Chores Galore

For years our family has struggled to find a good method for training the kids in the basics. Countless ideas have been tried and have either quickly or slowly fallen apart. My sister is a crazed fan of Melissa and Doug, so when there is a display of their toys I always check to see if there is something she'd like. Barnes and Noble has started carrying them, so I looked it over and found a magnetic chore chart. Being me, I set it aside and thought about it for three or four weeks. Burned by other systems, I bought one and let Kurt look it over. He liked it, so I let the sample sit for another three or four weeks while I thought about it some more. In the end, Amazon had the best price and I bought one for everybody.
The kids love it. We love it, and best of all things are going better. The feature I was least enthusiastic about--the white board--has become one of it's best assets allowing us to penalize negative behavior and the kids an opportunity to express themselves. Since we bought six boards there are enough disks for each child to have their favorite color, which allows us to use the currently unused disks to reward random acts of goodness and full completion of all required tasks.
Discipline is now much more uniform. It's negative one for disobedience; negative two for physical violence; and negative three for protracted disobedience aka laziness. Everybody knows the deal. Kurt's natural flair for statistics has turned what was a bogged down emotional conflict into a simple set of numbers earning rewards and punishments in a very even-handed way.
Things I like about the board. The magnets dress things up and are more permanent that stickers or check-off write and wipe boards. The white board as I've described above, and it is easy to keep clean and organized. The list of chores includes things my older children do as well as simple jobs for the little ones. There are blank tags for adding your own chores. The price is good value for money. It's available at Amazon, Here.

forget the can

I'll open my worms by the pound! This year we're studying early modern history and zoology as well as the usual language arts and mathematics. Zoology is bound to be the most fun, as I studied it in college and I love anything related to biology. We already have two little frogs in a largely self-contained eco-system named Tom and Fred. I'm sure that we'll have lots more fun, but next up is vermicomposting. I've done it on a small scale before, but this time we hope to bury most of our vegetable scraps--and not just on the nights we eat brussels sprouts. I had a beautiful set of instructions in a copy of Make magazine, but I can't find them so we'll just have to do the best we can with other instructions I found on the web and that came with our worms. I have to hurry up, the worms are escaping their wrappings.

Raggedy

her face was green
her clothing worn
in the machine she spun, reborn
if you believe in reincarnation.

which I don't.
so no need to worry if somehow
a better life than one with me
will be hers.

faith is a choosy pessimist.

Look out world!

This is my first thumb typed post. My new pink Blackberry is so cool. While thumb typing is even more tedious than regular typing internet access from such a sleek little gizmo is amazing.
I'm not going to argue the next time Kurt feels it's time to upgrade my phone.

Great Grandpa Ansorge

This is my husband's grandfather. He was a circus performer during the Depression and then owned a small chain of Health Studios. He was in the Guiness Book of World Records and Ripley's Believe It or Not for various feats of strength. Grandpa Harold died when we were in highschool and I didn't know Kurt very well then. I've always seen pictures of him when he was older. In this picture he strongly reminds me of Peter, Kurt's brother and my sister's husband. What a fun thing to find on the web. There is a little more at this link.

Mrs. I Pj

My life has been going through a lot of upheaval for the last four years or so. Like waking up from a dream I realized that my life didn't look anything like I expected or needed it too--with one vibrant exception. I am overrun with kids. I always wanted it to be like this. Tons of children growing, learning, breathing. They really don't have to do much to keep me entertained. I'm in the thick of it now. Next year the oldest will start highschool, but the youngest is still in diapers.
It's so important to know what you can and can't live without. I knew if I missed out on the kids nothing else would be able to compensate, and now that I see how much I've missed out on, they compensate for the loss as nothing else ever could. I may not be where I wanted to be, but I'm in a very good place.
Once I got over grieving the lost time, I've started setting up a schedule and a system for catching up. I'll never get as far as I could have, but I'll get far enough to fling rocks at Goliath should the need arise. The hardest part was figuring out what I wanted most from my new adventure in education. Now that I know what I want to know it's a simple matter of picking up the books and reading them. They are lying all over the house. I bought them for my kids.

The House

PBS can be an overload of good information sometimes. I've become a serious fan, scanning the tv guide for good stuff to DVR. I think one of my favorite finds was a documentary about Sam Maloof. Kurt and I got comfortable on the couch to watch not just a biography, but the artisan and his assistants at work. The home he made with his wife is spectacular, like all his work it is a true one of a kind. He liked to share his success with others. Sam and Alfreda's Foundation works to encourage and support other artists as they find their way to success.
I always scan the magazine racks at Sam's Club. You never know what you'll find. Today on the cover of a woodworking magazine I discovered that Sam has died at the age of 93. I guess I can cross him off the list of people I'd like to meet and move him to the list of people I wish I'd met. He really knew how to live his life now.