Happy Spring 2012

What a magnificent weekend. This past week we have been sleeping with the windows open and waking up to the birds chirping and the woodpeckers pecking in the backyard. This weekend, I was in Molly's room painting. More spring cleaning as well. Once the painting is finished, I will sort through all her "stuff" and decide what will go back into her room. Her closet will need to be sorted through again, decisions of what clothes still fit and what needs to given away will be made. So after a few hours of painting I needed a break. I felt like I was missing out on this wonderful weather. I grabbed my camera and snapped a few shots in our own yard. It really was a dazzling day and color was bursting everywhere.

I love this time of year. I love this small window of time between having the heat on in the house and it getting so hot that you need the ac. There have been some years that we have gone straight from heat to ac and skipped this small window all together. It's the same thing with the spring blooms. They are only here for a very short time. Maybe two weeks if we are lucky. They pop out and dazzle us with their vibrant color and then before you know it, they are gone. 

 Then I looked at this picture of Timmy taking a break from a few hours of playing basketball in the driveway. I just bought that sitting hammock a few weeks ago for Molly's birthday. She went to a birthday party a few months ago at a place that had a bunch of swing sets indoors. Molly fell in love with the hammock and spent most of the party just hanging out and swinging back and forth in the hammock. Well, all the kids have fallen in love with it. I love that we still have a play set in the backyard. I love that as my kids get older they still have no hesitation to get on the swings and play with one another or even swing by themselves. I know these moments won't last forever, just like the spring blooms. Before I know it, shots like this one, of kids just hanging in the backyard will be gone. With three spring birthdays all within a month of each other, I've been thinking about how much my kids have grown. Shannon, who will be 14 this week, she's finishing up eighth grade and will be on her way to high school. Timmy, who is about to turn 12, my last year before having two teenagers in the house. Ryan, who turned 10 back in January but really has grown this year, not just physically but also as a person. Molly, who no longer wants the light pink room that we painted when we found out she was a girl because she thinks it's a baby color even though I know she secretly still loves the color pink.

The rest of these pictures Shannon took. She asked if she could take the camera into the yard and this is what she came back with. I think she has a pretty good camera eye.

Happy Spring 2012!

After the Dazzle of the Day is Gone

After the dazzle of the day is gone,
Only the dark, dark, night shows to my 
eyes the stars.
After the clangor of organ majestic, or 
chorus, or perfect band,
Silent athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.
                               -Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass


I read this poem for the first time in a children's book about baseball. In Deborah Wiles's, The Aurora County All-Stars, 12 year old, House Jackson finds a note from Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd, who died before him at the age of eighty-eight. The note read, 


"Your mother gave these words to me;
Now I give them to you as treasure for the days ahead.
Look for me in every atom that you see."


I read Aurora County All-Stars for the first time a number of years ago after I discovered and fallen in love with Deborah Wiles books. The second time I read it was when Timmy was reading it and I decided to reread it so that I could refresh my memory  and Timmy and I would be able to talk about the book together.


Today, I read the first chapter to Ryan's fourth grade class. I love to read aloud in my children's classrooms. It's one of my favorite things to do. Recently I asked Ryan's teacher if I could do something different. Instead of picking up in the middle of a book that she has started to read aloud that I might not have read before which then makes it difficult to read if you don't know exactly what's going on, I asked if I could come in once a week with a book that I had picked out and just read the first chapter. My thinking was to pick books that have great beginnings, read the book in such a way that will get the kids interested, get them "hooked" if you will, and then stop reading to them. At the end of the reading, I leave the book behind in the classroom and the next day, the teacher decides who gets to read the book first. I've been doing a lot of thinking about those "reluctant readers," those "dormant reader," those students that can read but chose not to, and how to get them more interested in reading. Parents and teachers have to be a little passive-aggressive when it comes to getting those "dormant readers" to read. Kids are smart and we can't just tell kids you need to read because it will make you smarter. When I walk into the fourth grade classroom, I am not their teacher or their parent. I am just Ryan's mom who came into read to the class. I don't tell or ask them to read the book after I'm done reading, I just simply place it in a bin and tell them I will see you all next week. No pressure. 


"After the dazzle of the day is gone"...dazzle...what a great word. One of the definitions of dazzle is "to amaze as with brilliance." Synonyms are awe, overwhelm, and overpower. Lately, I have been feeling overwhelmed and overpowered by our hectic schedule, so many places to be, so much to do, so many important events coming up: birthdays, first communion, tournaments, boys trying out and making travel teams. This is all good stuff but instead of feeling overwhelmed by it all, I want to feel dazzled by all this good stuff. 


Today I was dazzled by the attentive listeners in Ryan's class while I read.  I was dazzled by how well Molly's class listened while we painted leprechaun hats and their concern for the student that was absent today and might not get to make a hat. I was dazzled by Timmy at basketball practice and by how much he has grown as a basketball player this past year and the comments that I get from coaches and other parents that tell me how great he is not just as a player but as a leader that generates team spirit. And I was dazzled by the fourth grade musical show. 

The final song they sang was...take time in life, take time in life, take time in life, we have far away to go. I really needed that reminder...take time in life.

As the dazzle of the day is gone, and the clangor of my day of students and basketball and a musical is over, I sit here in the still silence of my study writing this, the symphony that I hear playing in my head is gratitude for this crazy, noisy, dazzling life.

I found this picture on my camera. Shannon took it. She told me she was looking for signs of spring. Isn't it dazzling?

Don't Miss the Rainbow

This post is two weeks behind...pictures of my sweet baby girl turning eight. Lately, I've been feeling like someone has hit the fast forward button and it's stuck and I can't get it back to normal play. Spring is especially busy for us. We have three birthdays all within a month of each other, Easter, spring break, regular season basketball has ended, travel basketball is beginning, baseball, soccer tournaments this weekend and then there is just the normal stuff that has to get done, like making dinner. As much as I love our family time, I do wish I had a cook at times to make dinner while I'm out chauffeuring all the kids around to their stuff. 

Birthday morning.

Dad was the Watchdog Dad for the day.

Messy faces after ice cream.

Yummy!

The daffodils arrived on Molly's big day.

A snap shot from my phone at 2:12...her birthday minute.

Thursday just happens to be my volunteer day so I snapped some shots before they came in from PE. It was a beautiful day.

I took these pictures with the instagram app on my phone which I really love.

Birthday night, cake and present time.

These pictures were taken on Saturday, March 3rd. I was trying to catch up on my project life journal cards and Molly really wanted me to take her to the tree with the tire like I took Ryan weeks before. I really wanted to finish recording our family memories that I had fallen so far behind on, but I had this little girl saying, "Please, Mama, can't we go?" I had a little girl who wanted to make memories in that moment, so we went.

These were also taken with the instagram app on my phone. "Look, mom, no hands!"

 Molly's signature pose, arms outstretched, loving life.

So on the day that I was sorting through pictures on the computer and trying to write my journal cards, there was a little girl standing by my side asking to go to the tire swing on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and while she was standing there, I remembered a quote I read a few days earlier in a book while shopping...

Sometimes you just have to stop what you are doing and enjoy the moment you are in or you will miss the rainbow.

My Quest to Become a Book Whisperer...Continued

Yesterday I went down into the basement and found this on Molly's whiteboard that she uses to play school.

This is her Daily Four:
Read to Self
Read to Someone
Word Work
Work on Writing

This is what Molly does everyday in her second grade classroom except in her classroom, it is the "Daily Five." I think Molly left out "Listen to Reading" because we don't have a computer in the basement for her students to listen to reading. 

Here's one of her students getting ready to do some word work or work on writing.

Here's another student "Reading to Self" in a cozy corner on the floor.

This is what Molly's second grade teacher uses as a foundation for her reading program. It is based on a book by the title The Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. What I love about this way of teaching reading is that the students have a choice in what they want to work on. A similar philosophy to Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer, where she talks about giving the students a choice in what books they want to read. Students get to plan their reading time. They can answer questions themselves: What will I do first? What was I working on yesterday that needs to get finished? Who will I work with? They get a say in how they are going to work on reading and writing during this block of time. When I volunteer in the classroom on Thursdays, it is amazing how everyone of these 7 and 8 year olds are on task. They are engaged readers and writers and for Molly, it has obviously overflowed into her own little classroom in our basement. When kids feel they have a say in the matter, it makes a difference.

I've been on this quest to get my kids to read more. I've been trying to match books to my kids that they will want to read. I found this book, The Fourth Stall, last week at the book store and thought it may be a match for Ryan, my most dormant reader. 

 Oh, he can read, and he is on grade level, and he gets good report cards, but he will not pick a book up on his own for enjoyment. I have paraphrased Mark Twain's quote to my kids a number of time, "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." I read the first chapter of The Fourth Stall aloud to him to get him started. He had that look on his face of "Oh, when will this torture be over" but when he went to his room an unusual thing happened to Ryan...he started to read the book. 

The other night I noticed a light coming from under his bedroom door. It was 10 o'clock at night. This usually means he has snuck an ipod touch into his room and is playing a game or he is fooling around with Timmy. But on this night, I walk in and there he was lying in bed reading a book. He didn't even notice me. I pulled out my phone in my back pocket and snapped a picture. No yelling that it was 10 o'clock and you should be sleeping, no confiscating an ipod touch or ds game, no goofing off with his older brother, just a boy quietly reading a book.

Every Tuesday afternoon, Ryan and I sit in the car together for about an hour and a half while Molly does her horseback riding lesson. Our routine is to come home from school so Molly can change her clothes and then we go to Subway to get sandwiches. Molly usually eats hers in the car on the way to her lesson but once we are there, Ryan and I take out ours. We eat together, we talk about our day, I ask him about what's going on in school. It's not often that I get alone time with just one of my kids so I treasure this time that we have together.

Yesterday, I brought Ryan's CCD homework and after we finished our sandwiches we worked on his homework together. Then I pulled out The Fourth Stall for him to read and I pulled out another book, My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjian, that I found in his closet for myself. I think I bought it at the last school book fair. The night before, I started looking through some of his books to try and find another match for Ryan. This book caught my eye and I thought I would start to read it. Well, Ryan could have written this book. I could hear Ryan's voice in my head as I read. Chapter one starts with:

"I DON'T WANT TO READ THIS BOOK!"
Ever since my teacher said I was a "reluctant reader," I spend every waking minute avoiding my mother and her latest idea of how I should use my time. WASTE my time is more like it.

"The librarian said you'd love this book." Mom vaults over a basket of laundry, but I'm too fast for her. I dive out my bedroom window onto the roof of the garage. "One chocolate chip per page," she calls.

This is my life in a book as well. But this is a great book. This book says it's a reading level 2.9, it has huge margins on the side of each page, it has Derek's doodles or drawing of his vocabulary words in the margins, it is perfect for the so called "reluctant reader." But this book is also a good story. It may be a level 2.9, but the main character is twelve years old. There is a mystery that would interest an older kid as well. Derek finds a ten year old newspaper in the attic from Martha's Vineyard with an article about a teenage girl that had drowned. Why did his mother save this paper? Who was this girl? They don't even live close to Martha's Vineyard, so what would it have to do with them? But it does. 

So there Ryan and I are, sitting in the car like every other Tuesday afternoon and Ryan asks me what I'm reading. I give him a little summary, I tell him that the book reminds me of him, I read this first line of the book and he is hooked. He wants to trade books, his The Fourth Stall for my My Life as a Book. I tell him to finish the book he is reading now first and when I'm done reading this book I will pass it on to him. So the two of us quietly reading together, both reading different stories but feeling a bit connected to Ryan as we read simultaneously. 

After a while, Ryan looks up and asks, "Do you think if I ask my teacher to read this aloud to the class she would? I think other kids would really like this book as well." 

"I don't know Ry, but it doesn't hurt to ask."

"I'll ask her if she wants to read it after she's done reading the book we are listening to now."

My "reluctant reader" wants to SHARE a book he is reading because he is enjoying it!!! Think about it, he didn't say, "I want to write a 2 page book report," he didn't say, "I want to make a diorama of the setting and the main characters!" He wants to share it with his friends. Isn't that what we do after we watch a great movie. We talk about it with our friends. We ask them if they have seen it too. We tell them, "Oh, it was a great movie, you have to go see it!" We talk about our favorite parts and favorite lines. We need to talk about books like we talk about movies.

Last night at dinner, we shared what we were reading. Molly shared Bunnicula, a book her teacher is reading aloud in class. Timmy is reading Catching Fire but didn't say too much because he knows I'm going to read it and he didn't want to spoil it. Shannon is still reading Countdown and I shared a scene from My Life as a Book, that involved a monkey, a cowboy hat, and a dog. I was laughing out loud as well as everyone else at the table. As all this is going on, I notice Chris quietly sitting at the other end of the table looking down at his lap. 

"Chris, what are you doing?"

"I'm reading The Fourth Stall. I'm up to page 19. This is actually a pretty good book.

I just put The Fourth Stall Part II and My Life as a Stuntboy into my Amazon cart.