Liana's Passions

Since Liana was very young she has a tendency to fixate on something that interests her--much more so than what most children do. At three, she amused herself by cutting confetti with a small pair of scissors while I taught Arielle's lessons. She literally cut for hours. This prepared her for her flannel board era. When she was four, Fred covered a wooden board with a scrap of pink fabric and Liana drew tiny figures of people, cut them out, carefully glued a strip of sandpaper to the back of each, and then created her imaginary world on the wood. At one time I counted her "people" and there were 67!

Liana became interested in musical instruments a couple of years ago. She spent all her Christmas and birthday money on acquiring different intruments. She bought an authentic snake-charmer's flute from a rare instrument store in Colorado and a Chinese bamboo flute from an importer in San Francisco. She has a miniature violin, hand-crafted by a man in Hong Kong. After a concert she attended, she became fascinated with the Irish whistle. This is a child who will sit quietly and listen to classical music. She will tell you her favorite composer is Vivaldi, but she recently heard Pachebel's Canon in D and frequently accesses it from our favorites in the computer.

Before she had written language skills, she "wrote" books. Oh, how many papers she stapled together to form pages for her stories. There were no written words but detailed illustrations, and she could tell you the elaborate tales as if she were actually reading words. Her interest in ancient cultures would be a springboard for her imaginary journeys. She passed through the Egyptians to the Native Americans to the Chinese and now she has settled on India. Since she has learned to sew, she spent her last dollar on silky embroidered fabric to make herself a sari and wears it most every day.

This is a child who has trouble sitting still for a spelling lesson or instruction in long division. She has sleep difficulties because she can't shut down her brain. But since I have made some adjustments in school, she truly is a homeschool mom's dream. She delights in learning (most things) and she is never bored. Television doesn't hold a candle to the much more fascinating stories happening right in her mind. As her mom and teacher I must give her the skills she needs to explore the world. Then she will soar!

Library Day

Once a week or more we go to the library. It's one of Arielle's favorite places. Mine too when I was a child. We didn't always have an accessible library in the towns I lived, so that made the trip even more special when one was available. I still remember the smell of books back then and the excitement of choosing one from the shelves. It would have been a book without a colorful cover or beautiful illustrations like children's books have now. But a good story to take me on a journey into another world was enough for me.

Arielle makes the rounds to her favorite shelves that hold fairy tales and folk stories from other lands, the Nancy Drew mysteries, magazines for young girls, or her favorite--historical fiction. Liana looks for books about musical instruments, art, or ancient civilizations. And of course ducks. The girls never want to leave, yet the longer we stay the stack of books to check out gets taller and taller. I go through the readers to find books to interest Liana. She is a very discriminate reader. Forget talking animal books, ones with TV characters, or even books about kids her age. No, she wants action, history, and foreign places. Once I thought I'd found the perfect book and even ordered it on-line from our inter-county loan service. It was called A Doll Named Dora Anne about a girl who's given a doll handed down from her grandmother. (I would have liked it when I was Liana's age.) Liana read it but it wasn't nearly as interesting to her as Escape North about Harriet Tubman or Ben Franklin's Big Shock.

I remember long ago coming home from the bookmobile on a hot, summer day. My mom and I would get a cold drink (no A/C back then) and curl up with a great story and read away the afternoon. Well, my mother probably had to stop reading way before she wanted to in order to cook dinner or care for the younger kids, but she would read as often and as much as she could and still does. She left a legacy and my children are following in her footsteps.

We're home from the library and the girls' chosen books are scattered on the carpet around them. The house is quiet as they read, lost in other worlds.