I'm baaaaack :)

Well, we have had an eventful month, those Joyful Learners and I.

It was very nice to hear that people were missing the blog, but it was also making me even more conflicted. Ella has decided to try school, and Declan also wanted to go. Due to some other issues in our lives, I thought that this might be a good time to go with their desire to try.

It is very hard to make this decision. Many people in my life who I know through homeschooling have made a point of telling me how much their own children will never want to go to school, and how grateful their children are for the homeschooling lifestyle.

This makes me feel (whether it is intended or not), that they have an implied judgement on my failure to make my children *love* being homeschooled, or that they want school because I am an unschooler, or not really an unschooler, or whatever the implied judgement is.

Granted, I am not in the best most secure head space right now, so I could be making this all up.

Anyway.

Ella was *very* clear. She LOVES her life. She is happy. She likes her friends, she loves her family, she is secure. She is grateful. She is learning. She wants to try school.

She has been wanting to explore school for a good 6-8 months now. I did what most "good" unschoolers would recommend. I expanded our world, I connected more. I facilitated. I validated.

I finally realized that I was making a big mistake.

I had finally hit that place (her wanting to try school) where I was not letting her make her own decisions. I was, in fact, manipulating her into "appreciating" the gift of unschooling, while at the same time denying her wish to try something new.

If it had been skydiving, I would have said, "Let's explore that!"

If it had been driving a car, I would have said, "Hmmm....how can we fill that desire?"

But it was school.

And I was saying, with all my gyrations and interesting strewing, "WHY!?!? What am I doing wrong? What can we do differently?" All the while implying that her desire was wrong.

So I said, "Okay. Let's give it a go."

Now, I am wondering where this will lead us, where this will leave this blog, what I am going to do in this new chapter of relating to the kids and school.

But, I am back here. And will be keeping you updated on the Joyful Learners in school for the time being.

How to Be an Unschooler

How to be an Unschooler in 400 Words or Less

Wake up to the wide world and your sweet home. Stretch. Cuddle. Eat something. Smell the smells. Touch hair and remember the baby threads hidden in memory. Snuggle while pajamas are all still warm from comforters or sleeping bags or couch cushions or animals that lay in their beds while they slept until they were ready to awaken.

Read something. Discuss something else. Get a hug. Smell that wet, strawberry shampooed hair and brush it until it is all silky again. Play with the other child’s dreadlocks. Wear a pair of fairy wings. Treasure hunt. Write to a unicorn. Breathe. Be grateful. Love.

Record something. Download something. Check out classic movies. Check out B-movies. Read a magazine about a foreign country. Count the ants that are crawling around in the sidewalk. Take a walk in the mall, the beach, the park, the field, the museum, the city, the farm, the yard. Get a library card from as many libraries as you can. Use them often.

Make friends with interesting people, and meet everyone. Talk to the mailman, the baker, the librarian, the thrift store church lady. Bring them all cookies next time you make a big batch. Show them you are interested and they will become interesting. Find your community.

Go online. Blog. Write poetry. Sing a song and make up the words you don’t know. Laugh a lot. Make up jokes, stories, and limericks. Try to play an instrument, or lip sync. Show the kids you know every single word to Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit I Will Survive. Learn a new game. Revive an old one. Make up new rules. Cuddle again. Channel surf while the tv is on mute and make up the dialog. Watch a movie with subtitles. Watch a movie in your native language with foreign subtitles.

Breathe deeper. Do a yoga pose. Laugh when it makes you fart because this week you are all eating only Mexican food and that has involved a lot of beans. Catch your breath. Let your breath be taken away again. Love more. Be.

You are an unschooler.

Shake Things Up

Okay, the Christmas decorations are down, the day is grey and the video games are getting old (I guess that's what happens when you have a LEGO Star Wars marathon).

So, it is time to start shaking things up. We have had some fun around here making things and creating science experiments, and we are really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g our comfort zone by going vegetarian.

When we are transitioning away from holidays, it seems we have to put a little more effort into being engaged. Here are some things we've done to shake off the cobwebs of Christmas and get more into the fun of winter (an oxymoron if *I* ever heard one, but my kiddos like winter and who am I to say anything.....)

Some things we have done to get the fun rolling again are:

*museums (especially small-ish ones, like plastics or associated with a college. I think we'll hit the MIT museum next time we're up there.)

*a new crafting tool (next time this happens, I have my eye on a wood burning tool, I may get it sooner, but right now we have enough craft material lying all around the house for me to want to buy something new. Both Ella and I are a little in love with the Crafty Chica)

*bowling, roller skating, or a video arcade (last time at the arcade,my dd got a Newton's cradle http://www.officeplayground.com/newtonscradle3.html with her tickets won on the games, and there have been some unbelievable discussions that branched off from that toy!)

*a new music CD or video or computer game...or season three of the Gilmore Girls

*a road trip (even just to the next town over)

*the supermarket to buy strange fruits and veggies and figure out how to cook them (we have a coconut sitting on our counter right now waiting for a smashing)

*a day/week of foods from a different place, or eating on the living room floor instead of the table, or breakfast in bed

*checking out books from a different library (somehow I come out with completely different kinds of books from the library on the other side of town...we've been all over looking for our Gilmore Girls DVDs)

Felting! Feeling!

It seems almost everything we do around here lately becomes a potential Visual Presentation for 4-H. They have to be done by February, and I think my Ella-girl may have finally decided on a topic: wool. The Wild World of Wool, actually.

But, yes, you may remember I thought it was going to be soap......

Anyway.....

Ella made this felted piece the other day. She is planning to turn it into a purse. My camera didn't quite capture the smaller sparkly threads that are running through it.
We are going to be trying out different ways to do this over the next few weeks because it was so freakin' fun! Ella got a little tired of rolling the big felt back and forth, but she really went to town on little beads and made a baby for her gnome from Edelweiss. I can't, unfortunately, link you directly to the store.

The store is owned by some Waldorf former homeschoolers. They don't own a computer, or a tv. Each year, they buy a live Christmas tree and put real candles on it. It all sounds sort of idyllic and cozy sometimes to me when the giggles of SpongeBob are getting to me.

However, the children, once they got a bit older, decided to attend Sturgis Charter School, and the mom has told me that she'll forever wonder why they decided to do that. She is sad that as they get bogged down in homework and everything else and she sees less and less of them, both in the physical sense and in the sense of seeing the real kid behind all the pressure and scheduling.

It is sad to me to think that the struggle for some *ideal way of being* led the family to leave home schooling. I hope that on our homeschooling/unschooling journey, I can stay mindful of what my children need and not get too focused on a methodology.