GimletBlog

Thing One’s high school is known for its world-class drama department, and one of the department’s great traditions is its annual fall festival of student-directed one-act plays.  Thing One was very active in drama when he was a middle school student, participating in almost every play, but aside from taking drama classes it was challenging to fit after-school rehearsals and performances into his high school schedule.

Now that Thing One is in his senior year, he had time to audition for and participate in Dramafest.  He was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s one-act play, The Prodigal Son, and played the part of the narrator (aka Garrison Keillor).   Bopa was a great fan of Garrison Keillor, never missing the Writer’s Almanac or Prairie Home Companion, so he would have been especially pleased to watch his grandson’s performance.

After several weeks of after-school rehearsals, it was time for Dramafest!  Two or three plays were performed after school every day for one week.

Friday night was “Best of the Fest”: repeat performances of the top-judged plays and an awards ceremony.  The Prodigal Son won awards for costume design and best direction of a large cast.  The cast had a lot of fun and celebrated their success with a pizza party.

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Thing One’s high school orchestra recently held their annual Pumpkinseed concert.  Thing One is the principal cello for the chamber orchestra, which is a nice way to end out his senior year and high school orchestra experience.

The chamber orchestra played the first movement from the Serenade for Strings by Tchaikovsky and Czardas by Vittorio Monti.  Well done, Thing One!

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It’s official now:  Thing Two is no longer a little kid.  Yesterday his kindergarten class had a party to celebrate completing kindergarten and moving on to first grade.  Parents, grandparents, siblings, nannies and all their camera equipment filled the classroom to commemorate the big event.

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Thing One is starting his junior year of high school.  His school class schedule includes AP French, Chamber Orchestra, and Drama.  At home he’ll continue taking BYU Independent Study courses, finishing up the sophomore language arts and geometry series, then working on US history, junior-level language arts, and Algebra 2.  As a junior, he’s now eligible to sign up for Running Start at the local community college, so we’ve started the admissions process and hope that he can enroll in community college courses beginning winter quarter.

While Thing One is nearly done with his public school experience, Thing Two has started kindergarten!  He attends Thing One’s old elementary school along with a few of his friends from preschool.  They aren’t in the same kindergarten class, but they meet up at recess and play together.

When we toured schools for Thing Two, we were intrigued by the local alternative school’s Expeditionary Learning curriculum, which we thought would be an excellent fit for Thing Two’s abilities and interests, but he didn’t get into that school during the open enrollment period and the waiting list was so long that there was no hope of him finding a place in one of the few available late summer openings.  As it was, it was only a few days before the first day of school when we finally were notified that Thing Two had been granted a spot at Thing One’s old elementary school, so that uncertainty made for extra stress this summer.

The school is large, and at first Thing Two was a little taken aback by the number of kids and size of the building, but the school does a great job of breaking the classes down into smaller groups, and in no time Thing Two was very comfortable and happy in his new surroundings.  He likes riding the bus every day (he sits with a new friend from another kindergarten class) and Your Humble Narrator is getting used to this empty nesting thing.

We’re very excited to be back at Thing One’s elementary school with its vibrant community and wealth of after-school opportunities.  In addition to kindergarten, Thing Two has a French class after school once a week.  He already speaks with a slightly different accent from his big brother.

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Today was the last day of Thing One’s sophomore year of high school.  Note the soggy rhododendron, the rain jacket and umbrella.

At the beginning of the school year we mentioned that Thing One would be replacing several high school courses for BYU Independent Study online courses.  How did that work out for us?  Quite well!

With the help of a very patient math tutor (Uncle B), Thing One managed to do much better in geometry than in last year’s algebra.  He also did very well in European history, economics, geography, and language arts.  Meanwhile, his grades at school were great; he made the honor roll!  The last part of the school year was difficult as we were mourning Bopa, so we don’t know yet how that will affect Thing One’s grades for this semester, but his grades look quite good pre-final exams.  He also passed three of the standardized tests required for graduation, which was a relief, as Thing One doesn’t test well.

We were very happy with the organization and content of the BYU courses, and felt that Thing One learned a lot of useful information that the high school fails to provide in its curriculum.   Throughout the year we’ve all had to rethink and learn how to help Thing One with test taking and time management.  While he’s stayed on schedule with BYU’s timeline – students have one year to complete an Independent Study course – he’s two courses behind the school’s semester timeline (although he has earned more than the required credits).  That’s partially due to the extra time it has taken to rebuild Thing One’s confidence; he procrastinated writing papers and working on math because he thought he would fail.  When he received an A for his first writing portfolio in the online language arts class, a large mental obstacle was removed and he was able to move ahead.  We expect that the second semester language arts and math classes will proceed much faster than the first ones.

Independent Study has been a great stress reducer for Thing One and our entire family.  His grades improved substantially, his attitude towards school and studying has improved, and he has more time for the activities he’d rather be doing (Scouts, sleep, etc.).  We’re looking forward to a good and successful junior year.

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The last day of preschool is traditionally a picnic in a local park.  The sun didn’t shine, but it didn’t rain either, which is about as good as it gets for fair weather this year.  Thing Two went to preschool every afternoon, and he was especially excited for the days when he got to play with his best friend (pictured above).

Most of the games today involved a lot of running, spinning, and yelling.  Good times.

Thing Two has had a wonderful time at preschool and made many friends.  He’ll attend the special program this summer, but this was the last day with his teachers and his class.

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Today Thing One picked up his tuxedo for the high school chamber orchestra.

He also had his braces put on, so no more popcorn until his 17th birthday.

Which probably explains his serious expression.  He was a good sport about having his picture taken, sore mouth and all.

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Recently the Gimlet has been heard to complain that the blog hasn’t been updated in a while.  After all the summer’s excitement, it can be easy to forget documenting more ordinary life.  Time to sweep the cobwebs off the blog and catch up!

We missed the obligatory back-to-school photos and post, but rest assured, the Things are back at school.

Thing Two is attending the pre-K program at his preschool.    It’s a small class of about seven boys (yes, all boys in the class.  Strange but true.)  He is one of the older children this year and is growing more confident about participating now that he’s well acquainted with the teachers and the routine.  Astronomy and monkey trees are still his favorite discussion topics.  We brought out the telescope to show him Jupiter, but he hasn’t quite got the knack of looking through the telescope yet.  StarDate.org has a handy calendar of when the planets and other objects are at their most visible, so when Thing Two learns how to use the telescope, we can find something interesting for him to see.

Thing One is a high school sophomore.  After a rough freshman year, academically speaking, we made the decision to take a more active role in shaping his high school curriculum.  Not only was Thing One having a miserable time, and could not keep up with the relentless, overwhelming (and in our opinion, unreasonable and poorly chosen) workload (so much for “no child left behind”) but we also grew increasingly concerned over the school district’s approach to teaching core courses.   Mathematics has received a great deal of local media attention, and we were appalled to discover that European history has been removed from the required high school courses.  There is plenty to rant about after last year, but we’ll stop there (but are happy to continue ranting upon request, if anybody wants more details).

As a result, this year Thing One is enrolled in online high school courses offered by BYU Independent Study for math, language arts, social studies, and a penmanship course since cursive handwriting is also no longer part of our school district’s education.  He still attends his high school for science, advanced French, orchestra, and theater.  After only one month on this new curriculum the difference in Thing One and our family is notable.  His confidence is returning with straight As in both his online courses and at school, and the self-directed pace of the online courses has significantly reduced the stress levels at home.  So far, so good!  And all these courses notwithstanding, Thing One has been agitating to add one more class to his schedule:  driver’s ed.  We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Checking in on Thing Two’s garden, this is the second tomato harvest of equal size.  (Most of the tomatoes are about hand-size and are being stored in a very large mixing bowl usually used for bread dough.)  Our two Early Girl plants produced so many large tomatoes that they were too heavy for the supports to handle, and we had to add extra stakes to keep the plants upright.  The tomatoes had to be picked while green, as nothing is ripening on the vine this year, but they are ripening up nicely inside the house.  Hå gave us two cherry tomato plants which were nowhere near as prolific as the larger Early Girls, but produced a few small treats.

The tomatoes fared the best in our gloomy summer weather; Thing Two has some very nice cucumbers coming along as well, but none of the pumpkins or carrots produced anything, and the basil and chives were scanty (but useable for one dinner each).

With the return of autumn, the birds have been visiting our feeders more frequently, too.   I was hoping to get a picture of our local chestnut-backed chickadees, or the nuthatches who hang upside down on the feeder, but these little dark-eyed juncos were the only birds lingering on the perch long enough for pictures.

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