Viking bread

Our week was all about Vikings, and since our homeschool gathering was cancelled for the afternoon, we had some free time on our hands to spend in the kitchen baking like Vikings. Or maybe not exactly like Vikings; we didn't have to grind our own flour, and there was no raping or pillaging. But our Story of the World book suggested a recipe that looked suspiciously like any old bread recipe sans yeast, and while I'm not sure how that really brings us closer to the Vikings (again, no raping or pillaging, and where's my dragon boat? I want to speak to Thor!), it was a fun afternoon in the kitchen. Our very modern kitchen.

Oh, and did I mention that Calvin did this one all by himself? Truly all by himself. Of course it helped my sanity that the bread went into a cold oven. There's a first time for everything.

Oddly I have no after pictures, but without yeast the after looked a whole lot like the before.

Now we're cookin'

When Calvin was not yet two, he acquired a set of play cooking utensils, some wooden velcro food, and a kitchen hutch. These were prized possesions. He cut, he mixed, he cooked and stirred, he served. Tidily tucked into his make-believe world we found ourselves dining on such delicacies as strawberry eggplant shrimp stirfry, or kebobs of beef, onion, tomato, and kiwi. They were the meals of gods.

Somwhere along the way we hit on the idea of positioning his kitchen in view of our own. This set up provided me with the time I needed to produce meals. Even if they were simple and quick fare that nurtured more than they enticed, at least they didn't mix eggplant, strawberries, and shrimp. And it gave me afternoons in which to bake bread. Lovely, sunlit, lazy afternoons when the smell of warm bread filled the house and made it feel wholesome, country, and delicious.

In the past couple of years, though, I've found myself with less time for the kitchen. I'd always heard that as soon as Calvin was older I'd have more time for things like cooking, laundry, vacuuming and dusting, but this advice must have come from non-homeschooling families. Instead, as the kid has gotten older I acutally find that my time just keeps getting more precious, and the dust just keeps on settling.

And then I realized why.

Not long after the Calvin started walking we gave him his first chore—setting the table. He loved it, and the first time we sat down to eat and found our places set with his wooden play silverware, we loved it, too. With time we added more chores. At his current age of 7 (and 3/4 he won't hesitate to add), Calvin is responsible for setting and clearing the table, loading and unloading the dishwasher, collecting the dirty laundry, loading the washer, folding the dry clothes, dusting, feeding the pets, and keeping his room clean.

For some this will seem like a long list, for others I'm sure it falls short, but the truth is...all that help is costly. For me to do any one of those jobs takes just a few minutes. For me to watch the kid do any one of those jobs takes not only three or four times as long, but also shaves minutes off my life as I battle my inner voice of impatience. It's not that he can't do the jobs, it's not that he doesn't do them well, but, and here is the key to teaching any skill, dexterity comes with practice, and practice takes time. 

Thus the amount of free time I have is inversely proportional to the amount of assistance I receive.

This year we have added "help make dinner 3x per week" to Calvin's chore list, and while this is already my favorite job of his, it is also the most trying. I love watching him measure, cut, stir, season, and serve. It recalls for me visions of his toddler self producing stomach turning fare in his wooden kitchen. These are the adorable images I cling to in order to keep myself from interfering to move things along or providing unnecessary and injurious advice.

And even as I watch my free time disappearing in cloud of smoke or a puff of flour, this feels idyllic to me. It is the image I'd always had of homeschooling, this working side by side, creating, learning, enjoying each other.

This week, while making pizza together, he leaned over and repeatedly inhaled the smell of the proving yeast until I warned him against hyperventilation. "But it smells so good," he said. "It smells like the good old days when you used to make all our bread and bagels and english muffins. Let's do that again!" Immediately, images of warm bread with melty pats of butter on lazy, sunlit days flooded my mind. Yes, those were the good old days! Yes, why don't we get back to doing that?

Until I remembered that the reason I gave up baking our family's bread products was all that lost time. It's worth it. It really, really is.

Wednesday

First thing this morning, the Lego princess married the man in the bunny suit to the sound of pirate music and scales (i.e. piano practice).

Then we were visited by a woodpecker while we were math-ing at the kitchen table. I take it as a good sign for our deck that he didn't stay long.

There was some playing with the parts of speech, and some map crosswords. Calvin is determined to learn cursive right now, so I downloaded this wonderful practice book from Currclick while it was on sale and he enjoyed some writing and coloring in that. There was much reading, of course, and some jogging around the block to exercise both the dogs and ourselves.

And then it was lunchtime. (No, we didn't have muffins for lunch, but later on we did snack on these pumpkin muffins we made together on Sunday. It's pumpkin season again, and that makes Jon happy).

We were out for the early afternoon, playing at the park and whatnot, but back at home the wedding party continued while Iris kept a lookout for the kids arriving home at the bus stop in front of our house.

Then some science. Calvin and I watched some Bill Nye (not my favorite) and did some bone assembly activities. Building on the idea of adaptations, after learning about food webs and biomes, we are exploring the adaptations of movement in animals. This is us moving forward in BFSU (from B5/D4 to B6). The more I use it, the more I really love the way that book is laid out, the way it gives ideas for a path of study that will allow building on prior learning, but ultimately leaves the decisions up to those who are actually doing it. It's a wonderfully loose set of suggestions for those who don't necessarily want to go it alone, but don't want to be told how to learn, either.

This is the stuff we are both loving right now, and I think we'll spend some more time exploring the idea of adaptations in various species before we move on again. Today we were mainly looking at what moves us (aside from a good book, that is). Before going to bed tonight he asked me to give his "humerus, radius, ulna, carpals, and phalanges a squeeze."

Mesopotamian feast

Spring visited today. Temperatures reached almost seventy degrees and the sun was out for much of the day. Even after a winter as weak as the one we just had, a day like today still makes me long for the freshness of spring. Along with the warmer weather, another cold is visiting our house, complete with snuffles and the glassy-eyed stares of the slightly infirm. We've been fortunate on the illness front, though, so we won't begrudge the season a few snuffles and we're trudging right along.

A couple of days ago I read My Father's Dragon to Calvin. It's a short book, and only took about three days of bedtime reading to get through it, but he was so impatient for the next two books that he read them on his own yesterday, and read them again this morning. Today he declared a strong desire for a Boris the Dragon, and he's sure this is something I can produce with fabric and a sewing machine. Unfortunately my ability is limited to items of two dimensions only. A stuffed dragon may be beyond my skill.

We have swimming lessons on Wednesdays and I figured that the warm, moist pool would be good for snuffles, and since he wasn't coughing or sneezing, and the chlorine to boot, we kept to our obligation. Lunch with Gram and Grampa after, and a romp in the sunlit park. As my father pushed him in the what Calvin calls the "big comfortable swing", Calvin closed his eyes and actually rested. He swore, again and again, that he was busy dreaming of his dragon, but I think he was actually tired. Colds will do that.

A day like today just calls for outside play. Calvin turned our driveway into a map of Boris the Dragon's world, and our neighbors came over to meet Iris. The only thing less than perfect about today, then, was our dinner, and that was something I'd expected. As we explore the world around us we like to try ethnic recipes, and being in ancient Mesopotamia right now, it was there that we ate. Tough beef with about a million different kinds of onion (shallots, scallions, chives, garlic, leeks, and white cooking onions) in the slow cooker (since I don't have an ancient stone fire pit), turnips stewed in beef broth (it called for blood, but I couldn't find that) with more onions, and some couscous I threw in on the side.

We had a good time researching the menu, making a shopping list, collecting the ingredients, and cooking the meal, and it was fun, edible even, but not at all thrilling. Jon and I tried two ancient brew beers with dinner, but even those didn't help much. We had dates and apples for dessert, and we're glad we tried it out, but thankfully there aren't many leftovers.

Sunday

Yesterday was our library book sale day. It was the first sale for which I was sole coordinator, not that I didn't have gobs of help. Calvin was bent on helping me, so we left home at 8:30 in the morning and he worked with me until noon, offering bags to shoppers and helping direct those who were lost. In between he would sit and read. His dad picked him up at noon, then they came back at three and helped clean up. We a handful of new books, of which Robin Hood, The Frenzied Prince, Household Stories, and The Nightingale (beautifully illustrated by Eva Le Gallienne), are likely to be our favorites.

But that was yesterday. Today was Legos.

That's quite a collection of people at the train station.

They might be headed to the Natural History Museum.

Or to the game.

Wizards vs. Musketeers?

And cinnamon rolls.

And naps, then Snap Circuits.