Smrt Lernins

The Tank has entered the next developmental phase in his art, adding hands, feet, and ears. That does not, of course, mean that he’s no longer including guns for fighting “enemies, bad guys, and bosses.” All the big dark blobs in the picture are various weapons that fire various substances, including “lavity,” which is like lava, only more powerful.

The angry rabbit-looking guy in the middle is my favorite. I want to call him Ralph. He looks like he’s giving a thumbs up, but he isn’t. That’s a gun.

Here is the artist himself, wearing his zebra head band from Zany Zebra Day (don’t ask). He’s also wearing his “specialty shorts.” Note the strategically placed smiley face sticker on the crotch. Yeah, I couldn’t explain that, either.

With the exception of the SEE homeschool co-op, we haven’t really done activities outside of our academic curriula (math, science, history, language arts). We were just getting started with homeschooling and I wasn’t sure what we could handle, so I erred on the side of too little, rather than too much. Now we’re finishing up our first semester, and I have a better feel for what Captain Science is able to balance, schedule- and work-wise, so it’s time to start adding in some other things.

I wish we had the money in our budget for Captain Science to take classes through Master’s Academy, which, though definitely not secular, offers some fantastic classes in the arts. Unfortunately, that’s just not affordable for us this year.

Luckily, my great aunt has recently moved into town and happens to be an accomplished pianist and piano instructor. In January, she’s going to start teaching Captain Science piano. He’ll start with two lessons a week and has been promised that he can take an additional class in electric keyboard once he has learned his scales and the basics of piano playing. He was a little reticent at first, until he heard Great-great Aunt Elaine would be teaching him, and now he’s excited and keeps pestering me to let him start before the new year. Glad you’re stoked, kiddo, but I’ll need to revamp our schedule a bit before we can start that!

I’m also hoping to start him in a foreign language (probably Japanese). We have an old friend of the family who may be dating a woman from Japan who is also a Japanese instructor, so that’s one possibly avenue for that. Alternately, our local high school has had a great Japanese language program for many years and may have some one who could tutor Captain Science in Japanese.

Finally, my mother suggested adding arts and crafts into our schedule, rather than just feeling bad that I don’t make time for it. I think that sounds like a good idea. I would like to pick one day a week where we do some time of at least vaguely directed crafting or art work of some time. I’m going to pull out my craft project books and try to remember some of the best stuff we did in Girl Scouts. Paper making springs to mind. I think he’d enjoy that!

I’m really looking forward to the ways in which we can flesh out our homeschool experience with the addition of more outside instruction and artistic experiences.

I’m not a very crafty parent, which is somewhat incongruous, as I am a crafty person. I sew, knit, crochet, make Waldorf-style dolls, dabble at quilting, but I don’t really do kid crafts. It should come more naturally than it does, because I’m also a 12-year veteran of Girl Scouting, including several years as a camp counselor to 2nd and 3rd graders. I know how to finger weave, make paper bag hand puppets, make my own candles and all of those great crafts, but it just never occurs to me to do them.

I never sit down and think, “Gee! I sure would like to have the kids make their own crayons today!” I don’t make tomato sauce and make that mental leap to, “Wouldn’t it be fun to use this as finger paint on butcher paper?” I seldom, if ever, come up with holiday, seasonal, or weather related craft ideas on the fly. Even things like painting and working with clay don’t pop into my head as an idea for filling time. The Tank came home from preschool yesterday wearing a beautiful necklace made from dyed, dry pasta of different shapes and sizes, and I never, ever would have thought to make something like that.

Why are some parents like that and others aren’t? I have friends who routinely set up seasonal sensory tables for their children, who make their own playdough on a whim, who always have an idea for something like paper pumpkins or turkeys to provide holiday-relevant activities, who festoon their mantels with garlands made from paper leaves colored and cut out by their children. I’m an intelligent person. I daresay that I’m at least a moderately creative one. I like to think I’m even a fairly fun mom at times. Why don’t I even think about making designs from glue and shaking cinnamon and glitter on to them? Why don’t I make felt “paper” dolls with my kids? Why don’t we make and bind our own books?

Am I missing a creativity gene? A parenting gene? Am I somehow wrong-thinking and a right-thinking parent would do these things? I feel guilty when I see all the crafts my friends do with their children, because I worry that my kids are missing out on some special part of childhood that a better or more progressive/involved parent would offer them. I don’t remember my mother providing us with endless craft activities as we grew up, at least, not outside of Girl Scouts. I always thought that was what Scouting was for. My boys don’t do Scouting (Captain Science tried, but we quit half a year in, because it was every bit as bad as I’d thought it would be, and then some). I know I’ll want to lead a Girl Scout troop for Babypie at some point, and I’m sure we’ll do make all the milk carton ice candles, clothespin reindeer, and paper plate masks there that a little girl could desire, but what about my boys? Are they going to suffer and be uncreative individuals for a lack of crafting in childhood?

How do I find the motivation for this? Do I even need the motivation for this? Will macaroni jewelry be the dividing line between the wise and the foolish, the enlightened and the worldly, the creative and the dull? Does so much depend upon a tissue paper mosaic of a red wheelbarrow, glazed with homemade finger paint, beside the pipe cleaner chickens?

Captain Science’s canopic jars with notes taken at the Carlos Museum:

The Tank was asked to draw a picture of his family. He drew himself and Captain Science. The Captain is on the left, with “a whipper” (ie. a whip), and The Tank is on the right, with “two arm guns.” Niiiiice.