things that bummed me out was never hearing about what happened at school. I would get snippets, but not much. I heard some stuff from other parents, I gleaned a bit from homework. But i would never get- from Raelin, or Liam- a detailed review of what was being studied and what was great about it or hard about it or any variation in-between. It was just home- snack- leave me alone- homework- the day was fine... you get the idea. To actually have her volunteer information about what she's getting into and why and what she thinks about it? Priceless, really.

And so our day was pretty much that. A couple of thank-you cards were written. There was much lounging between reading sessions and Lego building. Toward the end of the day, Liam and I took on Khet (awesome laser/Egyptian inspired strategy game) he got for Christmas. After a few rounds of using the pre-sets, he started making up his own configurations and trumped me soundly several times.

In the meantime, I'm reading John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down, which I had back in my own stacks from college days. It's not for the faint-hearted. He doesn't mince words, and I had forgotten a lot of it, but its the perfect book to be re-reading as we are wading into this new way of being. He has a lot of good stuff to say and stuff you can take away, whether you have kids in school or not. But, more on that another day!