Day 253: Laaaaaaaaaaazy — and Balinese Dancers at Dinner
After breakfast this morning we called Beepaw Jim and Grammie and had fun catching up with them by the pool. The kids showed off their pool jumping and jump roping skills.
Then we had school. Willa and I recently switched to an official online homeschool curriculum. The structure plus a new reward system — one of those silly iPad dressup games she loves for every six successful/no-whining school sessions — is helping us turn a new leaf on homeschooling.
She’s learning to write “opinion pieces” (eg, why dogs are the best animals), narratives and informational texts. Currently working on a chapter book about a 24-year-old version of herself: an engineer living in Rio. There’s a jetpack invention and hilarity ensues. Stay tuned.
In keeping with our “Things Our Kids Need to Know” category of teaching in homeschool, I also refreshed Willa’s memory on the Star Spangled Banner. First showed her a kids video with the lyrics, then the famous 1991 Whitney Houston version sung at the Super Bowl.
After listening to Whitney, Willa goes: “It’s hard to believe that one of the world’s roughest games gets played after that,” referring to Whitney’s gorgeous voice. Ha!
Still working on hammering home the idea of practice. Willa did her 30 days of splits practice and got very close — I think the lesson got through? Now she just needs to spend a little more time on it. She seems motivated.
I rediscovered this 80s PBS drawing show that I loved as a kid — found it on YouTube, of course. Does anyone remember “The Secret City?” You use “magical powers” — eg, foreshortening, shading, overlapping, etc. — to create the illusion of three-dimensional buildings and objects. Perfect for the geometry stuff we’ve been working on. Willa LOVES this show as much as I did, and has been drawing along.
For lunch we ate leftovers from last night’s dinner. We are being so unbelievably lazy. I can’t remember ever even taking a vacation with this much going-nowhere and doing-nothing.
One person in particular is loving it: Willa. “Can we just stay here and do nothing again today?” Honestly it’s better than: “I’m so bored, I wish we could go DO something,” when, as a parent, you don’t want to do anything.
Teddy and I took turns walking down to the spa for massages. I drew and read. He read and practiced his juggling. The kids were in and out of the pool, drawing and jumping rope. James taught me Yahtzee and we played a few rounds. We also had an intense Rat a Tat Cat session.
At 7 we walked down to the hotel restaurant because on Sunday nights they have traditional Balinese dancers.
The kids were into it, got a pic with the dancers after the performance.
Five minutes after that, James curled up and went to sleep on his chair!
MISC:
Teddy and I don’t swear much, but we also don’t go out of our way to tone it down in front of the kids. Might rethink that approach.
The other day Willa said “damn” and I had to explain that, for whatever reason, there are certain words in the English language that are offensive and can’t be said by kids/in school. She was curious about this and asked for all the bad words. I listed them out for her (to our credit, she’d never heard the f-word before).
But we didn’t loop James into this convo and I obviously missed a few, because in the last few days this has happened:
This morning James dramatically yelled “Dammit!’ when he dropped a ball playing catch. Very earnest, not trying to be naughty. Had to explain, without fanfare, why he couldn’t use the word.
Yesterday as we were walking along the gravelly road, I heard Willa mutter to herself, “I’ve got all KINDS of crap in my shoe.” Again, didn’t make a big deal, but suggested she not use that word at school and find another one instead.
Today at breakfast James called Teddy an idiot! It was said in the most innocent way ever — like “you’re silly!” but it was so jarring. Not sure where that came from? Sometimes we’ll say things like, “Ugh, I’m such an idiot I forgot to bring a room key,” so maybe that’s it?
Finally, this evening, when I beat him at Rat a Tat Cat, James turned to me and said: “You’re a dammit.”
D’oh!
