Roomba has lost his voice!

This is where the little guy hides while Roomba is working nearby.

Roomba is the hardest working member of our household. He's that little round robotic vacuum cleaner. He vacuums the kitchen each morning and the dining room and living room each evening. Most days he does one other room too. The only thing we have to do is pick up the stuff on the floor, particularly cords and slipcovers hanging too far over the edge and start him up. He goes right under the couches, tables and chairs, picking up an incredible amount of dirt each day. We set him off when we go up to bed at night and sometimes when we leave the house in the morning. He doesn't need company, doesn't need constant reminding to do his job.

I'm not sure why Roomba is male, but he is in this house. When he starts up, he makes a little three or five note song to indicate he's got the message and wants to get to work. If he chews up a cord, large lego piece, coins or has a mile of hair wrapped around one of his brushes, he gets stuck and signals it with a lower, less cheerful two tone call. The best thing is that when he's done and made it back to his charger, he sends out a six note cheer - one of the happiest sounds! There is a whole series of beeping sounds he makes to indicate a problem and solution.

Now he makes no sound and it's very sad. Probably through over use, his voice was weakening over the last few months and is now completely gone. I really miss his satisfying cheer. And I miss deciphering his beeps to know what is wrong with him when we find him not moving somewhere in the house. Worst of all is when he's stuck under a piece of furniture - he used to emit beeps every few minutes to make it easier to locate him. Now we have to go on a Roomba hunt.

I hope there is an easy fix, a quick replacement voice box for Roomba. That's going to require some googling, I'm sure. And some time. When I lose my voice I write notes to the kids and get their attention better than when I can speak. Maybe that's what it's like for Roomba now.

So, How's it Going?

The oldest came down stairs this morning, his arms laden with light sabers, saying he couldn't find the blue one.

Me: We don't have Girl Scouts today, honey.

Him: Why not?

Me: Because they went camping over the weekend.

Him: Yeah, but they came back!

Our schedule has changed dramatically this year. Mondays we have an afternoon playgroup. Tuesdays are still Girl Scout days and my boys play with the siblings of the leader's scouts. Thursdays we have Writer's Workshop and Fridays we have Roots&Shoots. Then we have dance classes locally three nights a week. Aside from that, we are working at home.

This is the first year we've required things like spelling, grammar, handwriting, literature, history, and kept track of the time they spend on their work. They've always done reading and math and have always had a love for science. We did science and math classes through our homeschool group last year. We have actual structure to our days. The kids do seem to like being on task, but they complain about how long things take. We are usually done by noon or early afternoon. We've also been making a field trip every other week to museums.

They still have plenty of time and opportunity to explore their own interests, which speaks to the unschooler in me. Before we went to bed last night, PBS cued up a program about Christopher Columbus - we didn't make it through the whole program before falling asleep. But I remembered that Little Missy wanted to do a BrainPop (http://www.brainpop.com/) about Columbus and asked her about it. She said "Oh, I did Solar Energy instead!" and worked her eyebrows up and down to show her excitement.

The kids have had input into their spelling, math, grammar, history and literature programs so it's not imposed on them. They like the sense of accomplishment and the lack of busy work.

What they have a hard time understanding is how their schooled friends can be gone all day and come home with more work to do. Why didn't they just do all their work at school? I can't explain homework either.

Great Finds

Our Little Missy went on a weekend camping trip with her Girl Scouts troop and had a wonderful time. While she was gone, Mark and I cleaned her room. We had her permission, she was excited about the prospect. When she and I try to clean together, we lose patience with each other. Her room was beyond capacity with stuff and it was physically impossible for her to clean it. She was very frustrated. I was very frustrated.

She left Friday morning, but I procrastinated until Sunday to get started, which is why Mark had to get in on the act. The poor girl has the smallest bedroom and the collecting abilities of both her parents. She agreed I could toss broken toys, pieces to something we don't know where the rest is, and things she was not likely to play with again. I also sorted out all the old pajamas, t-shirts and leotards that no longer fit. She has three neat clothes bins now.

Little Missy has two rolling drawers under her bed for toys. When we ordered these, I briefly had the fantasy of storing extra linens in them, but she filled them with stuffed animals as soon as they were put together. I felt a great sense of accomplishment when I made it through those drawers! Then Mark pulled them out into the hallway and we peered under the rest of the bed. Disaster. We had to rake it all out and go through piles on the floor.

Here is a list of some of the more interesting items we found:

• Five socks, stuffed with items and tied in a knot at the top. One of those was stuffed with another sock and filled with broken toothpicks. Others had toys or Kleenex.
• A wooden shish-ka-bob skewer with a bead on the end, plunged into her wall.
• An extensive, scattered collection of rocks, shells, bits of cement and asphalt.
• A dehydrated orange segment that had not been in the kitchen dehydrator.
• Kleenex. Little bits of Kleenex made into dolls, Kleenex wrapped around her little animals as toga-like clothing, Kleenex in Lego pieces, in her dollhouse as covers or people, Kleenex everywhere.

When we were done, we rehung the canopy in front of the bookshelf and arranged the Build-A-Bears inside it. This will not only provide a play space for these favorite toys, it neatly camouflages the overflowing bookshelf we have to tackle on her next camping trip. Our little girl was thrilled with her new room, didn't glance twice at the HUGE black garbage bag waiting to be put on the curb and slept peacefully after a busy weekend.

Prairie Sweat

We had such a great day yesterday, I just can't stop thinking about it!

We've been taking our Roots&Shoots group on work days at the Theodore Stone Forest Preserve in Cook County. It's a magical place with three distinct prairies, a savanna and the most remarkable volunteer stewards you could ever hope for. Trust me, I've heard panic in the voice of volunteer coordinators when I've explained my desire to bring out a group of homeschooled boys on Friday afternoons. Granted, a lot of stewards probably have full time jobs as well and can't make Friday afternoons, but the thought of a group of boys could be enough to scare some off!

First, let me explain that it was nearly 90 degrees in the hot sun on the prairie - in October! The kids and parents gathered seeds from the prairie plants, each picking one individual species. I failed miserably in my efforts to collect nodding pink onion (for which Chicago was named), but mainly because I had 28 pounds of the little man on my shoulders. While we were doing this, I had one of the boys explain in great, eloquent detail, all about dragon flies, damsel flies, crickets, grasshoppers and katydids. Other kids just lost themselves in the task, some worked in pairs.

Having worked up a good sweat, we went back into the woods where we had previously cleared a lot of buck thorn and brush. There we separated the seeds from the hulls, if needed, and mixed them all together. With all the clearing, the sunlight will come though and allow them to germinate and grow. Have you ever seen a group of homeschoolers being told to line up? It's pretty funny, they just aren't used to it. We spread out in a line and spread the seeds more or less evenly in our clearing.


After that, we got the saws and loppers out to do some more clearing. We had some children joining us for the first time and their faces just lit up at the prospect of using real tools to do real work! And work they did. We emerged about 45 minutes later, drenched in sweat and exhausted.

This is what it's all about for me. To get these kids out in the wilderness, let them explore while providing a real service to the community, seeing them get in touch with their natural environment. You can't really hear the traffic noise back there, it's all earth, flora and fauna. It is often a real pain in the neck for the parents to get their children to the preserve. Yesterday's effort required tremendous coordination, driving, and kid swapping as most of our girls are off on a Girl Scouts camping trip. But for those who are able to make that effort, they are truly rewarded with children who have benefited from the experience. In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv describes an eighth intelligence of "nature smart" in his heroic effort to encourage parents to get their children out of the house.

The stewards have invited our little group to pilot a Chicago Wilderness program as part of the No Child Left Inside initiative. Each child was given a nice passbook and will collect stamps from the participating forest preserve once they record their observations and activities. Our children responded well to this, I hope we can eventually visit all five preserves and perform work days there. Most of those will be even farther from our homes.

Here's a website for everyone to go to and find out when your family can participate in a work day near your home if you live in the Chicago area. If you don't, try googling for volunteer opportunities in your area. Get out there, get sweaty, enjoy! http://www.restoringnature.org

Hair

I offer this as Exhibit A to all those who say "Isn't it about time to cut his hair?" I mean, just look at that hair! Freshly washed and combed, little boingy curls that will surely vanish once the scissors are put to use.

My brother threatened to buy me scissors for Christmas when I saw him last. I know I have an issue with my kid's hair, and am OK with that. My boys are continually being mistaken for girls. Once when my older two were two and three a grandmotherly type at the grocery store said "What beautiful girls you have!" Buddy responded by standing up in the cart and announcing "Yes, but I have a (insert male specific body part here)!"

Maybe because my own hair is pitifully straight and thin, I relish my kids hair. I had a mother at park once ask me how long I had been with my children, she thought I was a nanny. It's so other-worldly to me, this whole curl thing. I've finally learned that curls are dry and need constant moisture to be combed. We go through a lot of leave in conditioner.

Little Missy once had her hair cut into a nice, cute little bob. And she lost all her curls for a time in the process. We had such trouble combing the poor child's hair that it felt almost abusive. And she looked like a little street urchin most of the time with her tangles. We had gone on vacation and rather than ruin our mornings with combings, I french braided her hair, left it in the whole week and cut her braids off when we got home. She hated it, grew it out and has had it long ever since. Her curls came back, just at the bottom few inches, once it got longer.

I'm pretending to let them make their own hair decisions. Just ask the little guy if he wants a hair cut, he'll say no, loudly.