a glimpse into my journey toward unschooling

Sunday afternoon a young friend of the family asked me how Henry learns.  In what environment do we "have classes"?  What subjects does he study, and when?  Who teaches him?  These questions used to make me feel sweaty and afraid.  Of course children who attend fairly traditional schools will want to know what goes on in a different type of classroom, i.e. the classroom of life.  Why should I let these kinds of questions bother me?

I've come to see that it's not the question at all, but my personal feelings about breaking with "tradition."  Going into homeschooling--pondering it and such--I felt like a tourist looking on.  I didn't feel its terrain "belonged" to me.

Now I see that as a false perception--not just on my own part, but on anyone's.  Learning is not a foreign land.  It "belongs" to all of us.  Whether we or our children learn in "traditional" classrooms, or in the car on the way to the traditional classroom, we are all learners, all the time.

There's a simple truth, but it's profounder than I can wrap my head around.  Each one of us is responsible for his or her learning.  Parents are responsible for holding the space in which their children learn, and that can mean choosing to send their children to a school.  It can also mean choosing to educate them in other ways.

I now see that my job is not to educate Henry.  Neither is doing so Joel's job.  Together we have experienced that Henry learns what he wants to and is ready to learn.  We, or I'll just speak for myself, I love, repeat:  LOVE facilitating Henry's learning when he is ready to know more about something.  It is a joy to feel and witness his readiness to claim skills and explore subject areas--conventional and otherwise.

It sounds cliche to me at this point, but I can't argue with something so true it has become an aphorism:  life is for learning.  All of life is for learning.  I'm delighted to be a learner now, and delighted to watch my husband, our children, our parents, our neighbors, our wider circle of friends, continue to be learners.

Now.  I guess I was going to say something about unschooling.  I've read some John Holt and liked him.  There are websites.  Dayna Martin, a self-styled unschooling expert, has been my greatest teacher.  While I used to think, Wow!  Have you got the nerve to put yourself out there like that!  I now see her as a caring friend.  That woman has inspired me to let go of fear and enjoy life.  Check her and her resources out.  She has a powerful way of addressing the perceptions that can stand in the way of our living with the kind of joy and purpose most of us (all of us, no?) really want to claim.

She has helped me tremendously in my mothering journey.  That's for sure.  A six on the enneagram, I've got fear d.o.w.n.  What I've needed to work on is trust.  Ah, yes.  I've known that, but giving myself permission to trust rather than be afraid in a culture where parenting and educating are simply fraught with fear-based habits, behaviors, assumptions...why, THAT is another matter.

Be well, dear readers.  I cherish this space for checking in with you and myself.  Also love reading your blogs, whether I subscribe to you or have just "met" you.

figuring out some things

It's been great to blog again.  I've gotten to know some fabulous new (to me) bloggers and gained necessary inspiration for my daily life.

And now it's time for me to take a bit of a break.  I've got many irons in the fire right now:  taxes, upkeep on our home business records, a new dishwasher on the way (truly, glory hallelujah; I thought I could get into washing by hand, but I haven't been able to swing it), a potential new 1/4 time job for me at our church, the usual round of homeschooling things, preparations for a spring equinox celebration, a conference on Mary in Anabaptist Dress, which will provide me with the opportunity to read a lovely Gerard Manley Hopkins poem (bliss) and...an exciting 30-day at-home retreat for me (with Heather from Beauty that Moves).

Blessings!

on dolls

I loved dolls as a girl, and I'm surprised now at the emotional response I have to them. A month or two ago I bought one of the dolls in the hearth at the local thrift shop, just because her vintage plastic molded face and hair spoke sweetness and love to me.

As a five-year-old, my main doll squeeze was named, "I Love You." She was a rubber doll with formerly golden hair. When I Love You's original gold tresses became unsightly, my grandma Mildred made her a (lovely) brown wig to match my own hair. My mother wrote our address on I Love You's belly in indelible ink. I lost her at the Kansas City Airport, but they mailed her back to me. One time a playmate turned I Love You head down and swished her in a mud puddle. I was beside myself. I remember crying and crying one morning on the school bus because I just wanted to go back home to get I Love You; I felt a sudden need to take her to school (I didn't get to go).

I suppose that last memory is one reason I treasure homeschooling. When you learn at home (at least ideally), you don't have to let go of I Love You until you choose to. Your schedule allows you to go and retrieve that love, because it's worth holding on to and you're worth slowing down the world for. This, I can tell, is a whole other post in the making, but not the reason I'm writing about dolls, so I'll come back to the thought another time.

Today Henry and I listened to an episode of the Diane Rehm show that focused on the danger of encouraging little girls to engage in princess play. More specifically, Peggy Orenstein made the point that certain kinds of "princess play" can make it difficult for girls to disentangle their sexuality from our culture's tendency to sexualize them.

Objectification. Consumerism. Addiction. Selfishness. These are some of what I believe to be the real problems behind playing princess. Joel has been reading Andrew Lang and George MacDonald stories to Henry at bedtime off-and-on for a couple years now, and they're ripe with princesses and heroines in the traditional princess sense. But, in my opinion, these female characters are archetypes, just as the warrior, the king, the prince, the beggar, and others are archetypes.

So, so, so often we want to throw the baby out with the bath water instead of just getting rid of the dirty water. I think the society that sexualizes little girls instead of treasuring them, that rewards them for buying off-the-rack princess costumes and attending consumer events in them rather than wearing them for outdoor tea parties that just might lead to hole digging or tree climbing, is one that suffers from multiple addictions and chronic, collective low self-worth. I could go on and on here, but to what end?

Suffice it to say, aside from my homeschooling peeps and close acquaintances and friends, I don't see a whole of mothers and fathers out there encouraging doll play. Baby doll play. I think I don't see as much of that because parents feel ambivalent about teaching girls and boys to pretend with dolls, to mother and father dolls. Better to play at being professionals: fire fighters, iron chefs, police officers, spies, princesses.

From the surface, there seem to be more "jobs" out there for preening, narcissistic types than solid mamas and papas. Oh, pardon my cynicism. I'm really a rather hopeful person.

BUT...don't we glorify the sparkle-clad movie stars and their ilk an awful lot?

My solution is to nurture my little girl by doing a whole lot of things and celebrating her whole being. But I want dolls to be companions and teachers for her if she wants them to be. And, so far, she does.

Ahh. More to say, but it is time for bed.

I really would love to have some dolls with skin of brown, yellow and olive hues. Quite a lot of pink plastic there, wouldn't you agree?

It's about passion, and some other things

Just a while ago we returned from a Kansas Day celebration with others in our home school co-op. Kansas isn't my home state, but I'm learning more about it than I ever knew about Missouri, because Kansans are proud people. I like that about them. They know their state insect and state tree, and they really, truly celebrate their identity. Real Kansas Day is January 29, but we've had snow and severely cold weather these last few weeks, along with a couple almost-70-degree days, so we met today instead of two weeks ago.

The thing I loved most about this morning was meeting a local member of an organization called "The Brotherhood of Mountain Men," or something like that. He said there are only 400 members of this nationwide organization. Just back from a camping get-together in Oklahoma, where he awoke to snow and three degrees above zero (F) air, this guy smelled like another place in time. He brought his beaver musk for us to smell (can't remember what it was called, but, in sight and scent it was like delicately fermented ground-up organ meat). He brought buffalo-bladder-and-buckskin storage bags, knives, rifles, pistols, buffalo hides, buffalo hair socks, deerskin and wool cold-weather slippers, a porcupine-quill-embellished pipe holder, parfleches, and a host of other things, all so very appealing to the kinesthetic learner in me--especially the smell parts. It's really something to be in a room with someone who, along with his things, has an odor. Yes, an odor. Not a bad odor, but an outdoors odor.

This kind of thing just excites me no end. Whether the discipline be computer circuit-bending or historical re-enacting or knitting (and the accompanying carding and spinning) or something in the fields of science or math or literature...I don't care. Show me your passion (and your reverence for life), and I will love what you do and who you are, even if I didn't first think I would like you or agree with you.

I really feel grateful for this type of learning, because it's not just for Henry the homeschooler, it's for me too. Learning is a lifetime process and I love to learn. I love to learn!

reading week

Knowing that our every-day-some-schoolwork school year will soon be over, we principals of the Microlith School (the name Joel gave our school when we registered with the state of Kansas at the beginning of the year now that Henry is seven) have wanted to focus on reading a little more intentionally than we had in the recent past. We have called this week reading week and it has met with great success so far. Here is the first of five short stories Joel is writing for reading week. I guess we'll be putting these together to form what may become The Microlith Reader.

homemade geoboard

After reading about this in the lab sheet annotations for Henry's Miquon workbook, I decided I could whip up a geoboard myself. And so I did. Made it in the wrong dimensions, but it's still fun.

a post before folding laundry

I keep forgetting I'm living the life of my dreams because there are so many things that don't feel dreamy: I'm losing my job (sometime in the future), there is a mountain of laundry to fold (and yesterday the phone disappeared in the mix), and Anna's diapers are getting threadbare (again),

BUT

she is asleep for the time being. Henry is out with Joel for the evening, which means I've had some lovely re-grouping time alone. I ate canned salmon with Annie's white cheddar shells, avocado, cucumber & cilantro. Then I made myself some hot cocoa with half and half which, I've discovered, is divine, and I defrosted some raspberries to eat alongside.

AND

I'm not losing a full-time job, but a fulfilling 12-hour-a-week job, and life's not over yet. I'm committed to enjoying the laundry, enjoying the (at least for now) opportunity to spend a lot of time at home with our dear children, and to connect with the local homeschooling community and continue enjoying the process of learning with Henry and Anna (and Joel) at home.

I AM THANKFUL FOR

Good King Wenceslas duets with Henry; good food; the sound of things humming along, like the diapers washing right now in the washing machine and the clack of my keyboard; the sight of a sleeping baby; my little family and my extended family; the generosity of my church.

I PRAY FOR

a wise heart; the self-discipline to persevere in a life-giving path and do the right thing/s at the right time/s; the ability to be truthful but not snarky when I feel I've been wronged; self-understanding; the wisdom to know the difference between justified indignation and self-righteous pomposity (in myself) in the workplace.

That picture up there is an example of what I love and enjoy: time at home in happy, colorful chaos that allows me and those around me to keep becoming who I believe we need to be--not just for our own good, but for the greater good as well.

butterflies

For the homeschool co-op science class, we've been raising butterflies from larvae to adult. Fun! These painted ladies fly around our living room, mostly feeding on sugar water from a green sponge. I had to add these last garden flowers to make their lives in captivity a little more colorful. They don't much seem to care for the flowers.

eight months

Someone sweet turned eight months old yesterday. Henry said we should try not to let her cry too much (because it was her eight month birthday day). Well, she's looking pretty happy here.

Miquon Math (which you can't see us doing here) is fun. We have abandoned Five in a Row. It is a neat concept, but isn't suiting the way we learn, which is to go with the flow, but keep practicing reading and writing. Thanks to Becky's suggestion, we're reading The Secret Garden now, and enjoying it. I savor the way Mary talks about growing fat. It's a good thing, borne of fresh air and plenty of sunshine and play. Here are our jack o'lanterns.

a new school year

Today, accidentally on Maria Montessori's birthday, we began our new home school year. I feel a little sheepish saying this because, the deeper I immerse myself in the homeschooling milieu, the more I see that the school year never ends. Life hands us opportunity after opportunity to learn. I suppose the reason I personally wanted to give the new school year a bit of a kick-off is that Joel and I are implementing (I suppose you could say imposing on Henry) a bit (just the merest bit) more of a daily routine. At nearly seven, Henry's up for it, though I want to do my best to listen to him with respect and adapt the schedule to his and our needs.

We're also experimenting with a curriculum, Five in a Row, which many homeschoolers may (or may not) be familiar with. It comes to us recommended by several homeschooling families and I like its gentle manner of approaching the disciplines of language arts, social studies, math, science and visual art through good children's literature. Not a person to be confined by too many guidelines :), I can already see us adapting the FIAR concepts to use with books our family wants to read. I'm also excited--yes, excited--to say we're going to give Miquon Math a try. After talking with another trusted homeschool parent, it sounds like Cuisenaire rods are the way for us to go. And, besides, I've read about them in more than one John Holt unschooling book.

I remember that last year I said I wanted to write a post on my/our family's homeschooling philosophy. I never did it but the why of it all is how I entertain my head every night as I'm falling asleep. Why, why, why when so many supports to help us educate Henry in the public school setting are already in place?

I realized today that, for me, it's about care of the soul--Henry's, mine, and hopefully Joel's and Anna's too. There's something so exclusive-sounding about that. My inner judge nags me, "Don't you care about the rest of the world? Do you only care about your own child?" How I would like to answer that voice today is that I long for the world to be a kinder place to the human soul, that uncorrupted part of us that never stops longing for beauty, love, adventure...wholeness.

I love the things I've read by Parker Palmer, including Let Your Life Speak. I haven't read To Know as We Are Known, but suspect I will enjoy it. I checked out another book of his lately, A Hidden Wholeness, that explores a Thomas Merton sentiment touched on here, here, and here. So, how do I see homeschooling as nurturing our hidden wholeness? It can allow children and their families to slow down, explore concepts and master skills over time. It can allow space for slow growth--even the kind of growth that can happen through down time with simultaneous PBS Kids (yes, we're a tv family) and Lego play. Homeschooling allows for discussion-based learning, for bedtime, table and anytime conversations that don't need to be curtailed because it is time to go to the next thing in the program. The subtitle of Parker Palmer's book has to do with cultivating an undivided life--a life where the outside is consistent with the inside--at work, at home, inside ourselves and in our relationships. I strive for this, and I think Parker Palmer expresses it much more eloquently than I have time to. Read his book!

Following are some more links to homeshooling posts I've found helpful from a soulful / spiritual point of view. Red Dirt Mother, Pleasant View Schoolhouse
and Harmony Valley Homeschool.

Books I'm / we're enjoying

Searching for Sacred Ground
Way back when I started this blog I promised I'd read this because of the reference to axis mundi. The book breathes the energy and awakeness of Raylene Hinz-Penner, a beloved person to me.

Marguerite Makes a Book
Beautiful illustrations, great if you're wanting to study medieval times with children.

A Door in the WallAgain, on the medieval topic, a wonderful story, engaging for both reader and those read to.

Old Mother Westwind's "How" Stories
Henry loves 'em and, in keeping with what I'm learning about the Charlotte Mason method of education, they're good "living" books.

Except for Searching for Sacred Ground, these were all checked out from the local library, along with a pile of others. What gifts! Makes me think of the quote (it's too late now to go check the refrigerator magnet that tells me who said this...) "A room without books is like a body without a soul."

Since I'm not the one reading it to Henry, I almost forgot this final beloved book of Joel's and now Henry's (since we've read through the Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy): The Silmarillion. How could I forget that? It's one of the books keeping the "soul" in our living room.

home learning

Yesterday Henry read his first book. I took lots of pictures as the two of them read because their faces changed in the most expressive ways. Couldn't quite capture the glee on his face when he read "fight, fight, we fight all night."

Meanwhile, Anna and I watched. She's doing her own learning, swatting the toys on her bouncy seat with great fervor.

siblings

The sibling relationship is not always easy, but it is coming along beautifully. Henry doesn't like it when Anna cries for extended periods of time...like in the car when I am driving and we have already stopped at a rest stop once to nurse and ...

Mostly, though, I've been amazed by how he has welcomed her into his life, ooohing and aaahing. Someone asked me if it wasn't nice to have Henry off to school during the day so that I could have time with Anna alone. Actually, I like it better the way it is. Being home together except for Wednesdays and Thursdays makes it nicer and easier for us to be together. Time spent together strengthens our relationships and helps us appreciate the rhythms we share and those that are unique to each person.

130-in-one!

Oh, the delight of watching little hands work on this fun project when I came home from work yesterday. Henry taught me the ropes with ease and confidence and we completed the circuits for this chirping bird. Then I made sugar cookie dough and yogurt and we listened to more of Analise's Advent Journey.

Today's the day to get down the Christmas decorations, get the house ready for our tree and bake cookies! We are being remembered by so many dear friends with cookies and kind gestures and words that I really long to return the favor.

Peace of the Advent season to you!

desk work and daddy love

A little desk work for a sunny day.

Boy loooooves Daddy.

notes from the middle of November

Hello blogland friends,

I'm excited to share my new header. Henry designed this cinderella pumpkin to have fangs on top, but they've curled under now, leaving a friendly, gaping maw to greet me when I walk up the front steps. The quotation from Hafiz is from my bathroom calendar, and I just find it appropriate in so many ways.

I'm not all that fond of November, but it does hold things to recommend it to us: the maturation of autumn, the constant awareness in this month of remembrance that we are not alone. Other souls have walked this ground before us. I'm very mindful of that at the beginning of November with All Saints/All Souls days. We don't observe these days in any big way as a family. Personally, though, I can't help but feel the ache of those I know who are filled with questions about where they are going and where they have been--the ache of those who have more friends on the other side of this life than on the side we're on.

I had the most comforting conversation about disillusionment yesterday. It was one of my work days, and I was sitting at a round table with some elders I love and admire. What honest observations they made about their lives. Why is it, we wondered together, that you get to the next "chapter" and you still don't have it all figured out? Seems to have little to do with being a "person of faith." Somehow life's losses tend to lead us deeper and deeper into mystery and the wildness of our being.

It was good for me to be reminded that I have probably said a lot of things intended to be comforting that have been received as nothing more than well-meaning platitudes. What was so heartening about the conversation is that I can stow these thoughts away. If I'm granted the long life I hope to have, I want to remember with gratitude the friends who said, "It's not easy getting old. I'm just as confused now as I ever was." I want to remember them and how beautiful it was to see them wondering and loving, learning and struggling. Let me be like that. That's the kind of faith I want.

On a different note, I have felt buoyed along by the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the office of President of the United States. Joel and I stayed up late watching the returns and I went to sleep filled with the hope that we're entering into a new era that might hold transformation for our nation. I pray for this new president-elect in a way that I've never prayed for leaders before. That he may be wise and grounded and visionary and conciliatory. Already I've been shocked as I've heard him talking about killing Osama bin Laden. I am aware that I can't expect all things of a finite human being and that the heart of transformation is really my own response to life. Yet I feel hopeful and thankful and I'm not taking either of these things for granted.

I'm a big Michael Pollan fan and hope you'll have time to listen to this interview on his Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief. I hope our president-elect has made time to listen.

Days and nights have been pretty sweet in our home of late. Henry is bonding with my pregnant belly, which I hope to share photos of sometime. We're reading Riki Tiki Tavi thanks to a visit to the cousins' house, Little House in the Big Woods, and The Two Towers. The Tolkien books continue to be our family bedtime reading routine and I delight in hearing Henry sigh as he falls into bed, snuggles up and settles down to hear more of this fabulous tale. It pleases Joel to be the reader.

Oh, each day holds its own frustrations and nagging questions, but I'm so very thankful for my little family and our little home and all the family and friends who love us. November, I am thankful for you and want to savor your remaining days.

an emerging perspective on education

Our word educate comes from the Greek word "to give," if memory is serving me correctly. In education we are introduced to vantage points from which to view the world. I hope for Henry's life windows to be broad enough to capture many, many different views.Play is the primary work of childhood. Responsibility is important, but identity (and initiative) emerge from play. I am so grateful for memories of my mother saying something to the effect of, "I will do this work right now. Your job is to play." My friend Jen's family of origin said it well on the walls of the home where they once lived: "The days that make us happy make us wise."

Whether or not he values these things now, I hope for Henry's life to be full of the real deal: real flowers, homemade food, things made and repaired by human hands belonging to people he loves.

_______

Learning happens all the time. I want to give our days together enough structure to hold us in, but enough freedom to allow all three (and then four) of us to do what we need and want to do.

I try the intentional "lesson" on occasion, but we seem to be rearing a boy who prefers learning through his own initiative. Perhaps he would thrive in a classroom setting where the learning goals are set out for him. Perhaps he would not. What I know is that I love, love, love it when he spells out words for me and asks me what they are. Yesterday's finds from an Arby's animal identification kit: s-w-i-f-t-f-o-x, m-o-u-n-t-a-i-n-g-o-a-t and skunk ("...but I already knew that one," he told me). I love learning things together, like the fact that most birds in the world are "passerine" (I think), but the hornbill (which we will be studying at the homeschool co-op this week) is non-passerine, meaning it doesn't sing a song and its young are (probably ...maybe?) precocial (don't need feeding from parents) as opposed to altricial, which means needing feeding...

I want to acquire some Waldorf main lesson books for drawing, but right now we are content doing daily journal entries in the little green diary with a lock on it that he requested when we went to buy school supplies.

I am beginning to feel a little more happily placed as a "home-schooling mom" even though that label still makes me bristle a bit if I stop to consider the assumptions about me it may cause others to form.

Glory be!

now I know why they call it red lobster

Blogging gives me joy because it provides a place to squirrel away the little sights that make me happy. Yesterday Grandma and Grandpa Ewy took us to Red Lobster for lunch and, on the way there, Henry announced he would be having lobster for lunch. My first response was to want to say, "No, dear, that's too expensive." Thinking of this unschooling mentor I instead chose to say, "Let's talk more about that." At the restaurant Henry spent time around the lobster tank with other kids and Joel and I decided it would be okay for him to try the lobster. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa E for treating him to it!

Henry got to choose the lobster out of the tank and crack its beautiful red shell open with the cracker. He liked the claw meat best, but I don't think he will be wanting it again. Still, what an adventure.

Since lobster shells don't enter this prairie household just every day I thought I'd include a few pictures to show how half the red lobster's body is fitting into our home. Here's an odd still life with brandywine tomato, homegrown sunflower seeds awaiting roasting, an acorn and some Kansas pecans in need of shelling. What an unlikely combination! And yet I think they suit each other well.

shine on, harvest moon

I don't know how/if I can take better night-time photos with my little $40.00 toy, but here is the ripe harvest moon descending in our back yard. I'm thankful for the clear view of it.

Last night we went to a harvest moon celebration in Wichita and ate two flavorful stews, fresh bread, pumpkin bread and apple betty. The best parts for me were watching the children practice poems from A Journey through Time in Verse and Rhyme (that they never actually performed because they were too busy playing) and seeing Henry carry out the part of the wind in the little play they did do on the deck. He blew the leaves off the tree with style.

icu nurok

I can't get this silly They Might Be Giants song out of my head. We have been listening to it a lot lately, partly because Henry is enjoying the album more now that he is beginning to do a little (more) reading and sounding out. What a curious thing it is (to a five-year-old and a 37-yr-old) that letters can mean or at least sound like words. Here are the lyrics to the song I'm thinking of along with a translation link.

urnx
urnx, ni, imnx
ictv
ictv, nicu
icu, icu, nurok
urnx
urnx, ni, iw
icatv, icadvd, nicu
icu, icu, nurok
icu, icu, nurok