What we did: We made our own fun

I've been thinking about schooling, household chores, and habits, but first, I want to talk about fun.  Maybe I am writing this tonight because my brain feels like mush right now and anything particularly orderly is beyond me at the moment.  Why, you might ask, is your brain mush?  Well, today I taught on heredity, genes, homozygous and heterozygous genotypes, alleles and Punnet Squares and tomorrow it's Social Welfare Policy, Social Security, TANF, Medicare, means tests, majoritarian and client politics, blah, blah, blah ...  Wouldn't your brain be fried?  So, let's talk about fun.

What did we do for fun?  How about a hodge podge of memories in no particular chronological order or order of importance. (Is there another way to say that without repeating the word order?  Sorry, just wondering ...)

First of all, we didn't have a television.  Not really.  We were given an old clunker of a TV when Erin was about 6, but we lived in a valley between mountains with little television reception and we didn't want cable so the TV was used for watching an occasional movie. We bought a VCR player and checked kids' movies out of the library from time to time - you know, those old goodies like Winnie the Pooh and Robin Hood.  But screen time was very limited.

Instead of watching television, we had good quality toys that prompted hours of creative play.  Thoughtful grandparents gifted our children with Brio trains and track, legos, playmobil sets, wooden blocks, and other toys that stood the test of time and numbers.  Six kids used most of those toys.  They had to be sturdy and they had to invite imaginative play.  I still have most of those toys and they are still being used by little people who visit our house.  Clara, our granddaughter, was introduced to the trains when she was here last October.  I'm sure they will last through another generation of children.

Clara and Aunt Kay playing with our old trains

Instead of watching television, we went outside.  We lived on a quiet little street off our town's Main Street.  Behind our house were acres and acres of woods, and cornfields, with two rivers and a swamp.  The town tennis court, which was rarely used (because the college courts in town were nicer) was just behind our house.  We built a tree fort and hung tire swings.  We had a huge sandbox.  We had a wagon, trikes, bikes, sleds, ice skates, and cross-country skis.  We had a basketball goal next to the street.  With so much to do outside, why in the world would a kid want to come inside to watch television???

One of the favorite summer activities of my kids was flooding the sandbox.  Our sandbox measured about 12 by 6 feet and when it was filled with water, the kids would spend hours building dams, houses, and towns.  It was a bit of a mess, but oh my, how much fun they had with all that sand and water!  Is there anything more fun for a five year old boy than that?

The kids explored the woods and to this day, laugh about "Camp Dink-a-wawa" and the time their friend, Jonny fell through the ice.  We remember the big snapping turtle and clay covered bodies at the riverside and catching a woodchuck in a trap.

One winter, it rained and rained and our backyard flooded.  Then the weather turned cold and it froze and we had an ice rink that stretched across three backyards.  When it snowed, we could step out our back door and strap on skis and ski right out the backyard through the woods and cornfields.

Coty used to play "sports" with the kids when they were little, mostly baseball in the back yard.  It was all the kids against him and he had to hit and run and post "ghost runners" on the bases when he was at bat; when he was in the field he had to pitch, field, and try to get runners out.  It was great exercise for him and tons of fun for the kids, especially as they got better and could really give their Daddy a run for his money.

When the weather was bad, we had a basement.  It was a great place to play, ride big wheels and even roller blade. We would often go to the appliance store in town and pick up washing machine or refrigerator boxes that became houses or spaceships down in the basement.  Oh, I loved that basement.  Kids could just play and play and play and it never mattered if it was a mess because we never did anything down there but store a few boxes and do laundry.

I wish I could really describe that basement.  It had a big step between the old and new parts of the house aboe and an opening wide enough to serve as a stage.  We hung a curtain across it, lined up chairs in the lower section, and the kids put on plays - The Nutcracker, Aida, and plays they wrote themselves.  It also became the set for movies they filmed when Grammie came with her video camera and cousins were there to collaborate.  The first movie the kids made, "The Jeweled Necklace" is a family classic!

I wish my kids were sitting here beside me to tell me things they remember, because I'm sure they have better memories and stories than me.  The point is, the kids didn't sit in front of screens very much, we didn't pay for entertainment, and we didn't have too many structured activities. They just played, really played, indoors and out.  Looking back on all that, I know that it was a rather idyllic place to grow up - that house, that basement, that yard, that street, those woods and rivers. They had access to so much but really, we spent so little money on "stuff."  We made our own fun in so many ways back then.

There's more to say about friends and hikes and neighbors and our 4th of July parade and parties in the backyard and the library and swimming in ponds ... but I'll save it for another day.

What we did: We stayed home

When my children were small, we stayed home.  Imagine that.  We woke up in the morning, ate breakfast together, and did our jobs and schoolwork.  We stopped mid-morning for tea and a read-aloud, worked some more and then ate lunch.  Next it was quiet hour and then a bit more schoolwork for the older ones and then the rest of the afternoon outside.  Dinner together and then baths and the nighttime reading and telling of stories and then to bed.

As our children got older, of course there were the usual offerings of music lessons and sports.  Erin joined choir, Jonathan took piano lessons, Thomas guitar lessons, Andrew cello.  Matthew and Joel were still too young for lessons.  The lovely thing about where we lived is that it was a small, really small town, but it had a great, really great college.  That meant excellent teachers for all kinds of things, five minutes from my house.  I was very spoiled.  I could leave a baby napping at home with an older child keeping watch, drop a child off to a lesson and be back in a flash.  Very little car time.  I loved it.

Sometimes, when the children wanted to be involved in activities, we had to say no ... or wait.  I did not want to sacrifice family and home time to an endless round of practices and games. I didn't want to spend the entire day at the soccer field or basketball court with a baby in tow, so that everyone could play.  So, we compromised.  This season it's your turn.  Next season, it's his.  Now we'll come watch you practice and play. Next season, we'll all watch him.  Or, we persuaded Youth Center organizers to let us have our kids on the same team.  That worked for the two that were only twenty months apart.   Perhaps they'll say they were scarred by the experience, denied the opportunity to shine on their own, but people, it was a survival tactic.  I knew that if I had to be gone from home all the time, running to and fro, I would be a crazy woman and not the kind of mom my kids needed.

Since we were the only homeschoolers in town for a few years, there were no options for group activities like co-ops.  As the number of families learning at home grew, we started getting together from time to time, but we had no formal classes or co-op.  When we got together, it was to play, or put on a play.  Our basement was the stage for numerous child written, directed, and acted plays; our backyard, the stadium for our own version of the Olympics.

Don't get the idea that we never went anywhere - that we were some kind of weirdo recluses.  We visited friends and went hiking and swimming in the river together.  We were regulars at library story hour.  We went to concerts and got to know a lot of college students.  We visited neighbors - more on that in another post.  We were out and about.  But mostly we were at home

When I moved from that small, rural New England town to the suburban outskirts of a big NC city, I made a startling discovery.  People spent a whole lot of time in their cars.  Even those moms of young children who said they were homeschooling were in their cars - a LOT!  They were going to art class, science class, drama class, PE class, soccer, baseball, gymnastics, and orchestra.  They weren't homeschooling.  They were carschooling.  This was a little shocking to me.  Whatever happened to tea time and read alouds, to playing by the creek and bike riding, family meals and walks in the woods?  Somehow, listening to teaching CD's while finishing your fast food on the way to the next activity didn't strike me as conducive to family cohesion and the kind of learning life I wanted. (Yes, I know CD's are outdated.  But that's what it used to be. Now everyone has their own iPod and earbuds.  Even less family communication/cohesion as everyone is plugged in to their own thing)

It is true that, if you are homeschooling, there is great benefit as your kids get older to outside classes and co-ops.  We've been involved in our share since our move as our kids got older.  But I've always had to ask myself if the benefit of the class or activity is worth the investment of time running to and fro.  Often it is, especially with older children.  But with little ones, there wasn't much that trumped quiet, calm, orderly, creative, focused, free, work and play, indoor and outdoor time at home.

 

My good friend, Mary (front and center in the photo) just emailed this picture to me yesterday.

These are our old buddies in a group photo after our Treegano Olympics.  (TREE was the acronym for our group).  This must have been in 1998, around the time of the Nagano Olympics.

Can you find the Pinckney kids in this photo?  They're all in there!

What we did: Introduction

Whenever I visit my daughter, Erin, I run into a couple of young moms that I've known from before we moved away from New England.  When I knew them back then, they were very young moms with first babes.  Now, they are more experienced and have more children, three and five, to be exact.  That's a lot of diapers, sleep deprivation, first baby steps and birthdays.  Their mom-lives are busy and full as they each raise precious families.  Whenever I see them, they ask questions along the lines of "What did you do?" and "How did you ever do it?"  When I'm not around, they sometimes ask Erin, "What did your mom do?"

Photos unrelated to this post from recent visit up north

Our family is sort of "known" back there as the big family that homeschooled  (we have six children). We lived in a small college town - a fishbowl kind of town - where plenty of people know you and know your business.  I never minded that because, well, I didn't have anything to hide.  I couldn't hide anyway. I had the only 15 passenger van in town and people knew where I was whenever I went anywhere.

It's sort of funny now when I go back, to hear people talking about us.  My son-in-law, who works in our old town, gets interesting comments when people who meet him for the first time find out he is married to our daughter.  Oooooh, you're married to a Pinckney.

Anyway, back to the two young moms.  I've thought a lot about their questions since returning from my recent trip.  I've been wondering ... how did I do it and what did I do?  Time fuzzes the edges and I expect my memories have softened a bit.  What probably felt really hard back then feels nostagic-ly sweet these days ...babies that smiled and toddlers that played cheerfully and children that did their chores and finished their schoolwork with plenty of time to play peacefully outside and then come in for their baths and dress for dinner. Oh, wait ... that's not real life.  That's a fairy tale.  

The true story is that there were plenty of bumps in the road, discipline issues, smart mouth children (well, one anyway ; ), mishaps, mess-ups, frustration, exhaustion, occasionally the desire to run away to someplace quiet.  My dentist says that's why I showed up in his office for dental work.  I could sit and read pretty magazines without interruption.

I have more uninterrupted time these days so I thought I'd use some of it to share some memories of what we did.  This is not an advice series nor an attempt to advocate any particular style of homeschooling or living.  It is simply a recollection.  If you're a young mom looking for guidance; if you want a "how to" on child raising, organizing, etc. etc., you should go somewhere else.  (I'll share a few links at the end of this post)  If you just want to read a bit about how one family did it, some of our Ebenezer stories, read along ...

Julie and Mary Beth, and Erin, too, thanks for the spark.

A very few links because honestly, I don't spend that much time reading blogs about children and homemaking and schooling and all that jazz any more.  You probably know more good ones than I do. When I sit down to read online, other than my family members' and friends' writings, I mostly read quilt blogs these days!  But here are a few.  Feel free to share your favorites in the comments if you wish.  As my friend, tonia, says, we're all big kids here, so if you don't agree with everything, that's ok.  Read and glean.

Auntie Leila is very funny and thoughtful.  Check out the categories in her sidebar and you're sure to find something helpful, well-written, and wise.
Michelle and Stacey write about how they get through the day.  They have 8 young children, between them
Ann, of course, has many lovely posts on learning at home.
Susan is not writing her blogs any longer, but if you search them, you'll find some goodies on the learning atmosphere and home life.

The last detail ...

... the label, is now done!  

Thomas and Kay were married on January 1, 2011, hence the date.  

I like making these little labels - all hand stitched using fabrics scraps from the front of the quilt.  Maybe someday I'll really learn to embroider like my grandmother did.  Til then, these rather "rustic" little labels.

T and K came over tonight and we all sat around and talked while I finished the last little bit of hand stitching.  Tonight they will sleep under their wedding quilt!

Not quite ...

but I just have to show you!

There is still one little detail not quite finished.  I'll be sure and show that to you next week, because it's taking shape nicely and I love what it adds to the quilt.  But I just couldn't wait to show you the whole thing - pieced, quilted and bound.  Thomas and Kay's wedding quilt - each time I look at it, I love it even more! 

Al - most done!

 Rebecca, the long arm quilter who lives 5 minutes away, finished Thomas and Kay's quilt ahead of schedule.  She's so wonderful.  We both really loved the feathered curlique pattern for this quilt ...

Two March Madness tournament games, three episodes of Larkrise to Candlford, and the movie TinTin (not back to back!) provided the entertainment while I handstitched the binding.  I do love the gingham.   

In a day or so I'll show you the whole finished quilt.  I've got one more little touch to finish.  They didn't get it by their first anniversary, but they'll get it before one and a half! 

On this first day of spring ...

: : I went in the pool for the first time this year.  Really!  From the shallow end to the deep end and back.  It was cold but not terrible.  I might actually swim some laps tomorrow if it stays warm.  I've never been in the pool this early!

 : : The Lady Banks rose started blooming. It's full of buds.  Masses of delicate yellow flowers will soon cover this climber.

: : My students made models of chromosomes and demonstrated mitosis and meiosis ... and then they made pizzas.  All with play dough.  I think they learned a lot, and then they were just kids playing with play dough.

: : The redbuds are beautiful.  They are my very favorite flowering tree.  They aren't showy like the tulip magnolias and some of the flowering cherries around here.  I like them because they are a woodland tree.  They grow naturally in the shade of the tall oaks and hickories and splash their color in the understory.  Sometimes when you look out across the woods, you just see a wisp of pink ... floating.  When they leaf out, their heart shaped leaves are distinctive and lovely.

: : That verdant spring green is showing up everywhere - on the growing tips of the boxwood (in the foreground above), in the hostas emerging from the ground, in my front lawn which actually has grass growing all over it for the first time in years.  See it in the top corner of the photo above!  It makes me want to walk barefoot.

: : Joel's soccer team won.  Beautiful warm night.  I stood against the fence at the goal end of the field and watched with another mom.  We chased a few balls that went over the fence, too.  My boy did well.  It was a nice ending to the day.

Let's catch up a bit ...

Shall we?

Remember the pond pool in the backyard that we uncovered back in February.  It is now beautifully clear and a few brave souls have ventured in.  Actually, with the crazy warm temperatures we've had the past week, Coty's now doing somewhat regular pool running workouts.  Brrrrrrrr!  It's still too cold for me!

I returned from my New England/NY trip to a constant stream of company, all of which I have enjoyed, but I certainly haven't eased back into the routine here.  Oh no.  It was hit the ground running, in a get-to-the- grocery-store and refill-the-pantry, change-the-sheets-every-couple-of-days kind of way.

In addition to company, there was a day of visiting colleges last week - 3 in one day!  We started out the morning in Davidson and then headed to SC to visit PC (my dad and sister's alma mater) and then to Wofford, for a spring soccer game.  We snuck in dinner with my folks and Andrew before the game at a fun local grille in Spartanburg.  You know, fried pickles and sweet tea and waitresses that call you "honey."  Down home southern, with a bunch of good 'ole boys sitting at the bar.  It was all good food and good fun and I was so glad Mama and Daddy and Andrew could meet us.  They headed home and Joel and I headed to the soccer field at Wofford for a gorgeously warm evening of spring soccer complete with pink-tinged clouds as the sun set.  Really, really pretty.

We'll continue to visit colleges, meet with soccer coaches, take admissions tours, and explore the possibilities for Joel for fall of 2013.  And there are ID Camps - 2 this past weekend - for Joel.  Will he be a Terrier, Wildcat, a Blue Hose (yes, you read that right.  Boston has Red Sox, Presbyterian has Blue Hose), or something else???  Stay tuned ...
.  

Yesterday was Coty's birthday.  He got the requested birthday fruit trifle and we enjoyed a Sunday dinner celebration with family and friends.

Our dear friend, David Livingstone, visiting for the ninth year in a row to speak at Perspectives, helped us celebrate.  It is always good to have David here.

In biology class lately, we have dissected flowers ...

and a sheep uterus.  You might not have wanted to know about that last one.  Despite their initial apprehension, my students found this one really fascinating.

We keep up the best we can with our globe-trotting children.  Matthew took two weeks out of classes and went to India on a missions trip.  He visited some of the places where Coty always goes on his India trips and met our little friend, Nani, who was the first to greet Matthew when he arrived in Ventrapragada and the last to say good-bye when he left.

Jonathan and Kandyce are on the way back from their six month sojourn in India with the ISP.  They are currently visiting a friend in a desert oasis (really!).  Next stop after Egypt is Paris.  Pretty sweet second honeymoon, I'd say! 

 Kandyce's photo (thanks k)

I have adventurous children.  They come by it naturally, I think.  Coty and I have been the wandering barques, but for just now, I'm quite content to stay put ... for home to be the port, where my children (and others) can anchor for a time when they need a home cooked meal, an ear, a bed, or a porch swing to sit on.  The challenge is just in getting them all to sail our way at the same time!  

I continue daily quiet sitting outside - sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night.  Sunday morning was particularly beautiful.  The crescent moon was rising in the eastern sky, the outline of the poplar's nerve ending branches was fuzzed with the first new growth of spring leaves, and a lone cardinal began his morning calls.  More voices joined in and it occurred to me, as I listened intently, how certain sounds make me particularly happy - the cow lowing in the pasture beyond the woods, the barred owl hooting from down by the stream.  

That's enough catching up for now.  I've got this week's biology lesson to plan out here on the porch and then a walk to take.

Happy Monday, all!

AFTB

Yes, I've been AFTB (Absent From The Blog) again.

Instead of writing, I've been ...

: : enjoying a week away in beautiful western Massachusetts, eastern NY where houses are old, and sugar maples drip sap in early March.

the house where Erin and Luke were housesitting when I arrived...

Sugar maples across from Erin's house in NY

: : pushing a stroller with a very precious passenger along a country dirt road, looking across snow covered fields toward the gentle rolling mountains around, listening to owls, and hearing Clara say, "That's a birch tree, Gramma."

the view along Oblong Road, where Clara and I took our walks

: : reading Harold and the Purple Crayon with my little wake-up caller while snuggling in the bed each morning

: : continuing this year of solitude outside each day by sitting outside each night with a cup of tea, looking at the moon and Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades, hearing the wind shuuuuushing through the pines, petting Erin's sweet dog, Sadie, sitting by my side,

: : cooking, cleaning, rearranging with Erin,

: : sharing lunchtime picnics with Coty, Erin, and Clara in the living room and the yard,

: : visiting dear friends,

daughter, mother, mother/grandmother, daughter/mother, daughter/granddaughter!

:  :gazing at the view from Erin's front yard.  Oh, it's pretty country,

: : drawing on the driveway,

: : playing ball,

 : : just being Gramma and Mommy- and nothing else - for a little while.

PS - Another reason I stayed away from the blog for so long is that I was feeling intimidated by Post Number 1000!  As it stared me in the face back in February, before I went to Erin's, I just kept thinking I had to write something profound.  Problem is, I just wasn't feeling it.  I didn't have anything big or insightful or wise to say.  At least, not anything that seemed to warrant the title, Post Number 1000.  So, folks, this is IT -  the thousandth post.  Well, Erin and Clara helped me over that hurdle, didn't they?!  I suppose we can just move on now!