A computer of her own.

Maggie may not have a room of her own (no one really does in this house), but she now has a computer of her own.  After our summer stay in New York, my mother-in-law’s old laptop came home with us.  It’s about 7 years old, which makes it something like 150 in computer years, I think.  But it occurred to me that it might be fun for Maggie to have a computer that was hers, so I set to configuring it for her.  I set up an email account on the computer, and installed a few things that I thought she might like to investigate.  Macs have a lot of parental controls available, and for now her internet browser is set so that she can only visit Mommy-approved websites.  The kids love playing on the family computer, but often the default path is to end up on Nick Jr. or PBS kids watching videos.  Which is fine in small doses, but tends to render them a bit hypnotized, so I just wanted to keep away from that with the new computer.  Or old computer. Whatever.  My thinking was not so much to limit the use of this computer, but open up the possibilities for other ways to use it, rather than just the old favorites.

The email has been a big hit.  (Let me know if you’d like Maggie’s address.)  Maggie can be a bit reluctant to write, so in part I was looking for fun, authentic ways for her to practice.  She also learned to touch-type to make things easier.  She’s enjoying trading emails with friends and family.  She’s had the email account for some time, but having her own machine makes all the difference.  I’m a bit ambivalent about the automatic spell-checking, but she likes knowing if she’s spelling words correctly.  Never one for the inventive spelling, this one.

I’ve also been leaving her little surprises on the computer in the form of new bookmarks.  For example, I happened upon this website, and put a link to an addition game.  Or I printed out some materials from this very fun website (animal secret agents?  what could be more fun than that?), and left them for her with a note.  I often leave a little sticky note on top of the computer for her to find when she gets up in the morning.  I’m thinking that I’d also like to start sending her emails myself, but I haven’t started that.

It’s fun watching her pride of ownership.  She likes talking about “my computer,” and is discovering the fun of carrying up into her top bunk or onto the screen porch to work on something.  I look forward to helping her explore some of the other things she might enjoy, like taking pictures and putting them on the computer.  She’s interested in the idea of starting her own blog, but that hasn’t quite gotten off the ground yet.  In the meantime, this special new possession makes her feel more grown-up, and we enjoy occasional evenings of sitting together at the kitchen counter–she has her laptop, and I have mine.  We sit, we have a snack, we do our work, and we chat a little bit.  What could be better than that?

Color Wheels

Anna and I painted color wheels today.  I downloaded a simple template from here, printed it on watercolor paper, pulled out our new acrylic paints, and we got down to business.  Maggie wasn’t interested in this project (she was busy inside working on illustrations for a story), so I used the second template myself.

I wasn’t sure how Anna would take to this; she tends go her own way when it comes to art projects.  Which is great.  But I had a feeling that she might enjoy the structure of creating a rainbow wheel (she loves rainbows), especially if it involved a lot of squeezing and mixing of paint (another favorite activity).

Well, she loved it.  And I loved working alongside her, mixing our colors and filling our wheels.  We started with the primary colors, and then made secondary and tertiary colors.  The above website has instructions for making them very precisely; we opted for winging it and having a good time.

When we were finished, Anna examined both the wheels and said with some disappointment, “Yours is much neater than mine.”  Uh-oh.  This is exactly the reason that I’m careful about making art with the girls–I don’t want them making unnecessary comparisons to what an adult can do–even an untrained, amateurish adult like me!  But here we were.  So I said to her, “Look at your purple–I think it’s more of a true purple, don’t you think?  I put a little too much red in mine.”  Apparently this was the right thing to say, because Anna puffed up a little and responded reflectively, “Well, I mixed very carefully, and you painted very carefully, Mama.”

“Well, maybe,” I said, “but I don’t know that your painting was less careful than mine.  I think it’s just more exuberant.”

Which should not be a surprise to anyone around here.

A brief post script: the paints we used today were the student acrylics from Dick Blick, specifically the color mixing assortment.  As we’ve gotten more interested in mixing our own colors, we’ve been frustrated with the limitations of the cheap tempera paint we’ve been using.  So I recently splurged on both the above acrylics and the Dick Blick student tempera.  What a difference!  Although not specifically washable, I’ve found the student tempera to clean up very easily–and the colors are wonderful, so much better.  We’ve also taken their advice to use magenta and turquoise for mixing, which has finally yielded the colors we were hoping for.  I’m not sure why it took me so long to buy quality paint–I guess it seemed extravagant, since it’s one art supply we use in larger quantities–but I’m so glad I finally did.

This is what fall looks like. Really.

In my ongoing push to create a little more order and ease around here, I tackled the various surfaces of our dining room this weekend.  Which included a refreshing of our nature table, which had turned more into a rocks, sticks, and small-toys-or-boxes-that-really-belong-elsewhere table.  There were plenty of goodies from our New York trip–fossils and special rocks and feathers.  But I wanted to add some live things to the table, so Anna and I headed outside to see what we could find in the yard.  As you can see, we came back with bundles of flowers and greenery, which we fit into vases and added to the table.  So now our nature table has the same bountiful, colorful feeling that we find right outside our door.

But here’s the thing.  It’s OCTOBER.  Isn’t that supposed to be the season of chilly winds and turning leaves?  The autumn equinox has passed, shouldn’t things be dying and making way for winter by now?  Certainly, any waldorfy fall nature table is filled with dark greens, browns, and oranges, with fallen leaves and autumnal elves.  Where’s the REAL fall?

It amazes me that I have lived in North Carolina for almost twenty years, and it’s taken me this long to really understand that this IS fall.  It’s not the storybook fall filled with cold noses, pumpkins, and blowing leaves.  Well, we have all those things, but they don’t usually start until later.  In the meantime, we have sunny days in the 70′s, colorful blooming flowers, and abundant local produce.

Even more, fall is a time for celebration in this part of the world.  In more northern climes, fall is an ending, the transition from the sun and warmth of summer to the dark and cold of winter.  Around here, we all breathe a collective sigh of relief when the first cool days hit.  We’ve made it through the blistering heat of the summer.  We can crawl out of our air-conditioned homes and actually enjoy being in the sun again.

Perhaps it is because I am a child of a northern climate, but I have always been a wee bit judgmental about the weather around here.  Too hot in the summer.  Not a “real” winter.  And, of course, not a “real” fall.  And what’s the main effect of that judgment?  By holding up some mythical standard of what “real” seasons are, I’ve failed to notice what a glorious time of year this is.  True, there are no (unsprayed) apples growing close enough for us to go pick them, and sometimes we misjudge and end up sweating in our Halloween costumes.  But we also get weeks on end of weather that invites us outside to play, to pick flowers, and to hunt for vegetables in the garden.

Oh, life is so much better when I can enjoy what IS, instead of measuring it against what it might be.  Who knew that could be such a challenge?