Our First Rabbit Show

Show one, Cookie's class (silver marten)

We bought 3 rabbits at the Virginia State Fair, rabbits we bought under the condition that Martina could show them. Two months later we went to our first show, the December Richmond Rabbit Breeders Association show at the Richmond International Speedway.

Our rabbit are Netherland Dwarfs. Dwarves? Either way, the entry fees were low and preparation time minimal compared to the horse show agenda we are accustomed to. Martina almost talked me out of going but when I finally wheedled out of her what the problem was, we decided to get up early on Saturday and go. She was upset with herself for not working with her rabbits a lot more. I guess she thought that she needed to train them…

What we learned: this was a carrier show. All of the rabbits stayed in their carriers until their class was called. At that time they were carried to the judging table and placed into cages or boxes on the table with the other rabbits in the class. The judge ranked them and if there were several, sent all but the top two (I think) back to their carriers. Then the best of variety, best of class and best opposite (opposite sex from best of class) were awarded. We learned that a Senior Netherland Dwarf doe can only weigh 2.5 pounds. ZsaZsa, our black otter doe, weighs a whopping 3 pounds. Fat ass. She was DQed.

We learned that there are a LOT of people who are rabbit crazy! People drive all up and down the east coast and into the midwest going to rabbit shows 3 or 4 times a month! There’s a bunch of money going into the Rabbit Industry, which I didn’t even know existed until yesterday. There are cages made for transporting the maximum number of rabbits in the minimal amount of space. Feeders and water bottles, brushes and toenail clippers, grooming tables and rabbitry wear. There were embroidered chairs all over the place with rabbitry names. T-shirts and bags. Rabbit grooming supply carrying cases. And we showed up with our rabbits in cat carriers lined with newspaper. We have a huge ‘maxivan’ though, driving up in a Prius would require that the bunnies fit in the least possible amount of space.

And there were rabbits for sale *everywhere* at the show: Mini lop; mini Rex; Flemish giant; in colors with names like: squirrel; chestnut; chinchilla; and ruby eyed white.

Stormy

"William" needs a new name.

There was a raffle. A gigantic raffle with tables and tables filled with items and cages of rabbits all with numbered bags for you to drop your raffle ticket into. Martina dropped all three of her tickets into the bag on top of the cage containing one chinchilla Netherland Dwarf buck. She won. I put one of my tickets in there and two in the bag on top of another cage containing a black otter Netherland Dwarf buck. I won that one. The tickets were 3/$1. So the cheapest thing we did all day was get rabbits for .33 cents each.

She named her new bunny Stormy. Mine came with the name William but it’s got to change. I think I’ll name him after a Norse god or a character from Beowulf. Braggi perhaps? I don’t want to entice the spirit of Loki into our rabbitry, that’s certain.

We had a great time and are going to join the ARBA (American Rabbit Breeders Association) and intend to go to many more shows. It was fun. The people were very nice and the spirit of the thing was low- stress, supportive and kind of sweet.

As for ZsaZsa the Fat? She’s going to be a mommy soon because the one thing the judges did say about her is that she will make nice, nice babies. Anyone want a bunny?

 

Some days…

Things do get gnarly sometimes

Some days, some weeks even, are supremely difficult for homeschoolers. Normal SAHMs have all day during which to clean, shop, cook, run errands, take their demented mothers to driving simulation tests and such. Homeschool moms have to do all of these things while concurrently trying to teach a 4th grader not to be so intimidated by the ‘N’ in that damned math problem. (An aside: Is being intimidated by the ‘N’ hardwired into some of us?)

We do manage to get more done in less time per student than schools do. We have fewer students to deal with, fewer distractions and fewer personalities, learning styles and issues. Still…it gets rough out here sometimes.

So world, yes, there are days when we are not at home tidily doing our times tables at the kitchen table. Days when lunch comes out of a greasy sack and the books are skidding around the floor of a van zooming from point A to point B (should that be point ‘N’?) and sometimes it sucks trying to hold it all together. Sometimes we don’t hold it all together and we just leave the books at home and zone out on the Smart Phone while attending to life’s little curve balls and segues. Whatever. I’ll take this over the big yellow bus any day.

 

The Best We Can

Yesterday I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting another Waldorf mommy. My girls and I have a table set up at Norfolk’s Fair Trade Festival and are selling our handicrafts. This young mama and I connected over some needle-felted dolls and gnomes on my table. Once we figured out that we were both Waldorf moms our conversation found its way to the pressures and performance anxieties that often plague us and the online groups with their Perfection Mavens, which if taken to heart, can make these anxieties even worse.

Apparently I’ve reached either the age of I Don’t Care or the age of being the Giver of Unwanted Advice. Hopefully I wasn’t obnoxious but I really do believe that we must set our goals and live by them. By our own goals and standards, not by those dictated by someone who has read someone else’s words and is filtering them for us.

Most children who are involved with this educational approach go to Waldorf schools. Then they are picked up from school by one of two parents who work full-time and go home to a typical American home. They eat out, watch TV, have tons of toys. Certainly some parents who pay tuition at Waldorf schools make the effort to have a gentler, less media-centered home but probably not all. In fact I suspect that it’s probably not most of them.

So if you’re homeschooling your kids and using a Waldorf approach here is what I think: Do your best and forgive yourself when you don’t get it all just right. Not one of us does and most of our kids come out just fine. Love and intention go a long damned way. So does self-forgiveness. If you are tired or stressed or sick and you let your kid watch cartoons for 12 hours straight one day then pat yourself on the back. You needed the break and your kid will be just fine. The final product that most parents are hoping for: intelligent, caring, capable adult children, is never going to be dependent on whether or not you had one bad day.

Forget the naysayers and guilt mongers and go for it. If we do the best we can things are going to turn out okay.

 

 

Christmas Crafting

Yes, we are still doing our school work! Still, we have been quite busy in the afternoons and evenings making Christmas crafts. We started out with soap and bath bombs.

Thanks to Martha Stewart’s fabulous website, we used up a lot of our melt and pour glycerin soap making these candy cane striped and peppermint scented loaf-pan soaps.

an
We had a little glycerin left over so I added lavender and chamomile scent, some lavender blossoms and blue coloring to it then poured into our snowflake mold. Aren’t they adorable?

 

Now, got to go start that blueberry cordial! What are you crafting this year?

 

Why Waldorf Matters (and a little about why it’s not as easy as you think.)

Waldorf education has a reputation for being easy and for not offering much, if any, hard core academic learning. This opinion is based on the fact that Steiner promoted the idea that a child should be taught to read only after having attained the age of 7 years, or more specifically after the child has lived for 7 springs.  The change of the eye teeth is another indicator of reading readiness. The idea being that children must be developmentally ready to read and that early reading, early academic pressure of any type, will cause physical problems to arise. Somehow people interpret this ‘better late than early’ approach to academics to mean that academics are never taught. Not true.

Yes, Steiner was a spiritual man. Mystical even. And if you’re a skeptic then this is probably a bit hard for you to swallow. I get that. He firmly taught that what happens with our brain affects our physical body.

As to the academics, once the child begins reading there is a lot of hard and focused work that goes on. Children, for example, learn the 4 processes all at the same time not spread out over the course of years as in what have become our more traditional schooling methods. By the end of 3rd grade all of the multiplication tables should be memorized (up to 12) and the child has begun long division.

Perhaps it is the art that puts people off, makes them believe that this can’t be *real* learning? Surely there are those who believe that if you can draw a beautiful picture and write a paragraph on the topic you’re studying, there’s some flaw.

For 4th grade we have a long list of things to accomplish. Zoology, Native Americans (history, sociology, art, myth), grammar, memorization of various poems, letter writing, the tenses, local geography and history, form drawing, arithmetic to include patterns and codes, fractions, abundant and deficient numbers, and ratios, and Norse Mythology. We are studying Beowulf in addition to the Norse Myths which we covered in the Spring for personal reasons but we are reviewing the myths.

There are also subjects that are ongoing for the entire year like foreign language. For us, this year, that is Spanish. We have a tutor and an online program for that.

Swerving a little from the strictly Waldorf, we also read. A lot. Living books about Vikings have been our focus for the first semester of this year. My 4th grader also reads on her own and by assignment from the great variety of age-appropriate books that have won Newberry Honors and are traditional for children her age. These books are simply something I believe she must read in order for her to be culturally literate. Then there’s 4H, hippology, piano, ukelele and our lives for further study.

Does all of that sound like educational neglect to you? Certainly, it doesn’t to me. It’s easy to think we are doing so much more than the neighbors to educate our children but do we really have any idea what the neighbors are doing? Probably not. Maybe the neighbor kids are really good at building model airplanes and will someday design real aircraft. That’s a pretty cool thought. Over here the kid knows a few things that her friends probably don’t: always close the gate; watch the horses; the difference between salt bush and aster; how to castrate a lamb; how to bury a beloved pet and live through the pain. She can also multiply, divide and read Harry Potter. The most important things for me as her parent are that she is kind, empathetic, physically healthy and incredibly self-aware.

Would things be different if I had let her read at 4? Would she be less happy, less likely to twirl around and around in her dress? Less healthy? I don’t know and there is no real way *to* know. What I do know is this: Waldorf is not simple or easy but is deep and thorough and by the time we’re finished with high school the child will have been through physics and will be able to polish a 5 paragraph essay with the best of them. Hopefully she will also be centered, thoughtful and happy to have her dress bell out around her as she dances.

*We do not follow a strictly prescribed diet of pure Waldorf theology. We incorporate other educational philosophies into our homeschool. We do use Steiners educational philosophy as the base of our studies.

 

Overrun by Dwarves

Netherland Dwarf rabbits to be exact.

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Martina has been waiting for months for a rabbit. I promised and she has shopped online, showing me all of the cute ones, ever since. With the promise of Bunny Mecca at the State Fair, she anxiously awaited the day, which turned out to be last Thursday. Predictably there were a lot of rabbits for sale at the fair. Predictably, we bought one. Well, three actually. They are amazingly adorable and their poo will do wonders for our gardens.

Martina’s is Cookie, Mark’s is, we think, Buck and mine is ZsaZsa, so named because she is an expensive girl. Bunnies=Happy.

With regards to the Virginia State Fair, if you can go then do it. It’s so much fun. The arts and crafts entries are fantastic. The livestock and ag shows are awesome. The midway is a thrill-a-minute. There are educational exhibits, shows and tons of fun. The best thing we saw was the show by the American Cowgirl Chicks. The show was a lot of fun, emotional, exciting, and made me feel more proud to be an American than I have in a long, long time.

 

Hospital Homeschool

No, my daughter is not in the hospital and I’m sorry if you found this post while looking for ways to educate an ill child. I wish you all the best.

This post is about my mom being hospitalized and how much time we’ve been spending there, yes, including my 10 year old daughter. There’s no one else to keep her, nowhere else for her go on most days. So she’s with me learning about bacterial infections, dementia, getting old, pooping yourself and how to handle it when you’re in a room with a person who has and how to deal with it. She’s learning to cut up hospital food and feed her grandmother. She’s learning that 3 Equals is not too much sweetener (in spite of 10 years of indoctrination into the ‘if it’s not real food, don’t eat it camp).

The kid is a champ. She plays with her grandmother. She moves her flowers and balloons so that they can be best viewed from the bed.

Already one of the most empathetic children I’ve ever known, Martina is learning even more about what it is to care for someone and she’s getting it.

 

A Picture’s Worth…

’nuff said.

 

Harry Potter’s London

We spent 3 days in London over the summer. We also did some other interesting things but one of the most fun was the day Martina and I spent on our own, touring the Tower, Platform 9 3/4 and Diagon Alley (or, Cecil Court).

Sadly, they are doing renos on the metro at St Pancras and Kings Cross, so we couldn’t get down to the actual platform where the train is embedded in the wall. We had to make due with this, on the sidewalk out front.

This was so cool we had to go back the next day and actually purchase things from the Witch Ball and from the bookstore.

Martina got Harry Potter MONEY from this store. It’s awesome. Unspendable but awesome.

 

and Then There Was School Stuff

I’ve been MIA for a while, particularly from this blog. In fact, I was thinking I might be finished with blogging. It’s something you have to do because you enjoy it, at least that’s why I do it. It’s not about fame and fortune but about sharing what we’re up to in our homeschool and sometimes, our family life and I don’t care about becoming famous. What I do care about is recording a few things for my kids to look back on and hopefully sharing some useful tidbit here and there for those of you who are also parenting and/or swimming along in the homeschooling currents with us. Maybe I’m not quite done after all.

This year Martina (and yes, I called her Minerva for a while thanks to a few creepers but I just can’t do it anymore) will be in 4th grade. We are moving away from a Waldorf focus, though not completely. What’s working for us right now is doing a lot of reading aloud in the mornings, music after lunch, then math and science, then hand work while we listen to audiobooks. Our days are fuller than they were and that’s part of advancing through the grades. I try not to answer the telephone until we are finished and often ignore my needy husband when he shows up in the midst of read-aloud time. We really do need to stay on-task this year.

In short, I’m feeling the pressure! Martina does well on the annual standardized tests required by state law each year and I want her to have that back-pat each summer. Regardless of my lack of enthusiasm for hoop-jumping, it is what it is: validation.

What are we reading aloud? So far our topics to cover are these: Vikings; the Middle Ages; English; Math; Science; Handwork; History; Nature Study; Foreign Language; Poetry; Local Geography; Zoology; Norse Mythology. Sounds like a lot, eh? But I’m not finished! We have a co-op where I teach and the Martian attends classes. I will be teaching Beowulf for Middle Grades and Norse Mythology for little people. My child will be in: Beowulf!; Girl Scouts; Celtic Choir and; Creative Gaming. Then there are the extra-curriculars! Piano; Ukelele; Recorder; dance; horseback riding; 4H.

Whew! It sounds like an awful lot and I think parents with school kids have a gigantic load what with school, homework and then soccer and PTA? Why do I think that? Oh yeah, I did it for a long time…yes, Kindy through a UNC degree for my eldest. I can’t see that either way is easier, except in specific ways that are so different they don’t even merit addressing. Parenting and schooling a child are work and no matter how you it, it’s hard and rewarding and wonderful.

Links for specific tomes are in the sidebar, listed by Grade Level and Subject.