I grew up in a track and field family in a track and field state. Grandpa Milo’s cousin was a middle distance runner in the Rome and Tokyo Olympic games and held several American records. We lived very close to Eugene, Oregon, arguably the center of the world for track and field. I have seen world record’s broken on the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field. Two of my favorites were when John Smith broke the world record in the 440 yard dash at an AAU National Track and Field Championships in the early 1970’s. As he walked back in front of the bleachers, John Smith lifted his arm to wave to the crowd. My cousin Neil and I appeared in the Oregonian newspaper the next day right under his armpit. We felt famous. Another favorite was when Dave Wottle ran in a mile race against Steve Prefontaine in a Twilight meet. It was a a highly emotional race that Wottle won with his signature kick at the end while the crowd went wild in a way that I have never seen at a track meet in any other place than Hayward field. I love watching a track meet more than any other type of sporting event. I think a lot of it has to do with where I grew up.
Still, when we moved to Klamath Falls, a small town in southern Oregon, my brother and I started going to baseball games. During the time we lived in Klamath, both the American Legion World Series and the Babe Ruth World Series were hosted there. For me, baseball is less about the game than it is about the chance (read excuse) to hang out with friends on a sunny afternoon, eat peanuts and talk about life. Some of my very best memories of times I spent with my big brother, Doug, were at those baseball games. We went to basketball and football games, too, but it was just not the same. It did not get much more satisfying than when we could talk Dad and Mom into running by the Artic Circle drive-in to pick up a bucket of chicken to eat at a night game under the lights at Kiger Stadium.
I think I got to reminiscing about this since we moved here to North Carolina. For the two years before we got here, my alma mater, Oregon State beat University of North Carolina for the NCAA Division I national championship in baseball. The coach at Oregon State is from my home town of Newberg and went to high school with one of my little sisters, so I feel like I have a little bit of a connection. This year, Christian and I went to watch UNC play against Florida State. It was just like I remembered. With the Olympics coming up juxtaposed and the baseball season in full swing, some great memories of my youth returned to mind.
April 13, 2004 (no. 1) – In the comments yesterday we discussed math facts. I was EXACTLY in the situation we discussed when I wrote this post!
April 13, 2004 (no. 2)
Really appreciated Ruth’s comments from yesterday. What she did is EXACTLY what we ended up doing with Addie, except we haven’t reached the automatic part yet! She still has her chart next to her whenever she’s working on math. And yes, the one advantage is that I get to teach one level of math to 2 kids! Thanks too for the arn link…that ought to be useful.
Thanks to you Audrey. I think that whole interchange yesterday was pretty fun and educational.
Boy, I don’t know what happened to the last post. It got all screwy when I posted it from word to the blog…sometimes I type replies in Word cause it may take me awhile to
finish them..a little here, a little there during the business of the day. Anyway, the first paragraph looked okay, but the next three had some funny exchanges for my punctuation marks. I couldn’t leave it like that, so I fixed them and reposted.
My family has stayed in Klamath Falls on our way up to Bend, Oregon, at least every other year for the past 8 years. I have to laugh because the first time we stayed, we left the hotel earlier
than usual to make a side trip to see the “falls” …of course there are none, but we didn’t know
it at the time!
My husband is a die-hard UNC basketball fan. He just loves to watch college basketball
and I almost lose him every Spring to March Madness. It is a part of our family’s yearly
life-cycle! The boys enjoy this with him and the girls and I have extra time together. Sometimes we
will even make some extra goodies for the game and join in with them. I have one son who also loves to play basketball and is in a Junior NBA league for at least 2 or three sessions throughout the year.
I, too, have fond memories of going to the ball park in the summers of my youth, scrounging enough money for a candy necklace, coming home sticky-necked and full of enough girly gossip to provide fodder for talk throughout the week. Didn’t do much watching of the games, but hid under the bleachers with my girlfriends yacking it up.
Ruthie
I laughed when I saw the thing about the falls. We did the same thing when we found out we were moving to Klamath Falls. It wasn’t until after we moved there that we found out there weren’t any! We were some pretty disappointed kids. As for UNC basketball. I was VERY disappointed when we move to Raleigh that no one really cared that my beloved OSU had beaten UNC two times for the national championship. All they care about is basketball. I do not think they even realize that track events are run on an oval track!!
I deleted the first post Ruthie. I think the problem is the way my software handles some of the invisible characters.
Take heart, Audrey, it WILL come. I think it took Shea until he reached the middle of 5th
grade or later until he had them at an automatic level. The saying of the times table out
loud was particularly key for him since he is an auditory learner. He only had to say it
outloud if he was going to use the cheat…ahem…chart! Also every 2 months or so we would fill in a multiplication chart with the ones he was able to answer on an automatic level. Then we could see his progress.
Hey Ruthie, have you ever thought about starting a blog? You would be great at it.
Thanks, Ruthie…we’ll try those things, saying them out loud and filling in the chart with the ones she automatically knows. That should encourage her as I think the only ones she really needs to cement in are the 3s and 4s. We used a cute little program called Times Tales (google it) which uses little pictures and stories for the numbers 678&9 and nay of those numbers multiplied together. For example the number 7 is Mrs. Week and the number 8 is Mrs. Snowman, so the little story goes Mrs. Week and Mrs. Snowman were driving in a car together. They were driving one mile an hour over the speed limit and it has little number characters drawn driving in a car and a 55 mph speed limit sign. I’m thinking about having her make characters for 3 and 4 and draw her own stories to go with them as she loves to draw and also loves to tell stories.
Hey Ken, is this a subtle way of telling me to stop leaving messages for others via your
blog? LOL! Seriously, there is no way I would want to manage a blog at this time. I
wouldn’t know how to do it at all. I can barely post a reply! I really must take a
computer literacy class someday. If I started my own, I wouldn’t have time to read the
blogs that I so enjoy and that kick start my morning. I facilitate a homeschool support
group for my church and do enjoy encouraging parents in their efforts to home-educate
their children.
Another blog that is different from yours…I rarely comment on his, but it is another
father who is very involved in the educating of his children is http://www.everygoodpath.net.
I like that he has posted some classical educational plans according to grade level.
Have you ever read John Paul Gatto’s, The Underground History of American Education? I
checked it out from the library, but I believe that you can also read it online chapter
by chapter. He was twice New York city’s Teacher of the Year. He quit teaching and has
been lecturing ever since in a campaign to demolish the educational system as it is now run. A very good read. For me, almost every sentence held weight and I found myself reading many sentences over
again to truely grasp their meaning.
No, no!!! We LOVE it that you post here! It is just that you have such good things to say. I will start checking out everygoodpath.com. I have heard of John Paul Gatto’s book–I think I might have picked it up at a library or a bookstore one time and leafed through it. It sounds very interesting. I cannot imagine that you do all the things that you are doing with your church, support group, and five kids. Please don’t stop coming back!
John and I have only 4 children….perhaps you counted in our border collie, Haggen, the
red-necked doggie, short for Copenhaggen – don’t even know if that is how you spell it –
because as a flea-ridden pup she grossly ate someone’s discarded chew (ewww). She really
does count for 2 children, so I guess we really have 6!
Ruthie
OK. Well FOUR is still a great number. That is how man siblings were in my family growing up.