So many firsts in a day. My husband’s first day back to work. Our first day back to school. Our first month without Tiggy.

I really didn’t plan it that way. I just sort of felt like doing school  so I told the kids we would. I wasn’t thinking about the date, but I’m not sure it really matters. How do you decide when to start picking up the pieces of your life after it has been shattered?

But the fact is, I needed to do school.

I finished planning my garden.

I finished writing out my gardening calendar. For the whole year.

I tried crocheting a pair of baby booties, but apparently counting stitches is beyond my current mental state.

So I went through my seeds to see what I need to order.

I’m pacing. Continually pacing. Whether physically from room to room, mentally from project to project or virtually from Facebook to Twitter to email, I’m pacing. I need something to slow down and focus my thoughts.

We needed to do school.

I had no great plans for the day. Last week I had a shadow of a thought about how to transition back to our normal school routine, but it all required so much planning. And thought. And concentration.

So we started with a little meeting and a prayer and dived into spelling. The program we’re using is scripted. It takes no planning. No thought. No concentration. Just dealing with a little complaining from children who have had no schoolwork and very little structure for a month.

OK, actually it took a lot more than that. It took all of my energy to watch my daughter form contractions from the words I put on the board.

Not once did I have to stop to go get a toddler off the table.

Not once did I have to catch the easel after a car raced into it.

Not once did I have to wrestle tiles from chubby little fingers.

Not once were we interrupted and it took all of my energy to keep going through the silence.

Fortunately, I had no great plans for the day. So I showed them a picture of the tree a friend I’ve never met is planning on sending us. A beautiful Japanese flowering cherry. We looked at it. We read about it. We thought how nice it would be to have a picnic under it along with the butterflies and bumblebees of early spring. And then I had another thought.

A lot of people have suggested a memorial garden as a beautiful place to sit and think about Mattias. As much as I like the idea, I’m not sure it is the best for us. I fear it would become overrun with weeds. We’ve purposely stayed away from ornamentals because I have enough work with homeschooling, the animals and our vegetable garden. And after the peace lily incident. . .well, suffice it to say that I’m not sure I could handle his little memorial garden succumbing to my lack of diligence in weeding. Or to the scratching of chickens.

But a memorial playground — that sounded like something we could do. So I gave them all a sheet of butcher paper to draw up their dream playground. Their plans are full of all sorts of things that will never be, from Bear’s church to Mouse’s tree house to Bug’s talking flowers. But they all contained a few ideas I think may be. Some day. Over time.

I picture a pathway in a large circle bordering the whole area where the children can skate and bike with the tree in the center. There’s a sandbox and a stage, a picnic table and some swings, a slide and maybe even a small basketball court. Maybe we can build a clubhouse, or maybe we can just plant sunflowers for a sort of sunflower house grown new every year.

There’ll be places to play and places to sit, places to romp and places to reflect. What better memorial can there be to the life of a toddler? And what better place for a family with small children to go to remember him?

And so we ended our first homeschool day. Nothing much planned, but a lot accomplished.

It all started with a mess in the basement. Which led to an argument about who was working and who wasn’t. And to everyone being called back up to practice working together to clean the front room.

Figuring she’d end up doing most of the work anyway, Mouse decided she wanted to reorganize the basement. After they were finished with the front room, she went down and chased everyone else up, which of course meant that those who previously wanted nothing to do with the basement refused to leave it.

Anyway, in the midst of her reorganizing, she discovered an old doll-house lamp. Once upon a time, it really lit up and even played a little tune. She thought Bug would enjoy it for her doll house so she came up to change the batteries.

That didn’t help so she decided to take it apart.

“Hey, look mom! It has a circuit board in it!”

I smiled at her

“It’s kinda dirty. Maybe I’ll clean it.”

I left her to her self imposed chore, wondering how the lamp had survived the moving purge last winter. Suddenly, I heard a yelp and a holler from the kitchen.

“I did it, mom! I fixed it!”

She came to show me. The lamp lit up. It plinked out its little tune. It did indeed work and Mouse was beaming.

Next thing I knew, she had taken apart a toy piano that no longer played. A little cleaning and a few adjustments had my daughter announcing she wanted to become an engineer. Not wanting to dissuade her, I didn’t say a thing about math.

“Well, taking things apart and putting them back together is a good way to start.”

And I thought of Nate Saint whose parents let him take apart the car when he asked. After he got it all back together, it even ran almost as good as when he started.

Am I that kind of mother? I’d kind of like to be. I mean, it makes a much better story for future biographies than “When Mouse took an interest in the family car, her mother locked the doors, hid the keys and shuttled her off to the library to learn what she could from a book.”

But then again, we kinda need that car. And we have a LOT of toys to disassemble before we get that far.

Why, just now, did she have to ask me what kind of degree you need to become a mechanic?

While waiting for my Mudpuppy to be born almost two years ago, my husband and I sort of got hooked on Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen. In fact, we watched almost an entire season of Hell’s Kitchen in a single night, and it was Kitchen Nightmares that made us almost miss the poor little guy’s birthday.

Since then, my husband has been rather fond of occasionally offering his Ramsay-inspired critiques of my cooking. Fortunately, he keeps it rather light. There are no plates being slammed in the trash, food being thrown on the floor or streams of expletives accompanying tirades about improperly cooked wellingtons.

Which always make me think of rubber boots. Because when my husband talks about wellingtons, he isn’t ever talking about food. Just boots. But that is neither here nor there.

Instead, he makes a face as he studies the food and states,

“The seasoning is…”

And pauses for effect. A pause long enough that the intended effect is almost lost in irritation for him to spit it out already. If you’ve ever watched Hell’s Kitchen, you know exactly what I mean.

“…absolutely perfect.”

And when served an undercooked egg, his reaction leads one closer to giggles than tears.

“It’s raw!”

And not really being able to properly mimic Ramsay’s Scottish accent, he shouts it in the thickest Aussie drawl he can muster.

“It’s raw!”

So anyway, all this playful discussion of food is not lost on the children. Apparently, they pick up a lot more than you think they do amidst their laughter. Because that is the only way I can explain my son’s comments at dinner.

I don’t know if he was feeling homesick or what, but my husband got a hankering for potato cakes, something served at his local fish and chips store outside Melbourne. So he mixed up a huge batch and then conveniently went outside, fell off the porch and sprained his ankle so I’d have to fry them all.

And this is where my son . . my dear seven year old son . . . comes in with his plate, asking for more.

“Mom, those were seasoned beautifully. They were browned perfectly and had a nice crunch when you bit into them but then they were wonderfully soft in the middle. Absolutely lovely. Good job, mom.”

Um, thank you, dear. And as he turns away with another plate of potato cakes, I wonder if I’m raising a young food critic. And I think that somehow I must get this boy over his dislike of writing because he has a bit of a flair for words.

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Image courtesy of Wikipedia

(Some helpful resources are listed at the end and feel free to leave links to your own in comments!)

Fall has made its presence known through crisp mornings, our first frost warning, a house-wide bout of the sniffles and warm comforters coming out of the closet. And for a household that has been newly organized around the rhythm of the sun, it has brought along a more leisurely pace to the bedtime routine.

As the clock says quarter to bedtime, I no longer find myself out with the children herding the ducks and geese back into the hen house for the evening headcount and lock up. Instead, I’m sitting on the porch with children in their pajamas, teeth brushed and looking attentively over my shoulder.

I trace out the three triangles of Sagittarius on the planisphere we printed off the Internet and note how it looks like a tea kettle. With a pen laser, I lead their eyes along the Milky Way, starting overhead and moving down to the southern horizon where it looks like steam rising from the mouth of the kettle. As I mark the three triangles they suddenly see the constellation and make a small leap.

“There it is! I see it! I see it!”

I note that the actual constellation is supposed to represent a centaur with a bow and arrow. This is also where the center of our galaxy lies. Just to the west, the last of Scorpius for the season could be seen just above our barn. These two, for me the most recognizable of the summer constellations, will soon disappear from the sky and give way to the winter constellations.

We find Jupiter, so bright in the eastern sky that it can currently be viewed before the sun even sets. With binoculars, it is supposed to even be possible to see four of its moons this month.

The Big Dipper is out, and the children need no more direction than mom telling them which way to look. I show them the “C” of Leo the Lion’s great head and for a moment my five year old is afraid. She snuggles close to her father as he reassures her that I am talking about star pictures, not real lions.

“This is so much fun!”

I hear my son exclaim as I look at our planisphere for where to look for the “W” of Cassiopeia. Tracing it out with the laser, I think to myself that I really need to look up the mythology behind these constellations. It has been such a long time since I’ve read much about them. So I stand on the porch, telling the children what I still remember from a childhood fascination with the stars and thinking how well this all would tie in with our ancient Greek studies if only I could remember the details.

For a moment, I wonder what we are missing in this scientific age of ours when we see stars as distant balls of fiery gases and use the 88 recognized constellations merely as a road map to find planets, comets, nebulae and other distant objects in the night sky.

Once upon a time, the night sky was a  grand canvas upon which story tellers illustrated their oral traditions. Whether Navajo, Australian Aboriginal or the classical Greek we are generally more familiar with today, family groups came together around their evening fires and used the stars to entertain, educate and preserve the lore of their people through the generations such that we may still delight in their stories hundreds and even thousands of years later.

As I watch the glow in my children’s eyes, I understand why. Now I just need to learn some stories to go along with the beautiful illustrations they are already enthralled with.

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Remember to print out a plansiphere and take a few minutes to learn how to use it before going outside and you can find many of the most recognizable constellations together. It can then be used as a sort of road map to find other interesting objects.

The Draconids, for example, are expected to peak October 7 or 8. They aren’t expected to be particularly showy, but they peak just after sunset, making it an excellent opportunity to hopefully see at least a couple meteorites with your children without staying up too late.

Amazing Space has a nice, brief video on highlights for each month geared at a younger audience.

Older children (or those already fascinated by astronomy) may enjoy StarDate with it’s daily information about the night sky, including scripts of the radio show and free podcasts.

Stellarium turns your desktop into a planetarium. A very cool tool for homeschoolers!

And it is always worth it to check a blog such as Sky and Telescope or EarthSky to see if there is anything of particular interest coming up that you might like to try to see with your children.

Well, school is back in session for the Hanley children. This year marks a number of changes, but so far mom is happy.

As long as we sort of pretend days one and two didn’t happen, that is.

Days one and two involved a young man of seven crying under the table. Over things like being asked to write the word “Geography” on a piece of paper. They involved a young lady of eleven telling me every chance she got about how boring it all was.

Her math and spelling, you see, suddenly have levels attached. And she knows the levels attached don’t correspond to 6th grade. Unfortunately, her spelling and math are a bit patchy and there are things here she really needs to know.

Days one and two also involved a young man of 18 months disassembling everything we took out as he participated with his own brand of toddler helpfulness. Which is amazingly sweet and cute for some activities, like feeding the chickens, and amazingly. . .patience testing. . .for things like school manipulatives.

But Bear was finally coaxed out from under the table with math, and the one year old finally satisfied with a bag of dominoes. Mouse failed a test, convincing her that maybe she wasn’t ready for the level 6 spelling book, and aced it after the lesson without undo copying and repeating which gave a boost to her confidence.

Even if it only expressed itself in a sly grin she wouldn’t dare admit actually had anything to do with spelling. And math got more interesting once we started playing a game. And the fact that she’s taking her current book seven lessons at a time has her figuring out just when she’ll get the level she thinks corresponds with 6th grade. Something that looks more like the algebra her friend is in.

And all the children have seen the pile of books I’m doing my planning for science from. Which has my son pouring over them, asking if we can renew them after I’m done and wondering just how many of the projects I’ll let him do.

It took three days for the children to get used to the school routine:  a little bit of work, a little bit of activity, a little bit of free time.

With this being the first year we really took a whole summer off, however, I guess that isn’t too bad.

Oh, and my other two children, you ask? The five year old and the three year old? They’ve loved every minute of it. In fact, their only criticism of our school day is that I make them stop and put their books away.

How is homeschooling going on your end?

I sit in a tent in our backyard watching my children silouhetted against the Milky Way. They’re watching the northeastern sky intently, waiting for a streak of light. It’s only 11, long before the Perseids are projected to peak, but we’re hoping to see a few anyway.

“Look at all the stars, mom!” Bear says with wonder in his voice.

“This is my favorite day ever,” says Bug as she rolls backwards, kicking her feet in the air.

“I saw one! I saw one!” shouts Mouse as a meteorite streaks across the sky.

“Where?” demands Bug, righting herself again.

We try to explain that it is over, but that if she watches, she may see another one. Encouraged by her sister’s success, she leaves the tent to see the whole sky.

And as I watch her stand there looking to the heavens with awe as her siblings tug at her nightgown, chiding her to get out of the way, I think,

“This is how I want my children to remember summer.”

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If you missed the Perseids peak show yesterday, it isn’t too late. We saw a lot of meteorites Monday and Wednesday, though the skies were too cloudy to watch on Thursday. This is one of the best meteorite showers of the year, and well worth a late bedtime with the children as you share the beauty of the night sky.

If you would like a more formal way to enjoy astronomy together as a family, check out IFAS’ Novice Observing Challenge, a free 66 page e-book full of information and hands-on projects for anyone interested in space to learn a little more. On page 47, you’ll even find a meteorite observing log to begin recording the meteorites you see.