Archive for the Category »Dirty Harry «

May

Several years ago, when Dirty Harry was just beginning his homeschooling adventures, I attended a day-long conference on homeschooling. I remember exactly three things about this conference.

First, I remember that the speaker asked a mom sitting near the front to please remove her toddler child from the room because his activity was distracting her.

Secondly, I remember the speaker recommending this book…

And then I remember buying it from her booth at the close of the conference, and I remember loving every moment of reading it. Seriously, if you haven’t read The Hawk and the Dove trilogy by Penelope Wilcock, you need to consider remedying that. It’s so totally good!

Lastly, I remember her comments and suggestions about teaching handwriting to boys.

The sanctuary of the church where we were meeting was pretty full. I’d say there was somewhere between 200-300 people in there. We were mostly women. The speaker asked us to raise our hands if we regularly wrote in cursive. Almost all of us raised our hands. Then she asked us to raise our hands if our husbands regularly wrote in cursive. I’d say roughly about 10% of the women raised their hands. She then went on to give an explanation of why that was.

Cursive is generally introduced in public and private schools in the second grade. The instruction continues into the third grade, and by about halfway through that year, the child is expected to have it mastered, and cursive writing is required for written assignments from then until usually late middle school or high school. By then most kids have access to computers and typewritten assignments are accepted and encouraged.

This timeline is usually fine for girls. Girls are ready to trade in their sturdy block print and No. 2 pencils for purple gel pens and flowery signatures accented with hearts and butterflies. Boys, usually, are not. The speaker explained that there is a tiny muscle in a child’s hand that everyone needs to be fully developed in order to have success with handwriting and other fine motor skills. This muscle develops earlier in girls, usually by the age of 7 or 8. For boys, it develops fully later. So, boys as a whole, will struggle with the skills they need for cursive writing simply because their hands and fingers aren’t ready for it. If they could wait to learn cursive until 3rd or even 4th grade, they would have much more success and less frustration.

I was one of the women at that conference who kept my hand down when asked if my husband wrote in cursive. Big D does not. As a child, he struggled with it and hated it. As soon as he was allowed to go back to printing he did. Today he writes like this…

At times when he has a lot of writing to do, the large block letters get more and more undiscernible. Big D’s signature is…ironically…a D, a big one. (…and that list is excercises that he was teaching to Dirty Harry’s baseball team, just in case you were wondering.)

I waited until this year, 4th grade, to start cursive for Dirty Harry, and it’s gone off without a hitch.

No complaints. No fussing. And believe it or not, he actually writes in cursive better than he prints….even if he didn’t dot any of the i’s in Philippians. There are quite a few acceptable handwriting programs out there. We used this one…

They have a transitional book, pictured above, that slowly and methodically introduces a child to cursive. You can purchase it here.

Is cursive writing even necessary anymore? I guess one could argue that it is not with computers being available to kids so prevalently. Yet it was important to me that my children still learn it. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t let them do all their assignments on a keyboard. Both of my older ones have taken pride in the accomplishment of learning cursive, and I’m sure I’ll continue the tradition with Cap’n Jack Henry in several years.

So, if you have a little guy coming along, you might want to save all those swirls and loops for a year or two longer and let that tiny, necessary, small motor skills muscle develop fully. And I’m pretty sure he won’t need a purple gel pen either.

Category: Dirty Harry, homeschooling Tags: boys, handwriting, Hawk and Dove trilogy, purple gel pens 14 Comments

Booger Evolution and a Couple of Other Matters

May

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First of all, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but I haven’t blogged in over a week. That was not my intention. Life just got the better of me the past several days, and I did not have the time or energy to try to keep up with my regular posting schedule. Regular posting schedule? Did I really just say that? Bwahhahhhahhaa! Anyway, I am sorry when that happens. I hope you missed me. I missed you.

Secondly, my washing machine’s draining and spinning function is on the fritz right now. This meant that I had to handwash and rinse Dirty Harry’s baseball uniform so that he could play in it tonight. Have I ever mentioned how difficult it is to clean Dirty Harry’s uniform even with the ease of an automatic washing machine? Oh, I have? A bunch of times? Oh…well…let me just tell you…it’s even more difficult in a sink. By hand. Any romantic notions I’ve ever had of living in a past time before automatic washing machines ended today.

Thirdly, can you tell me how in the world that this cute little chubby booger…

…somehow turned into this long, lean big booger?

I’m clueless about booger evolution, except that it takes ten years.

Happy birthday, Dirty Booger…er, I mean Harry!

Category: Dirty Harry, The Pirate Mom Speaks Tags: birthdays, blogging hiatus, boogers, washing machines 6 Comments

Character Breakfast

April

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I always intend to blog five days a week, Monday through Friday. But it never happens. I usually squeak in three or four posts, but that’s about it. Fridays, in particular, have alluded me. Today, however, I have a few extra minutes, so I sat down at the computer but found myself stumped as to subject matter. So, I started browsing our vast on-line library of pictures…

On the rare occasion that I actually blog on a Friday, I usually like to post something for my “Flashback Friday” feature where I delve into my legwarmered, teal eyeshadowed, BonJovied past and write about something ridiculously old-school. I have something I could post about today that is extremely timely and interesting and bittersweet that would definitely count as a flashback, but I can’t post about it. And I can’t tell you why. I probably won’t be able to post about it for at least five years. Don’t ask…I can’t tell. Yet.

Soooooooooooooo…I’m going to post a little vignette about my three children eating breakfast. Yes, eating. Yes, breakfast. Because these are the photos that inspired me today as I browse Big D’s site.

Big D took this series of photos in February when we were visiting his parents. I don’t know why he took them, but I’m glad he did. Big D and I have very different photo-taking approaches. Usually, I use my point-and-shoot to try to record bits of our history. I take pictures during holidays. I take pictures at events. I take pictures so that we will remember.

Big D takes pictures of emotions. He captures feelings. He records personality. It is art. I love that we have both kinds of pictures of our family. Someday my kids can look back and remember what we did and where we went and what they achieved. But they’ll also be able to look at these photos and know who they were.

They are just eating cereal, for crying out loud. But one can look at these photos and know something about each of them. We don’t just know that we went to Ma and Pa’s house and ate their cereal. We know a little bit about them. We see a little of their souls. Some how, some way Big D clicked and captured a moment and captured their characters at the same time.

I love photography.

I love my kids.

I love my husband.

Happy Friday to you all…

Category: Admiral Big D, Bonny Annie, Cap'n Jack Henry, Dirty Harry, My Crew Tags: breakfast, cereal, character, grandparents, kids, photography 5 Comments

Fridge Phonics Insults

April

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Yesterday I was searching through the fridge to see if any of the guacamole from the night before (which I’m blogging about on Monday) was left and fit for consumption. When I closed the door, I saw this…

I knew immediately that Dirty Harry was the culprit. I knew this for several reasons.

Big D wasn’t home and would never put something like that on the fridge.
Clara doesn’t have thumbs, so grasping and placing magnets would be difficult.
Bonny Annie is generally nice and encouraging of her littlest brother and just wouldn’t say things like that. Plus she was on facebook.
I didn’t do it.
Jack Henry, while certainly not dumb, is only 17 months old and doesn’t have a good grasp on the English language yet. Plus he was taking a nap.
Dirty Harry does things like this when he is supposed to be doing his math lesson at the kitchen table. Plus he’s known to randomly insult people…even babies. I think it’s an almost-ten-year-old boy thing.

So, you can just call me Sherlock from now on. I knew it was him.

I called him to explain himself.

Me: Harrison, why did you put this on the refrigerator?

DH: Because I was just playing around with them when I was getting a drink.

Me: And the letters just magically spelled that your brother….your BABY brother…is dumb???

DH: No. It’s just that it’s hard to spell things with only one magnet of each letter. I was going to spell ‘JESUS ROCKS’, but you need three S’s for that.

I was still clueless as to why he still felt the need to spell something insulting about Jack Henry, even if he was lacking needed letters, but the whole JESUS ROCKS comment momentarily threw me. I told him he should not spell things like that, even to be funny. And I also told him that he could stand at the fridge and spell four more non-insulting sentences about Jack Henry before he could get back to his previous activity. He groaned and complained, but he finally came up with four more.

Okay, I was still not pleased with this effort. If you are telling someone to fix Jack Henry, then obviously you’re implying that something is wrong with him in the first place. But I let it slide. I guess it might imply that Jack Henry needed a Band-Aid or something.

Another imperative sentence…but a nicer one. If Jack Henry can be quizzed, then one is perhaps a little more confident in his cognitive abilities.

This was probably the nicest of all of Dirty Harry’s statements. While Jack Henry does not literally glow, one sometimes feels he does when he flashes you one of his big grins. I suppose Dirty Harry could have plans of coloring him with a neon highlighter as well. I wouldn’t put it past him. Just last week he colored on Clara with blue permanent ink.

Since this sentence lacks a direct object, it’s open to interpretation. Jack Henry does indeed dump whenever he gets a chance…food on the floor, baskets of books, boxes of toys…you name it, and he dumps it. And then, if you go the crude route, which I’m sure was Dirty Harry’s intention, Jack Henry does dump in his diaper…usually twice a day.

When I was done with all my picture-taking, I asked Dirty Harry what the “She”, written in dry erase marker, with an arrow meant in one of the pictures above.

DH: Oh, I wrote that when it still said, ‘JACK HENRY IS DUMB’. The arrow was pointing at Sis, since I couldn’t spell her name. I’d need two A’s and 2 N’s for that.

Something tells me he hasn’t exactly learned his lesson yet.

Category: Cap'n Jack Henry, Dirty Harry Tags: Fridge Phonics, imperative sentences, insults, saying dumb things 10 Comments

What BASEBALL Means to Us: Dirty Birds, Among Other Things

April

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Yes, baseball means a lot of different things to me and my crew.

First of all, it means (and I’ve covered this one before) red dirt and grass stains on white pants because guess what a baseball diamond consists of? Red dirt and grass. And guess where your son (or daughter) will be most of the time? Yes, in the dirt and grass.

It means that Big D is the assistant coach this year. It means that you will see him less and less, that he will hibernate on baseball coaching sites, and that packages from UPS will be delivered almost daily to your doorstep containing practice tees and other coaching paraphernalia. It means that you can’t call his cell phone while he’s at a practice because he won’t answer you, of if he does, he will have no idea what you’re saying to him. It means that Dirty Harry is thrilled to have his dad as a coach. It means that I’m extremely proud of him for sacrificing his time and energy to fill the gap…but that I still wish he’d pick up that darn phone!

It will mean that your teenage daughter just got a lot more bored. She will need endless change and dollar bills for infinite trips to the concession stand. She will need to have her cell phone charged so she can make lots of phone calls to her friends. She will ask you about ten times in an hour and half if the game is almost over. She will be flirted with by her brother’s teammates and friends, which will make you sick to your stomach and willing to comply with her requests to stay home.

It means that your child might pitch. And subsequently that will mean that I, as a nervous wreck, will bite off all my nails (and I don’t bite my nails). It means that I will drink a shot of whiskey (and I don’t drink whiskey). It means that I will go to the parking lot to smoke a cigarette (and I don’t smoke). It means that I will retreat to my van and eat a whole box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls (okay…I’ve been known to eat a few of those).

It means that I have to carry a twenty pound sack of taters on my back. It means that he will cry and fuss a lot. It means he will appeal to total strangers in the stands to free him. It means that he will want ice water and Cheerios on demand. It means he can’t have it because I’m not made of rubber, and I can’t reach him. It means he’ll throw a tantrum, banging his head against my back. It means I take him out of the carrier and hand him over to the bored teenager, killing two birds with one stone.

And speaking of birds, I never would have guessed that baseball would mean that we would have dirty birds. But it does. Because Big D and Dirty Harry…those stinkers!…broke my birdbath while playing catch in the backyard. Dirty Harry threw the ball. Big D missed it. And my birdbath, which used to belong to my grandmother, was smashed in the process.

I’m proud of him and his strong arm, but that is ridiculous.

Don’t you just love baseball season? I do. I really do.

Category: Admiral Big D, Bonny Annie, Cap'n Jack Henry, Dirty Harry, The Pirate Mom Speaks Tags: baseball, birdbaths, cigarettes, Ergo baby carrier, pitchers 7 Comments

How to Build a Volcano

April

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Or “How to Make a Complete Mess of Your Kitchen Table for about Ten Seconds of Excitement.”

Dirty Harry has been studying the earth for a while now. For a culminating activity, we built a little volcano in our kitchen. It was a fun project for a kid who likes to build things, and we did ours on the cheap. Sure, you can buy a kit for about $20, but I’ll bet you have the materials to make one just behind your kitchen cabinets.

Here’s what you’ll need…

vinegar
baking soda
a small glass (we used a shot glass, but you could use any size)
clay or Play-doh (optional)
a cookie sheet or some other flat pan to protect the surface of your table or counter (optional)
other objects to create a scene such as Lego figures, grass, rocks, etc. (optional)

First, if you’d like your volcano to look authentic, you will need to cover your glass with the clay, leaving an opening at the top.

Then, if your child wants to be creative, allow them to make a volcanic scene on the cookie sheet. Dirty Harry used Lego people and grass and rocks from outside.

Oh, and look…Indiana Jones has made an appearance to watch the eruption…

To create the actual eruption, you fill your glass half full with the vinegar. Then you will spoon the baking soda into the glass until the mixture starts to bubble up and out. You can continue to add vinegar and baking soda alternately until your child has had their fill of volcanic activity.

Here’s a little video of ours…

Then have your child clean up all the mess so that you can put dinner on the table. They will grumble, complain, cry and gnash their teeth. Then threaten them with a grounding from their Wii. At this, they will probably comply, but you can probably still expect a dirty look or two.

Of course, you will probably want to remind your student that this project differs very much from what happens beneath the earth’s surface. This eruption is caused by a chemical reaction of the vinegar and baking soda and is simply a fun visual of a real, live volcano.

Related links:

A cool site with various kinds of homemade volcanoes and videos (Please note that while the volcano material is completely fine, that there are links to some questionable videos that may appear randomly in the sidebars. So, please use caution if you’re viewing with your children nearby.)

Information, stories and photos of real volcanoes

Category: Dirty Harry, crafts, homeschooling Tags: home schooling, Indiana Jones, projects, science, volcanoes, Wii 2 Comments

Photo Fallacy

April

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I have heard many, many times that one will not take as many pictures of their subsequent children as they do of their first. This has proved wrong in our family. Way wrong.

We did take a ton of pictures of Bonny Annie. She was cute. She was a little red-headed girl. She was the first grandchild. On both sides. She was oft-photographed.

But we took even more pictures of Dirty Harry. He was cute too. He was chubby. He was the first boy grandchild. On both sides. But it was mostly because we had a better camera.

But Cap’n Jack Henry wins the prize. He is undoubtedly the most photographed child in our family. Possibly in the whole world. He’s cute. He’s little. He has extra-long eyelashes. And super-curly hair. He’s the 6th grandchild. On both sides.

Allow me to demonstrate this dynamic…

Yesterday was Easter, right? All three kids got a little bit of candy in their baskets. See…

So far, so good.

So, how many photos does it take to document each child’s consumption of said candy? Let’s take a look…

Specimen #1, Bonny Annie:

One…

Two…

(and she’s probably going to kill me for posting that one)

Three…

Three…not bad. Sufficient. To the point.

Specimen #2, Dirty Harry:

One…

One? Just one? And I was lucky to get that one. He doesn’t like to sit still for picture-taking.

Specimen #3, Cap’n Jack Henry:

One…

Two…

Three…

Four…

Five…

Six…

Seven…

Eight…

Nine…

Ten…

Eleven…

Eleven. Eleven!!! Excessive. Superfluous. And I deleted the blurry ones.

So, as you can see, it is possible to take more pictures of your second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. children than you did of your first. It can be done. I believe that I also proved that it would be crazy for us to try to have a fourth child. We simply do not have the time or energy to take and process all of the potential pictures.

Category: Bonny Annie, Cap'n Jack Henry, Dirty Harry, My Crew Tags: babies, curly hair, Easter candy, long eyelashes, photography 5 Comments

Pride Cometh Before the Apple Falleth Far From the Tree

March

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The other day I gave Dirty Harry a spelling test. I’m a homeschooling mom. We do that. He missed one word: apples. It’s not that big of a deal really. With the spelling curriculum we use, your child only studies the words they miss on a given week. So studying one word takes less than five minutes a day. No sweat, right? Wrong.

Dirty Harry was mad. He launched into a hot tirade, proclaiming that he knew how to spell the word apples, that he just made a little mistake, that he wanted a do-over. I agreed with him on the point that he knew how to spell it. He was probably just rushing through, but that’s the consequence of rushing, and I told him so. He fumed and complained some more. I told him to get over himself and move on. He misspelled the word apples on his test, so he would have to study it throughout the week and be tested again on Friday. Period. End of discussion.

On Wednesday our spelling curriculum dictates that the student do some sort of fun activity to study their words. Dirty Harry likes to use the site www.spellingcity.com to play games and take little tests on this day. But apparently he was still a little sore about the whole apples ordeal.

Dirty Harry: Mom, I can’t think of any fun activities to do with apples.

Me: Just go use the Spelling City site for a while. With only one word, it should only take a few minutes.

Dirty Harry: It doesn’t work well with one word. This is stupid! I know how to spell apples! Can’t we just forget this whole thing and move on??? Blah, blah, blah, blah….

Me: No, we can’t. You missed the word on your test. If you knew how to spell it, then you shouldn’t have been in such a hurry and made a careless mistake. Why don’t you just take a piece of chalk and write apples on the chalkboard five times for your activity? That should be extremely simple for you since you know how to spell it and all.

Dirty Harry grumbles and sulks but finally picks up the piece of chalk and writes the word five times.

“That was too easy,” he says, “so I’m going to just go ahead and write the whole alphabet for extra cursive practice, okay?”

“Ummm-hmmmm,” I answer. I was busy in the kitchen, so I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing. Later, however, I went to check his work, and this is what I saw….

Bwahhhhaaaahaaaaaahaaa!!!!

I’m sorry. Please excuse my maniacal laughter, but something in me always finds great humor in my kids’ failures when they’ve persisted in giving me such a hard time about something. It’s a character flaw, and I’m working on it.

He has since taken his spelling post-test and earned a hundred. I don’t think he’ll ever spell the word apples incorrectly again in his life.

But if he does, I hope I’m there to laugh my head off and remind him of this story.

Category: Dirty Harry, homeschooling Tags: apples, laughter, pride, spelling, Spelling City, Spelling Power 10 Comments

Shop Class

January

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Last Thursday turned out to be a doozy of a day at our house.

Thursdays are always a bit of a challenge anyway because it’s Bonny Annie’s long tutorial day, so I can never plan much for her school-wise since she’s gone from the house from about 9:00am until about 1:30. But on this particular Thursday, our friend, Mr. Vern, was showing up to work on our dining room floor, and since the dining room is also our classroom, I thought serious schoolin’ for that day was going to be a wash.

But I was wrong.

We’ve known Mr. Vern for a number of years. He goes to our church. And he recognized Dirty Harry’s interest in the job right away, and he tapped into it. He casually just started giving him little jobs, running him back and forth to his truck for odds and ends, even taking him on a quick run to Lowe’s. The next thing I knew Dirty Harry was chest deep into our crawl space, thinking that this was even better than Legos, and my plans for attempting a math lesson on the living room floor were abandoned.

When we bought our house new a little over eight years ago, the builder installed a French door that had already been fitted and installed into another house into ours, since ours had sold and we had a fast-approaching move-in date, and the other one had not. We had always noticed that the door had some minor problems since we always had to slam it to get it to shut properly, but we didn’t know, until just a couple of years ago, that the seal on the door was faulty and that the floor all around the door had some water damage. Fortunately, the damage was not severe or widespread, but we had reached a point where the floor had to be fixed and the door replaced, or someone was going to fall through into the crawl space. The only family member that possibility appealed to was Dirty Harry, and at under 65 pounds, he was not likely to make that happen.

Here you can see where the floor had gotten spongy all along the door jam…

So, Mr. Vern’s job, along with his trusty helper, Dirty Harry, was to cut a whole in the damaged floor and put in a temporary, but functional, patch of plywood flooring. Eventually we’re going to lay Pergo flooring on the whole downstairs. Maybe over the summer…. (Did you hear that Big D??? The summer???)

Dirty Harry’s favorite job was using the hammer and other various tools to whack away at the damaged flooring.

I love the above picture because, for some reason, Dirty Harry looks five instead of nine. Not that there’s anything wrong with nine, but if you’re a mother reading this, then you probably understand. There’s just something special about five….

I also love that while this project was going on I heard Mr. Vern having Dirty Harry work relevant math problems as it pertained to cutting the floor. I also loved that at one point they were having a scientific conversation about the results of friction. I also loved that Mr. Vern shared a gruesome story about an eye injury he once suffered in an attempt to scare Harrison into leaving on his work googles instead of wearing them on his head. I also loved that Dirty Harry was working so hard at one point that he was sweaty. I also really, really loved that Mr. Vern noticed in time that Dirty Harry was, at one point, pounding away at a non-damaged floor joist and stopped him. And, of course, I love the fact that my floor is temporarily repaired…

…even if it is a bit unsightly at the moment. I love that, even now, Big D is planning the door replacement and permanent flooring project. (Pssst….Big D? Still listening???)

So, the next time your school schedule gets turned upside-down by….whatever….don’t fret! Embrace the situation as a school elective, and let your child learn something of a different nature.