My goodness, it's a beautiful day!
We woke up to gray skies (& a forecast of rain later) but then the clouds burned off, the skies were blue & sunny & all seemed right in the world.
Last night, for the first time, I could hear the Peepers at night. What a great sound. The birds were chirping first thing in the morning & during breakfast, Phil & I watched a Coopers hawk hunt the little critters around the stone wall on the east side of the property.
After breakfast we walked around the yard, planning what to do with the wood we will gather from the downed trees, felled by the December ice storm. When we got back 'round the front yard area I made an unexpected discovery: my strawberry plants, planted last year in my Square Foot garden, were absolutely thriving! I pulled off the protective netting & accumulated leaves & found robust green leaves. In fact, there were some sneaky little strawberry plants growing outside the garden - growing where some of the berries must have fallen last year.
I cleaned up the box, pulling one by one the blades of grass that were also thriving! To my utter joy, I found many plump earthworms squirming their way throughout the rich soil. Happy, happy! Phil & I decided to let the entire box become the Strawberry Patch. We'll build some new boxes for which ever veggies we finally decide to commit to this year.
This afternoon, the kids attended a Manga & Candy Sushi event at the library. Phil & decided to take a long walk during their 2 hours there, then walked them back home. It was perfect walking weather. We could smell the smoke of several burn piles as families tried to rid their yards of their downed brush & limbs. It smelled like camp - ahh!
What a delight a Spring Day can be!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
What have your kids been doing lately?
As an unschooling family, this seemingly innocent question can be a stumper. Of course our days are full of activity, but sometimes it doesn't always sound "productive" to others.
Yesterday I was at a friend's house because her son was hosting a D&D get together & Shaun was attending. The other kids were from homeschooling families, but not unschooling families. Much of the discussion was around the different studies the children were involved with - particularly math. After a long discourse on the different branches of mathematics & the national exams the kids were taking, etc., I got asked The Question. What have your kids been doing lately?
Gulp.
"Well, we've been big on watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel series. We've been trading videos with our friends down in Georgia. We just got back from Tennessee & North Carolina & have been busy talking about the things we want for our finished basement. Umm, & we've been, umm..."
Blech!
As I said the above I knew it sounded lame in comparison to what the others had just been talking about, but that's what popped into my head. Of course I forgot that we had recently been to the Boston Science Museum & learned about mythological creatures & the myth stories that came from the constellations. And I forgot that while in Asheville, our friend Alice brought us to this cool open art gallery at the old Woolworth building that had displays of paintings, including digital, photography, pottery, jewelry & sculptures. And, of course, all that driving from here to the south & back gives us plenty of time to talk about a whole host of topics, but that is so hard to use as "Proof of Learning". Our learning - each of us - is happening in the moment, as we see things, hear things, feel things, taste things. I know it's happening, it just can be so hard to describe it in conversation with others.
Oh, well...maybe I'll describe it better next time!
Yesterday I was at a friend's house because her son was hosting a D&D get together & Shaun was attending. The other kids were from homeschooling families, but not unschooling families. Much of the discussion was around the different studies the children were involved with - particularly math. After a long discourse on the different branches of mathematics & the national exams the kids were taking, etc., I got asked The Question. What have your kids been doing lately?
Gulp.
"Well, we've been big on watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel series. We've been trading videos with our friends down in Georgia. We just got back from Tennessee & North Carolina & have been busy talking about the things we want for our finished basement. Umm, & we've been, umm..."
Blech!
As I said the above I knew it sounded lame in comparison to what the others had just been talking about, but that's what popped into my head. Of course I forgot that we had recently been to the Boston Science Museum & learned about mythological creatures & the myth stories that came from the constellations. And I forgot that while in Asheville, our friend Alice brought us to this cool open art gallery at the old Woolworth building that had displays of paintings, including digital, photography, pottery, jewelry & sculptures. And, of course, all that driving from here to the south & back gives us plenty of time to talk about a whole host of topics, but that is so hard to use as "Proof of Learning". Our learning - each of us - is happening in the moment, as we see things, hear things, feel things, taste things. I know it's happening, it just can be so hard to describe it in conversation with others.
Oh, well...maybe I'll describe it better next time!
Monday, March 23, 2009
ARGH!
ARGH - Autodidactic Radical Gathering of Homeschoolers - is a twice a year hangout for unschoolers. Last weekend, we joined in the fun for the first time. We left MA late Friday night - I had a recital that night - & drove to NJ. Then on Saturday we drove the very long journey to Roan Mtn., TN. The state park maintains rental cabins that were far and above expectations. Clean, spacious & well-furnished, we had everything we needed to be comfy & cozy.
Not that we stayed in our cabin much! The Lovejoy-Higgins cabin was the place to be - & we were usually there if we weren't up at the nearby conference center.
Alas, our camera's charger is missing, so no photos. Suffice to say, there weren't a lot of dull moments!
One nice planned activity was a visit from Patti Digh, author/blogger of Life is a Verb - 37 Days - essays about the question of what she would do differently if she knew that she only had 37 days left to live. She read a bit from her book & shared some interesting, sometimes quite funny, stories about herself.
The kids had a blast running about with their friends. Not a lot of sleeping but, boy, were they happy!
Not that we stayed in our cabin much! The Lovejoy-Higgins cabin was the place to be - & we were usually there if we weren't up at the nearby conference center.
Alas, our camera's charger is missing, so no photos. Suffice to say, there weren't a lot of dull moments!
One nice planned activity was a visit from Patti Digh, author/blogger of Life is a Verb - 37 Days - essays about the question of what she would do differently if she knew that she only had 37 days left to live. She read a bit from her book & shared some interesting, sometimes quite funny, stories about herself.
The kids had a blast running about with their friends. Not a lot of sleeping but, boy, were they happy!
Monday, March 09, 2009
If it's March, it must be...snowing!
Last Monday: 1 foot of snow
Today (Monday): 4" of snow
Yesterday: 60 degrees & sunny
Gotta love New England weather!
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
The Wonderful World of Books
I've been lurking in one of my unschooling yahoo groups during a discussion of books. The gist of the ideas shared was that all types of books, be they standard novels, graphic novels or comic books, have positive value & offer the reader wonderful ways of expressing ideas & stories.
This all triggered some memories for me.
I come from a family of book lovers. My great-grandmother, grandmother, & Mom all read voraciously & all of their homes were filled with books. My dad, when I was very young, used to work for a printing company & often brought home the imperfects - books that had ink splotches, etc., that would prevent them from being sold. These added a great deal to our collection. Even though we lived in a small house, our playroom (a converted enclosed porch) was filled floor to ceiling with metal shelving that held the books. My brother & I were both considered "early" readers - we could read before we started school, which then was first grade. I can't help but wonder if at least part of that was helped along by being surrounded by all the books. There were novels, non-fiction, comic books of all kinds(I read & loved Doonsebury, even though I didn't get most of the social commentary at that time!). We even had Disney movie books that came with a record (remember those things?). You could play the record & listen to the story being read out & hear all of the songs from the movie, all while reading along & seeing the drawings from the movie.
{A quick aside: one of the Disney books was Robin Hood - the one with the fox as Robin, etc. If any of you have heard/seen "Hampster Dance" on the internet, the song they dance to is a speeded up version of the slow intro song from Robin Hood! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance)
When I was in junior high school, the administration established a schedule that had everyone go to first period class & then read (teachers, too) for, I think, 45 minutes. The stipulation was that it couldn't be reading that was part of homework (&, I think, no comic books). Other than that, it was students' choice. My mom recommended some of her favorite stories to me for my reading. One was "Jane Eyer" . I remember some of my classmates looking at me as if I had lobsters coming out of my ears. That's the kind of book you get assigned to read, not choose to read. Why would I read that for pleasure? But I did read it, & I liked it.
Sophomore year high school, I had to do a book report/essay critiquing a drama of my choice. I chose "Death of a Salesman". I didn't think much of Willy Loman. I thought he should get over it, & wrote as much (though "nicer") in my critique. My teacher was pretty blunt in her critique of my essay. She wrote something to the effect that "Death of a Salesman" is a classic work & is highly revered by anyone who knows anything about literature. I didn't get an "A".
The following year was junior year - a biggie for English class. That was the Year of the Research Paper. Everything we were taught went into the process of crafting a long, detailed analysis of a piece of literature. Guess what I chose. Yep, "Death of a Salesman". I wasn't going to let that drama get the best of me. I worked my butt off researching & writing my paper. I found out a lot about the context of when DoaS was written. I read that thing countless times - enough to quote passages if I wanted to. In the end, I got a much better grade than the previous go-round with Mr. Loman.
Flash-forward to senior year in college. As part of a course on family dynamics, we were assigned a paper - we were to use a piece of literature that involved a family & write about the family dynamics. I bet you can see where I'm going with this. "Death of a Salesman, Return of the Lomans"! I loved writing this paper. Of course, I was pretty familiar with this family. But something else was going on. I was older.
There is a difference between a 15 year old high school student and a 21 year old college student. By that time, I had met people from not only around the country, but from other parts of the world. I had experiences & life knowledge that I could draw upon to help understand something like DoaS in a way that I couldn't possibly have done the first time around. I was different person reading the same story, & I suddenly saw it as a new story. (I also got the long-sought for "A", which was gratifying at the time.)
I haven't read DoaS since. Maybe it's time for me to revisit it. Maybe not. I imagine that now that I've been with the same guy for nearly 2 decades, have children who are teens (or near-teen) & have lived an "adults life" , I will see new things in the story.
What I know is that reading it as a teenager didn't give me the definitive understanding of the work. Just because someone is exposed to something at a certain age doesn't mean they will benefit from it the way some people may think. When parents & teachers worry that kids aren't getting enough "real" education in something, be it classic literature or algebra or how to dissect a frog, they are assuming that the kids when understand it the same way that the adults do now. They are forgetting that some things are better understood in their own way, in their own time. Information gets processed by the brain in such a complex manner. Of course the life experiences of that person will impact how that information is understood & retained. This is why timelines for when information should be learned are so artificial. They ignore that fact that human learn their entire lives, & that the process of understanding something is so much more than input & output.
My kids are surrounded by books, too. They have an entire large bookcase devoted to manga. It actually serves as a lending library - they borrow out to their friends who love the different series but don't buy them, for various reasons. They see me reading all the time - be it the newspaper, online, magazines or books. They read every day - be it books, graphic novels, magazines, articles from the newspaper that I think might interest them, online, while gaming & sometimes while watching a movie (Kimi loves to use close captioning while watching). They choose what they want to explore & how they want to do it. And I know that every time they re-watch a TV episode or movie, or re-read a book or play a game or whatever else they are doing, they are getting something new from it. And they are the better for it.
This all triggered some memories for me.
I come from a family of book lovers. My great-grandmother, grandmother, & Mom all read voraciously & all of their homes were filled with books. My dad, when I was very young, used to work for a printing company & often brought home the imperfects - books that had ink splotches, etc., that would prevent them from being sold. These added a great deal to our collection. Even though we lived in a small house, our playroom (a converted enclosed porch) was filled floor to ceiling with metal shelving that held the books. My brother & I were both considered "early" readers - we could read before we started school, which then was first grade. I can't help but wonder if at least part of that was helped along by being surrounded by all the books. There were novels, non-fiction, comic books of all kinds(I read & loved Doonsebury, even though I didn't get most of the social commentary at that time!). We even had Disney movie books that came with a record (remember those things?). You could play the record & listen to the story being read out & hear all of the songs from the movie, all while reading along & seeing the drawings from the movie.
{A quick aside: one of the Disney books was Robin Hood - the one with the fox as Robin, etc. If any of you have heard/seen "Hampster Dance" on the internet, the song they dance to is a speeded up version of the slow intro song from Robin Hood! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance)
When I was in junior high school, the administration established a schedule that had everyone go to first period class & then read (teachers, too) for, I think, 45 minutes. The stipulation was that it couldn't be reading that was part of homework (&, I think, no comic books). Other than that, it was students' choice. My mom recommended some of her favorite stories to me for my reading. One was "Jane Eyer" . I remember some of my classmates looking at me as if I had lobsters coming out of my ears. That's the kind of book you get assigned to read, not choose to read. Why would I read that for pleasure? But I did read it, & I liked it.
Sophomore year high school, I had to do a book report/essay critiquing a drama of my choice. I chose "Death of a Salesman". I didn't think much of Willy Loman. I thought he should get over it, & wrote as much (though "nicer") in my critique. My teacher was pretty blunt in her critique of my essay. She wrote something to the effect that "Death of a Salesman" is a classic work & is highly revered by anyone who knows anything about literature. I didn't get an "A".
The following year was junior year - a biggie for English class. That was the Year of the Research Paper. Everything we were taught went into the process of crafting a long, detailed analysis of a piece of literature. Guess what I chose. Yep, "Death of a Salesman". I wasn't going to let that drama get the best of me. I worked my butt off researching & writing my paper. I found out a lot about the context of when DoaS was written. I read that thing countless times - enough to quote passages if I wanted to. In the end, I got a much better grade than the previous go-round with Mr. Loman.
Flash-forward to senior year in college. As part of a course on family dynamics, we were assigned a paper - we were to use a piece of literature that involved a family & write about the family dynamics. I bet you can see where I'm going with this. "Death of a Salesman, Return of the Lomans"! I loved writing this paper. Of course, I was pretty familiar with this family. But something else was going on. I was older.
There is a difference between a 15 year old high school student and a 21 year old college student. By that time, I had met people from not only around the country, but from other parts of the world. I had experiences & life knowledge that I could draw upon to help understand something like DoaS in a way that I couldn't possibly have done the first time around. I was different person reading the same story, & I suddenly saw it as a new story. (I also got the long-sought for "A", which was gratifying at the time.)
I haven't read DoaS since. Maybe it's time for me to revisit it. Maybe not. I imagine that now that I've been with the same guy for nearly 2 decades, have children who are teens (or near-teen) & have lived an "adults life" , I will see new things in the story.
What I know is that reading it as a teenager didn't give me the definitive understanding of the work. Just because someone is exposed to something at a certain age doesn't mean they will benefit from it the way some people may think. When parents & teachers worry that kids aren't getting enough "real" education in something, be it classic literature or algebra or how to dissect a frog, they are assuming that the kids when understand it the same way that the adults do now. They are forgetting that some things are better understood in their own way, in their own time. Information gets processed by the brain in such a complex manner. Of course the life experiences of that person will impact how that information is understood & retained. This is why timelines for when information should be learned are so artificial. They ignore that fact that human learn their entire lives, & that the process of understanding something is so much more than input & output.
My kids are surrounded by books, too. They have an entire large bookcase devoted to manga. It actually serves as a lending library - they borrow out to their friends who love the different series but don't buy them, for various reasons. They see me reading all the time - be it the newspaper, online, magazines or books. They read every day - be it books, graphic novels, magazines, articles from the newspaper that I think might interest them, online, while gaming & sometimes while watching a movie (Kimi loves to use close captioning while watching). They choose what they want to explore & how they want to do it. And I know that every time they re-watch a TV episode or movie, or re-read a book or play a game or whatever else they are doing, they are getting something new from it. And they are the better for it.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Snow Day!
Wow - we got snow over night. Lots of snow - maybe a foot or more. The area schools & town offices announced closures yesterday in anticipation.
Kimi's friends from the neighboring towns got all excited - knowing that school was cancelled they quickly texted each other to try to get together at the mall, which is closer to where they live than to us. When Kimi came to us asking if we could drive her out there tomorrow (which is now today) we asked how everyone was going to get to the mall when the roads were expected to be so bad that they cancelled school a day early. Conferring with her friends some more, they decided to scratch the plan.
I felt bad about this. These teens were so excited to have a day off, to just be free of their normally scheduled lives & do their own thing. It highlighted for me how much freer my kids are to do the things they love to do when they want to do it.
I can remember how lovely summer vacation was - the clock barely existed. My brother & I got up when we wanted to, ate when we wanted to, hung out or played or watched TV or swam or rode our bikes or listened to music when we wanted to. How often do young people get to make these kind of decisions for themselves? At least around here - the metro Boston area - parents are strongly encouraged to schedule up their kids' lives. School is followed by after school programs, organized sports &/or music lessons. Weekends are crammed with enrichments, enrichments that the kids do without their parents (or their parents are there, but watching from the sidelines). Vacation breaks bring out "camps" at the schools. Summer vacation? Send your kids to day camp!
I know that most families are duel-income, which creates child care issues that families with a stay-at-home parent don't usually have. And I'm not saying that there isn't value for kids to participate in these kind of programs, lessons, or camps. But when a child's life becomes a string of scheduled events, when does that child get to just Be? To just chill & hang & day dream & choose whatever s/he wants to do?
When do they get their snow days?
Kimi's friends from the neighboring towns got all excited - knowing that school was cancelled they quickly texted each other to try to get together at the mall, which is closer to where they live than to us. When Kimi came to us asking if we could drive her out there tomorrow (which is now today) we asked how everyone was going to get to the mall when the roads were expected to be so bad that they cancelled school a day early. Conferring with her friends some more, they decided to scratch the plan.
I felt bad about this. These teens were so excited to have a day off, to just be free of their normally scheduled lives & do their own thing. It highlighted for me how much freer my kids are to do the things they love to do when they want to do it.
I can remember how lovely summer vacation was - the clock barely existed. My brother & I got up when we wanted to, ate when we wanted to, hung out or played or watched TV or swam or rode our bikes or listened to music when we wanted to. How often do young people get to make these kind of decisions for themselves? At least around here - the metro Boston area - parents are strongly encouraged to schedule up their kids' lives. School is followed by after school programs, organized sports &/or music lessons. Weekends are crammed with enrichments, enrichments that the kids do without their parents (or their parents are there, but watching from the sidelines). Vacation breaks bring out "camps" at the schools. Summer vacation? Send your kids to day camp!
I know that most families are duel-income, which creates child care issues that families with a stay-at-home parent don't usually have. And I'm not saying that there isn't value for kids to participate in these kind of programs, lessons, or camps. But when a child's life becomes a string of scheduled events, when does that child get to just Be? To just chill & hang & day dream & choose whatever s/he wants to do?
When do they get their snow days?
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