Resiliency during Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

I want to THANK all the people who have worked tirelessly to keep us safe (firefighters, police, EMS, tree cutters, etc.) and warm (electric and gas company workers).

The week began uneventfully. I prepared two posts for the blog carnival: one on Sunday and one on Monday. I hosted the blog carnival on Tuesday. Pamela and I attended school like we always do. Our headmaster (also a volunteer firefighter) called off school because of Winter Storm Pax, which seemed scarier than Leon. The governor urged everyone to stay home. They were right. Early Wednesday morning, someone in our county died in a car accident.

While everything looked sparkly and lovely with an icy glaze, I worried about the power. My folks had gone several days without it in the ice storm here back in 2001. I headed out to take pictures for Steve and posted them before we lost power. It rained and sleeted off and on all day. David cleaned the tub and filled it with water for the toilet. I filled jugs with fresh water for us to drink. Then, we waited.


When lights flickered that evening, Pamela turned off the ceiling fan lights (4 bulbs) and turned on the desk lamp to dim. She explained, "I don't waste power." Her thoughtfulness impressed me, and I posted a note about it on Facebook. At about ten o'clock, we heard a tremendous crash. Pamela woke up and asked me, "What happened?" My favorite branch had bit the dust (sniff, sniff). Then, we all went to bed warm and cozy, and the temperatures dipped below freezing.

At 1:30 AM, I woke up to the Amityville Horror in my house!

The blue LED light of my alarm clock was blinking madly. The smoke detector was beeping at odd intervals. The house alarm system randomly cut on and off. A bright orange glow blazed eerily through my window. I grabbed a shawl and ran out to the front porch to see wild sparks and a grass fire along the telephone pole in my neighbor's yard. My dad told me later that he saw it through his bedroom window and thought he was dreaming that his front porch was on fire. I shivered in my socks and jammies and watched to make sure the ice would prevent it from spreading. Pamela popped her head out and asked, "Is the power off?" I told her, "Not yet."

Once everything looked safe, I ran inside to wake up David. I grabbed my cell phone and we watched a spark that flashed between blue and orange travel down the power line. Here is a short clip (turn up the volume to hear the crackle). These are the last dying breaths of our power.

We heard a terrific BOOM. The sparking stopped. We had no power. The next morning we figured out that a tree branch had smashed the light bulb of the street light and caused the light show. We headed back into the house. David used his new iPod as a flashlight and I looked up the number for the power company in the phone book. Since Duke bought Progressive Energy recently, I couldn't find the phone number. We bundled up and went back to bed.

The most amazing thing about that night was that Pamela didn't freak out. In spite of the noise and the fire and the loss of power, she didn't cry and she didn't scream. She saw that I was calm and that her brother was calm and that our neighbors across the street were calm. She borrowed our perspective and didn't lose her cool.

Do you know how amazing that is for an autistic person?

We woke up the next morning (Thursday). Pamela wasn't upset nor did she cry about the loss of power or the lack of electronics. At some point, she had rummaged through kitchen drawers and pulled out two flashlights for me. The house was very cold, but the thermostat had reached rock bottom. I found the thermometer we use for science and discovered that room temperature was 50°! I headed outside to assess the damage and take more pictures.



Until you've been through an ice storm without power, you have no idea how eerie it is. Dead silence. Totally cut off from the world. Silence broken by the branches cracking, which sounds just like gunshots. Sirens blaring down the road. Heavy vehicles rumbling past to help someone in need. Melting ice sliding off the metal roof and hitting the windows.

I decided to keep warm by cleaning house since Steve was due to arrive the next day. I had a pile of laundry to fold, dusted, and worked on the floors. David woke up at around eleven and said, "That's weird. I'm picking up Opa's wireless." When offered the chance to hang out at her grandparent's house, she refused. I took a break at one point and enjoyed a cup of coffee before heading back to Planet Hoth. At about one, we decided to find some hot food. Hardly anything was open and what was open had Soviet Union style lines. I managed to order a delicious meal for us, only to learn that they couldn't take credit cards. An hour later, we came home with groceries from The Pig.

Pamela got a little upset at one or two times, but she did well in the face of so much uncertainty. She consoled herself in the car by comparing the situation to history. "No power. Just like cavemen." "I pretend to be Ma and Laura." "Knights had no power." When we heard a favorite composer, she'd say, "Mozart had no electricity." I was so impressed with how much self-regulation and resiliency she displayed in the face of adversity.

I cleaned until sundown, and the thermometer was at 46° when I left. Miraculously, my folks still had power. Mom offered me a glass of my sister's award-winning Madeira. I rarely drink but the thought of going home to a frozen house with temperature dipping into the twenties convinced me to sip a quarter of a glass. At around eight o'clock, their power went out! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! We went out to the street to look for a cause and, to my great joy, a man from the power company was working in the cold and dark to restore power! I jumped up and down on my mom's porch like a contestant on The Price Is Right! Before long, the power came on so I checked on my house. I turned around to get Pamela when I heard the lovely purr of the heating unit.

We slept well in a warm, cozy house. And we slept in! I spent the day vacuuming, doing laundry, running the dishwasher, etc. I emptied out the freezer and counted birds. Pamela and I picked up our hot meal. Bright sunny day. Ice gone! Except for the fallen trees and debris and the sound of chainsaws you'd never have guessed that our town had looked like Narnia the day before. Of course, lots of people are still without power, even now.

That evening, I was doing the finishing touches of cleaning up. There seemed to be a bunch of power trucks in front of the house. I found out later they were pruning the live oak in the yard of the neighbor across the street. Apparently that tree was an outage epicenter. While I was working on the bathroom, Pamela burst in and announced breathlessly, "I saw CBS."

Me: "At Oma's house yesterday?"

Pamela: "A reporter."

Me: "Where?"

Pamela: "Over there!"

She pointed to the window. I looked out. Seven power trucks lined the street with a WLTX vehicle in front of my house. A reporter was giving a live report for the news for a station in Columbia — the night footage is in front of my house.

You don't see that everyday! You might not think much of what Pamela did. Let me explain. First, she noticed something extraordinary in a week of unusual events. Second, she realized I was so busy cleaning I failed to notice what was happening on the street. Third, she could not keep the exciting news to herself. She searched for me and went upstairs to tell me.

This is one element of what they call experience sharing in RDI. Situations like this may seem minor but, when you add them up, you see a huge improvement in quality of life as a friend has shared at her blog.

Steve finally made it home and we were so glad to see him. He took a nap while I waited for the blanket to finish drying. Just when things had finally calmed day, Pamela and I felt a sharp jolt shove the house. Pamela asked, "Is it earthquake?" I replied, "I'm not sure," and waited to see if a tree was going to fall on the house. About a minute later a friend on Facebook asked, "Did anyone just feel an earthquake?"

Yes, as far-fetched as it might seem, a 4.1 earthquake hit Edgefield, SC, and we felt it on our side of the state. So, like any good citizen scientist, I filled out an earthquake event form and went to bed before the locusts arrived. After all, you never know what might happen with a full moon.

Making *GOOD* Time on the Road

Nancy Kelly's wonderful advice for rich holiday reading has inspired me to share tidbits for rich holiday travel as well. Pamela and I are making two trips to and from Kansas this season. As the drive is twenty plus hours one way, we include an overnight stop. We also take advantage of inspiring rest stops like Carl Sandburg's home, the house that Manly built, a replica of Little House on the Prairie, the National World War I Museum, Gettysburg, just to name a few. While some stops cost a little and last an hour or two, we never regret making the effort. As one of my friends says, "I like to make good time on the road—emphasis on good!"



Taking time to stretch our legs, our eyes feasted on beauty at the St. Louis Art Museum for nothing more than a voluntary donation. I chose to keep ten dollars for parking underground in my pocket and walk in the bitter cold because of the plentiful free parking. The added bonus was this gorgeous view of the reflecting pool in front of the museum.

While we had planned to visit a couple of dear friends (van Gogh, Monet, Millet, and Winslow Homer), the first painting that captured our attention was this ginormous painting of King Charles I by Dutch artist Daniel Martensz Mytens the Elder. This trip revealed that art is a shared experience, not just with your companion but also with friends from afar. When we spied this commemoration of his coronation, I recalled a conversation with the elementary class at Harvest Community School last week. The students are very much aware that Charles I lost his head, so they were intrigued that Carolina and Charleston are named for his son, Charles II, who managed to keep both head and throne.



Pursuing van Gogh, we came across this version of the madonna and child by Davide Ghirlandaio. The Roman numerals, MCCCLXXXIV, painted on the stairs caught Pamela's eye, and she quickly read the date as 1486. Again, I thought of the elementary students at Harvest because they want to learn Roman numerals since some books number chapters in this manner.



Monet's Water Lilies were gorgeous, and seeing someone notebooking increased my delight as I revel in The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater! We finally found three van Gogh's in a row. Pamela said her favorite is the one to her right, Factories at Clichy. Van Gogh included two tiny figures in front of the factory, hard to spot, but logical when considering how small we are beside the mechanical wonders made by our hands.



While the dancing grapevines in Vineyards at Auvers (shown clearly in this detail) tugged at my heart, my favorite is Stairway at Auvers, a painting which quivers with delight. Again, I am reminded of our school for the primary class adored this painting by the artist they call "Rainbow Man." When I texted a picture of Pamela standing beside the stairway to a friend whose children attend Harvest, her kids were amazed that we saw the masterpiece with our own eyes.







On the way to Millet, we spied greyhounds painted by another realist Gustave Courbet. We had to take a picture for our friend Eman, the ultimate dog lover. We even texted a picture of Pamela and the greyhounds to his mom. The other day, when we were walking with him to pick up lunch, we saw this cute little white dog named Lily. He could not contain his delight and said, "It's a Maltese! I love her!" As she was wearing a brown sweater, I let it flow into an impromptu Spanish lesson with the teen who had joined us. We figured out how to describe the encounter in a second language, "Veo una perrita blanca con un sueter pardo. Su nombre es Lily."

Right next to Knitting Lesson by Jean Francois Millet, we saw Girl with Mandolin by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Seeing the mother teach her daughter to knit brought to mind the finger-knitting lessons on the porch swing at school. One student taught another, and, before long, the entire elementary class knew how to make scarves and belts. I had to take a picture of the Corot for my friend Leslie adores this artist. I tagged her once I posted the shot on Facebook.





Before reaching our final destination, we met George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, pictured on Pamela's left. Apparently, Stuart cranked out so many of these portraits that he called them hundred dollar bills! Pamela and her class has been reading a short version of his biography in Four Great Americans. How serendipitous to find his portrait on the way to Winslow Homer's The Country School, which brings to mind Understood Betsy, a book that our entire school just finished reading.



I will conclude with this collection of arms and armor from the Middle East and Far East, which remind me of the boys who spend recess imagining themselves as heroes and villains in battles, real, fictional, literary, historical, and invented. Making GOOD time is not about how fast you finish a journey. It is about making good memories, reflecting on past experiences, and sharing your discovery with friends.



We study art for its own sake! However, if you must find a utilitarian reason to visit art museums in this standardized-test-obsessed world, this article might convict you. "Students who, by lottery, were selected to visit the museum on a field trip demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions."

Help for Those Who Hate Math

Last July, I had the pleasure of meeting Richele Baburina, author of Mathematics, An Instrument for Living Teaching, at the Living Education Retreat. Her insights have helped me enormously with a student in the autism spectrum who has declared loudly to us at the school: "I HATE MATH!" "IT'S TOO HARD!" "IT'S BORING!" "YOU JUST WANT TO ME WRITE PAGES AND PAGES OF STUFF!"

I empathize with his views of typical math curricula. As Richele points out in her first blogpost on mathematics, "Though its use in daily life was important, it was the beauty and truth of mathematics, that awakening of a sense of awe in God’s fixed laws of the universe, that afforded its study a rightful place in Charlotte’s curriculum."

Does typical math curricula inspire awe over God's fixed laws of the universe? Does it point to the beauty of mathematics?

When he sees a worksheet full of equations, my young friend shuts down or melts down! As Richele states in her second post on mathematics, such worksheets are not CM-friendly. They are convenient for moms and teachers because they give us a break from individualized instruction.

Rather than haul out workbooks, I assessed his addition facts orally with different manipulatives: dominoes, dice, etc. He seemed to know them, so the headmaster of our school and I assessed him in two-digit addition. Rather than pass out a worksheet, Angie pulled out her 5" x 8" notepad to emphasize the shortness of the lesson! She asked him how many problems he could do. He told her six. So, she gave him a couple of problems that did not require carrying. He made no errors.

When she wrote down one that required carrying, he struggled. Rather than disrupt the flow by pulling out manipulatives, she appealed to his sense of reason. She wrote above the two columns of the problem, tens and ones, and explained that this number is like a house. It has two rooms, the tens room and the ones room. Only numbers that are 9 or less can fit in the room. She asked him where he thought then ten part of 13 should go. He answered, "The tens room. Is that why they do that?" (carry the ten). From that day, he always knew when to carry and when not to carry. That week, he gave correct answers for tricky two-digit addition problems: some with a three-digit answer or with 0 in the ones place of the solution. He sailed through three-digit problems!

His math book offered addition problems with decimals next, so I asked his mother what he understood. Not much. I asked her about his understanding of fractions because they lead to decimals. She stated that he knows the basics, so, this week, I shifted to assessing him in fractions.

My friend bores easily, so variety is the name of the game. Because I am mindful of shared experiences (the joy that comes from collaboration—a challenge for those in the autism spectrum), I seek situations that invite him to work with me. Richele calls this living teaching:

• Teach math concepts in a hands-on, life-related way that assures understanding.
• Encourage daily mental effort from your students with oral work.
• Cultivate and reinforce good habits in your math lessons.
• Awaken a sense of awe in God’s fixed laws of the universe.

On the first day of our foray into fractions, he explored fraction overlays. To pique his interest, I asked, "Guess what I made!"

"What!"

"I made this basket."

"You did? What's in it?"

"Some fraction overlays.

"What are those?"

"Take them out and see!"

Eman pulled out all of the overlays and made circles with the fraction slices. As he put them away in the way he found them, we talked about the names of the denominators for halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eighths, tenths, and twelfths. He knew them all, so I took notes on what he did and what he knew. This task covered more than fractions: taking out and storing the pieces exactly as he found them required fine motor skills and practiced the habits of attentiveness and order. He spent at least twenty minutes doing math and enjoyed it!

Knowing that Eman loathes repetition, I found another hands-on task the next day. I asked, "Guess what the kids in your class are making!"

"I don't know. What?"

"Leonardo da Vinci's parachute."

"Really? Can I try?

"Sure."

"But I want to work outside!"

"We can do that."

We headed outdoors with pencil, ruler, and four pieces of paper. Together we folded each paper in half, drew diagonals, and cut along the diagonals until we had four triangles. We talked about the shapes we noticed (rectangles and triangles). Then, we put them together as shown in the picture and I said, "It reminds me of the fraction overlays from yesterday." He agreed, so I probed.

"It looks like there are pieces missing. How many do you think are missing?"

"Two"

"So, if we had those pieces, what kind of fraction would we have?"

"Sixths."

After that exchange, I began to wonder if boredom might be the culprit. This hands-on, meaningful task revealed a keen understanding of fractions that rows and rows of problems might not have uncovered. Then, we taped the triangles together and I showed him how he could make a tent. I asked, "Do you know what this shape is called?" "A pyramid." Yes, he really is bright.



Eman's mother loved the parachute project and told me that his visual-spatial awareness is keen. The next day, I printed out a model of a dodecahedron. Before we started, we had a little chat about the pentagons. Then, he wanted to know what a ten-sided shape was called and then a twelve-sided shape. I made a grid with twelve squares for him to color to represent each side: 3 red, 3 green, 3 yellow, and 3 blue. My printer was running out of cyan, so only one pentagon was true blue. Eman insisted that the other two were purple, which made for a more interesting problem. While coloring the grid, he said, "I remember doing these in school. I liked it." Then, he wrote fractions for all five colors.

He seemed worried that cutting would be too hard. When asked what he could not do, he said, "The black lines."

"I can cut the white tabs. What can you do?"

"The colored ones."

We took turns cutting, and then he folded all the sides without any help. Then, we took turns taping it all together. When finished, he just had to roll the dodecahedron like a dice!



To avoid boring him, I chose six red and six blue buttons the next day. Eman had to sort them by color, size, and number of button holes and make fraction grids. After doing the color count, he told me he wanted to try his own problem. He insisted.

I asked for a topic. He chose cats and dogs, and I selected a much more challenging problem: conduct a survey about liking cats or dogs. When Eman had a hard time choosing cats or dogs, he created a new category: both. He polled students, teachers, parents, and even the ladies painting the new elementary classroom. He interviewed 27 people and checked their preferences. He asked how to spell their names and wrote them down! This math problem encouraged writing, communication, social interaction, attentiveness, and patience (we had to wait for kids in the primary class to come out for bathroom breaks and lunch). Moreover, this problem inspired Eman beyond the length of a typical math lesson.

I made a printout to show his data and apply equivalent fractions. Tasks were picking a color scheme, coloring a grid that had bars the same size as labels for him to convert thirtieths to fifths, and making a bar graph as well as a pie chart in both denominations of fractions.

Because of the trust we have built, his first reaction was not complaining about it being too hard. He studied it for few seconds and asked, "Did you make this?"

"Yes. I did. I learned how to make these in college."

"Really?"

He enjoyed picking out the color scheme, counting up the responses, and coloring in the grid. At one point, he told me, "I like this!" He figured out the fraction in thirtieths and had no problem seeing that 6/30 was the same as one bar and that he needed three brown bars to make 18/30. He has not fussed about math in over a week.

Tomorrow, we will make the connection to fifths, color the bar graph, and make the pie charts. In time, I hope he will learn to love math for its sake because he has encountered enough inspiring ideas to endure the repetition required to learn those facts that must be learned.

Education should be a science of proportion, and any one subject that assumes undue importance does so at the expense of other subjects which a child's mind should deal with. ~ Charlotte Mason (page 231)

Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon the text-book and few subjects are worse taught; chiefly because teachers have seldom time to give the inspiring ideas, what Coleridge calls, the 'Captain' ideas, which should quicken imagination. ~ Charlotte Mason (page 233)

Science for Students in the Autism Spectrum

Temple Grandin worries that schools do not value of hands-on learning. In a recent blog, she wrote, "One of the worst things the schools did was taking out the hands-on classes such as art, music, sewing, woodshop and auto mechanics." Art gave her something to look forward to doing at school every day: "My ability in art was always encouraged, and both my mother and my teachers encouraged me to draw and paint many different things. I loved getting recognition for several of my best elementary school art projects."

We are blessed to have part-time and full-time students in the autism spectrum at our school. I think Grandin might like our approach to science and art by the scenic trail of nature study. The primary and elementary classes are reading Minn of the Mississippi by Holling C. Hollings. To help them feel the "realness" of the story, I shared pictures of my family's visit to the headwaters of the Mississippi at Itasca State Park about ten years ago.


Some autistic students develop the habit of frustration for a variety of reasons. It takes time to help them find joy in learning what is beyond their pet interests. Every person is different, so what works for one autie may not inspire another.

Eman is teaching me so much. He often refuses to try because either "it's too hard" or "he's bored." He does not enjoy keeping a nature notebook until he finds something that delights him, in which case he begs to draw. One day when he was dragging his feet, I let him tape pictures to a page and narrate what I should write. Novelty is a big hook for him, and being able to use double-sided tape for the first time made a few notebooking experiences positive. When that novelty wore off, I tapped into a positive episodic memory of last year when he joined us for the turtle release party. I showed him pictures of those very turtles: the cage my friend constructed to protect them from crows, the nest, the hatchlings, and the dud.



When the classroom after lunch was too much for him, we switched to reading Minn in the morning. We focused on finding joy in his tasks. When he wanted to draw a story about Minn in his silly notebook (comic strip things that make him laugh), I encouraged him to start an unsilly notebook (comic strip things related to what he is learning). When he asked to read outside on a sunny day, I agreed if he promised to do his best on the notebook. And, he did! One day, he drew seven different scenes representing the most emotional moments of Minn's life: her hatching, getting her leg shot off, her canoe ride, meeting the fox, scaring the boys in the pond, laying eggs, and snapping at the dog's tail.

Right now, working on the pond gives him joy. Watching what happens when we turn on the water pump that pushes water through our homemade water filter is exciting. We stand at the little pool and watch it with anticipation until the water reaches the top of the stones and forms a waterfall. One day, the filter overflowed and he watched the headmaster solve the problem. Somehow, cleaning leaves out of the pond gets him to thinking about turtles. Before long, he is ready to read more about Minn's adventures, draw it in his unsilly notebook, and read it to his mother.



On another day, a cockroach caught his eye. He was shocked when I shared my plans to draw it in my nature notebook. "You keep one, too?" He was so interested in seeing mine that I promised he could look through it once he had finished making an entry in his.

At another time, two doves enchanted us with a stroll around the little pool to get a sip of water.



Speaking of problem-solving, Grandin spotlighted another value of hands-on projects: "Practical things do not always work right and people skilled in the real world learn how to improvise. When I made a mistake on a sewing project, I was sometimes able to fix it and other times I could not. Mistakes I made cutting the fabric wrong on a sewing project taught me that I had to slow down. I had to be more careful before I cut the material."

One day, he helped his class with the compost bin. The lesson screeched to a halt when they discovered worms. He watched the students find grubs and toss them into the pond to feed the fish. Two weeks later, his cat showed up at school. He decided to see if she would eat a worm and he knew exactly where to find them. The cat did not!

And, then, there was the day he found the dead fish. Eman studied it in the net for quite some time. He wanted to touch it but was afraid he might get cut. So, I offered to do it first. A bit grossed out, I put my finger on it for only an instant. "No, you need to do it longer!" So, I held my finger on the squishy fish and it must have been long enough. He mustered his courage and touched it himself.



Mason's thoughts in connection to literary books like Minn of the Mississippi: "The approach to science as to other subjects should be more or less literary, that the principles which underlie science are at the same time so simple, so profound and so far-reaching that the due setting forth of these provokes what is almost an emotional response" (Pages 218-219).

Mason's thoughts in connection to outdoor work: "They are expected to do a great deal of out-of-door work... They keep records and drawings in a Nature Note Book and make special studies of their own for the particular season with drawings and notes" (Page 219).

Mason's thoughts on nature notebooks: "The nature note book is very catholic and finds room for the stars in their courses and for, say, the fossil anemone found on the beach at Whitby. Certainly these note books do a good deal to bring science within the range of common thought and experience; we are anxious not to make science a utilitarian subject" (Page 223).