Larry Hammer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
larryhammer) wrote2020-08-11 07:52 am
larryhammer) wrote2020-08-11 07:52 am
“There are twelve scrolls of army rolls / And scroll after scroll has father’s name.”
The seasons, they roll on.
Eaglet starts second grade next week, remote learning only for the foreseeable future, beginning two weeks late. We’re podding with some friends: a boy we bubbled with for play-dates for a few weeks, earlier this summer, and twin girls (one of whom has been engaged to the boy since kindergarten). We’re hoping learning together will provide enough social to make the format easier for Eaglet to deal with, compared to this spring, and that the teachers have gotten enough experience and coaching that they’re better. Certainly, the thrice weekly park play-dates (with a different friend) and weekly pool play-dates (with Eaglet's oldest friend) over the last month has helped Eaglet a LOT, even with social distancing (which for the kids amounts to, no actual rough-housing).
Academics, I’m not worried about, much — a summer of dealing with video game messages has made Eaglet a more confident reader, though they are still a reluctant reader of books. Math skills seem to have remained steady and deductive skills improved, though it may seem that way because they’re also getting better at expressing themselves. A fair amount of Chinese has been forgotten, though, despite twice-weekly tutoring, and the school is not offering immersion remotely, only lessons.
As for myself, my quarantine hair has gotten to that awkward stage where it's too long to stay neat — parted in the middle, it frizzes out above my temples — but too short to usefully tie back. Also, the fiction writing part of my brain has woken from its years-long coma -- I've polished a couple old stories and now reworking three old trunk novels in parallel. This has put translating (and Chinese lessons in general) on the sideline, alas.
Roll on, seasons, roll thundering on.
---L.
Subject quote from Ballad of Mulan, Anonymous tr. mine.
Eaglet starts second grade next week, remote learning only for the foreseeable future, beginning two weeks late. We’re podding with some friends: a boy we bubbled with for play-dates for a few weeks, earlier this summer, and twin girls (one of whom has been engaged to the boy since kindergarten). We’re hoping learning together will provide enough social to make the format easier for Eaglet to deal with, compared to this spring, and that the teachers have gotten enough experience and coaching that they’re better. Certainly, the thrice weekly park play-dates (with a different friend) and weekly pool play-dates (with Eaglet's oldest friend) over the last month has helped Eaglet a LOT, even with social distancing (which for the kids amounts to, no actual rough-housing).
Academics, I’m not worried about, much — a summer of dealing with video game messages has made Eaglet a more confident reader, though they are still a reluctant reader of books. Math skills seem to have remained steady and deductive skills improved, though it may seem that way because they’re also getting better at expressing themselves. A fair amount of Chinese has been forgotten, though, despite twice-weekly tutoring, and the school is not offering immersion remotely, only lessons.
As for myself, my quarantine hair has gotten to that awkward stage where it's too long to stay neat — parted in the middle, it frizzes out above my temples — but too short to usefully tie back. Also, the fiction writing part of my brain has woken from its years-long coma -- I've polished a couple old stories and now reworking three old trunk novels in parallel. This has put translating (and Chinese lessons in general) on the sideline, alas.
Roll on, seasons, roll thundering on.
---L.
Subject quote from Ballad of Mulan, Anonymous tr. mine.
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Lots of army scrolls
In the stores,
In the stores...........
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The drive to the twins' house is about the same distance as school, it turns out.
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(Word)
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It’s been two years, for me — it’d be longer if not for Yuletide.
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Very glad Eaglet's school seems to be improving, and there are friends to interact with!
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...
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It’s cute and vaguely creepy.
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Four years ago, I would have been more disturbed, but after listening to several rounds of kinders and first-graders go around with each other trying to work out what boy/girlfriend and marriage and love actually mean in (im)practical terms, it's pretty clearly yet another strategy for doing so, by modeling. (I'd be back to disturbed if there was any sense of working out what sex means, but I've yet to catch anything like that.)