2011 Playlist

Music we tidy & clean & get our coats on to --
and must be reminded not to dance to, only because then nothing else is happening...

I'll Tell Me Ma--Van Morrison & the Chieftans
The Ballad of Davy Crockett--The Wellingtons, Fantastic Mr. Fox Soundtrack
Fooba Wooba John--Burl Ives, Fantastic Mr. Fox Soundtrack
Buckyeye Jim--Burl Ives, Fantastic Mr. Fox Soundtrack
Three is a Magic Number--Blind Melon, School House Rock Rocks!
The Trolley Song--Judy Garland, Pottery Barn Kids Playtime
Banana Split for My Baby--Louis Prima, Pottery Barn Kids Playtime
Three Little Fishes-- Kay Kyser, Pottery Barn Kids, Playtime
Pop! Goes the Weasel--The Merry Macs, Pottery Barn Kids, Playtime
One two three four--Feist, The Reminder
Jump up--Dan Zanes, Family Dance
Malti--Dan Zanes, Family Dance

Family Movie Night Resources

Mr. Owl plans his January around the Sundance Film Festival. He's volunteered there for 3 years and Loves it. Not just because of the free Kenneth Cole jacket, plant-base inked mug, and other SWAG. It's the 8+ indie film premiers he can cram into 2 weekends for free. Oh, and the celebrity sitings are cool too.

No surprise that he initiated, and keeps going, the tradition of Movie Night at our house.  If you were to peek in on us of a Friday night, you would hear the hand-crank popper rattling like loose ball bearings, the remote being searched for (again), and see our couches draped in tablecloths. This is not because we are worried about the moonlight fading our Craigslist furnishings, but because we all like to have our popcorn buttered. And it ends up everywhere. But that's OK, because now we have a vacuum with a removeable canister and 4 people in our family who are tall enough to operate it. And they will operate it.

Something that has helped us know what kinds of films our kids might be ready for is the book The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together by Ty Burr. Not only is it an enjoyable read but it hits the mark for what is age appropriate as well as offering rabbit trails within genres.

Commonsense Media is a site I refer to often for their breakdown of parental ratings on violence, sex, positive messages, and language. It also has a quick summary written to let parents know just what to expect. Parent and kid reviews tell what age they think it appropriate for and help me guage if a movie is right for us with a 4, 6, and 9 year old.

Little House on the Prarie Bookclub

We are doing a book club with the girls and 2 other families as we read the Little House on the Prairie series. We haven't been able to go as much as I'd like--but I love the concept. We read the book, and discuss it, sometimes dressing up or doing a project to go along with it. To go with Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie we had dinner to make Ma proud; roast chicken, cornbread, blackberries, Christmas cakes with strawberries, salad, baked potatoes and ham bits, and peppermints.

It has been great to have the girls think about what else is happening in history at that time; Is this before or after the Civil War? The Pioneers trek west? How many states were in our country then? We learned that Laura and her family's "western frontier" was much different than we originally thought of it, and Oh the devotion of Ma to follow her husband's wandering spirit!

I forgot until the day of that we have a book called Inside Laura's Little House that gives recipes, craft projects, and cultural history related to this time. There are other titles related to this series by the same author, and even companion books for Anne of Green Gables and Little Women that I will have to check out.

Interpretive Natural History Museum Visit

We recently visited the new Museum of Natural History. It's architecture slips right into it's surroundings and sustains them with thousands of solar panels, has both sophisticated and simple displays with layers of learning, and an interior of cement, steel, and glass with angles that mimic the slot canyons nearby--not to mention MC Echer. Our visit to such a fascinating and futuristic building left me feeling like I had been to a place completely new yet it's whole focus is the place where I live.

Even before we entered we had to pull Bowery Bird away from her wildflower coloring book, see Mockingbird and Kingfisher's pet insects they caught, admire some magpies, and hear from Henry, "hey-it's a--oh, it's just another man, I though it was a turkey..." as bicyclists came down the trail. So we were all  honing in on the natural even before we entered the museum.

We each had our own bit of fun here;
Mr. Owl informed the museum that his Iroquois tribe's Five Nation wampum belt was displayed upside-down (Oops!).

On the top floor we were about to enter an exhibit except 5 boys from the big school group were wrestling all over the benches and blocking the way. I don't know what possessed me, but I leaned in close to their faces with "WHERE. ARE YOUR PARENTS!" ...it wasn't quite a scream. They froze with arms and legs in every direction, looked up, and fell over each other backing around the next corner. The effect was great. My family however,  nervously turned to look at me. "I was just kidding!" and I burst out laughing. It was hilarious, and soon was quickly misinterpreted and replayed many times by Mockingbird and Kingfisher as "WHERE ARE YOUR PANTS! ha ha ha".

Later Bowery Bird was sitting on a bench when a chaperon came up and asked her "Is this clipboard yours?"
"No."
"Well, is this your school group?"
"No. I don't go to school." to which the women gave her a "whatever" look, took the clipboard, and left. Abigail finished her story with "But I don't go to school, mom--school comes to me." So typical, Abigail's dry sincerity is read as apathetic snobbery by the uninitiated.

Mockingbird was as costumes became available; a fox, a sparrow, a butterfly, a safari explorer, a cave guide, and a terrified dinosaur escaper.

Kingfisher was reminded not to hit the tanks of snakes, or barrel into mom at full blast while she's holding Beatrice, and quizzed dad on his scat in the Naturalist Lab. (I didn't mean to write it like that--or did I?...)

Canary ended up soaked and loving it as she was released from the stroller into the pint-size explorers room complete with water play, cave, and aforementioned dress-ups.
A good time was had by all.

The Night Fairy

aka: Fiction Keeps it Real

Our library does a Mother-Daughter Book club for girls 9 and up. Since it every month fills quickly Bowery Bird had the idea to just do one of our own. We are lucky enough to have a library with book club sets, so I reserved Juvenile sets from the them for 5 months out and invited 10 of our little friends and their mothers to join us.

Our first book was The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Shiltz. It was a great introduction for our young girls, being a sweet fairy's tale filled with the conflict of survival and forgiveness after her wings are bitten off by a bat.

Just before this a good friend recommend the book Deconstructing Penguins by Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone. It was the key needed to make an okay book club incredible. I read it just in time and used its techniques to introduce the book with the idea that we are all book detectives trying to solve the mystery of the book's various parts. While eating grasshopper cookies we took votes to determine who were the protagonist (pushing the story forward) and antagonist (stopping the story from progressing). Then we talked about what the theme of the book was and came up with Flory's fear resulting from the loss of her wings. I noted these things on a white board for everyone to see.

 I see this Mother Daughter Book club as sort of a cross between your basic book-talk and the book The Mother-Daughter Project by Hamkins & Shutlz (which I feel is a must read for any mother of girls). It is the effort of two women in the social sciences to bond mothers and daughters together and give them the skills and confidence to navigate adolescence and beyond. They do this by showing people how to start a Mother-Daughter Project of their own, with activities to do and topics to discuss.

In the end, I asked for personal examples of life's challenges and changes they've had to adapt to. Girls eagerly said things like "moving", "new baby", " flying to Alaska with only my little brother" (from a 7 y/o). Mothers needed more prompting, and two brave moms shared "we can't have any more children" and "we don't have a car that fits our family".

It got very real, and I think helped us all see that being young or old doesn't keep us from challenges, and--like Flory--challenges don't have to keep us from being happy.