Vacuuming Fun

Right now, at this very moment, my boys are fighting over who gets to vacuum my couch. Yes, it's a brave new world, over here.

Earlier, when it was Nicholas' turn, Benjamen kept getting in his way, sitting on the bare frame, all the cushions scattered on the floor in front of the couch. With a bit of mystery in my voice, I called Benjamen over, "Come here."

"What?" he asked as he came closer.

"Sit here on this big cushion."

"Why?" he asked.

And as I put the other big cushion on top of him, I said, "So I can have a Benjamen sandwich!" and I laughed and laughed as I walked away.

Then a little, muffled voice came floating to my ears: "Then EAT ME!"

Learning Adventures (as opposed to Field Trips)

The last few weekends, we've been taking day-trips to various functions and events. It wasn't a plan or a concerted effort on our part, just things that crossed our paths and piqued our interest.

Last weekend we went to an open house at Friends Wilderness Center, which is just a few miles away from us, at the end of the main road that goes through our community. It's a Quaker-run retreat on a wooded piece of land near the Appalachian Trail.

Beautiful lillypad pond surrounded by purple irises

The land is cut through with deer paths and marked trails, and there are several cabins and meditation areas, as well, including a yurt and a treehouse.

Yurt

They had lots of things set up for the kids when we went. There was a beehive behind glass with lots of information set up and a beekeeper to field questions, as well.

Beehive

Outside, there was a woman, Trish, who helped the boys use natural materials, like seed pods, blossoms, bark, sticks, leaves, acorn tops, etc, to make art. They glued down a bark mouth, a pinecone nose, acorn eyes, etc and made little nature men. Trish was very sweet with the boys and they all enjoyed making their nature faces.


Jonathan and Benjamen went on a guided hike to a waterfall in the morning while Nicholas and I made our nature men, then we all had lunch together when they got back. Later in the day, there was a guided hike to the treehouse and yurt, and all of us did that hike together. We came across lots of mountain laurel along the way.

Mountain Laurel on the left

Once in the treehouse, there was a talk about leaves, trees, and photosynthesis.

Treehouse

From there, we took a hike through the woods to a meditation center, with a rock meditation circle, then on to an old cemetary in the forest, with one large stone and several smaller unmarked stones surrounding it.

Hand-carved headstone

We also came across some prayer flags strung from tree to tree.



We spent the day and had such a lovely time. They have a women's retreat this summer that I'm considering. It would be nice to be there in the quiet for an extended time.

Back at the cabin having a cookie after a long hike; riding on Papa's back is hard work

Priming the pump

Trying really hard to accidentally fall in

This weekend, we attended the local Wine & Arts Festival. There was lots of good music, good food, and good fun for the boys. We learned how to do a type of etching. You fold a paper in half, like a card. On the inside, on the right, you cover the paper in chalk. Then you color over it with crayon. Next, you close the "card" and make your print or design on the front. When you open it, you have two designs, a positive and negative print, the positive on the left, the negative on the right. Very, very cool.

Jonathan making his alien UFO design on the front

Nicholas' shape designs inside

There was also a puppeteer who was very good with the boys, one on one. He played with them for quite a while and then there were two puppet shows that we attended between listening to music and having lunch.


Papa got to pick up some wine from a local winery, too, so everyone had a happy day, me with the music, the boys with the activities and food, and Papa with his wine tasting.

This coming weekend, we're headed to a homeschooling day in a park in Berkeley Springs. Lots of fun planned, with a scavenger hunt, swimming, etc. I'm looking forward to it.

Remember when they were bald and blind? Yeah, last week?!? I looked in on them Saturday and they looked like this:



I looked in on them on Sunday, Mother's Day, and they all flew out at me. Some went all the way across the road, some settled on the deck, and some just flew around the nest.


Flying! I couldn't believe it. Here's one I captured of the little guy taking off again:


He flew back to the nest and settled in.

We've had so much fun watching them grow. Benjamen, especially, was the one who prompted me several times a day to check in on them. He loves animals so much.

Comfy Movie

Comfy Movie
Originally uploaded by jjfbaltzell.

It's been rainy all day, so we've been reading alot, curled up on the couch. After lunch we read from The Adventures of Little Bear, D'Aulaires' Greek Myths, and The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (which are totally gruesome, by the way, and the boys love them).

This afternoon we listened to the next chapter in our history series and since it was on Cortes and the Aztecs, we thought we'd pop some corn and watch El Dorado. I threw down an old comforter (from when we had a waterbed! before we ever had kids!) and some pillows and the boys asked for blankets.

I'm making some pretzel dough in the bread machine and we'll all work on those after the movie is over.

Cozy days at home are wonderful.

Baby Wrens

baby wrens 2
Originally uploaded by jjfbaltzell.

They're getting fuzzy already.

Deschooling

I had a bunch of books from the library stacked in the living room for our next chapter of history, on the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, and Jonathan read through some of them over the weekend. He found a book full of activities and picked out a few he wanted to do. We listened to the next chapter on CD as he read along in his book while I gathered our supplies.

In the morning, we all worked together to make this Mayan temple pyramid:


When it dries completley, we'll paint it red, as the Mayan temples are thought to have been.

And in the afternoon, since the Maya were fond of the plangi method, we made these for everyone:

Tie-dye socks and t-shirts

On Sunday, we planted an upside down tomato plant:


We're having fun watching the leaves reach for the sun. They're actually turned completely upward, smashing into the bottom of the bucket. We're gently training them outward each day.

Monday, while cleaning out our gardening supplies, we found that a wren had put one of our hanging planters to good use:



We look forward to watching the babies grow and fly away one day. We've been looking in on them daily and Mama Bird is pretty patient with us. They're smaller than the first joint of my thumb, right now, and perfectly adorable.

~~~~~

I've been paying attention to what Jonathan does without the structure of a schedule or lessons during the day. It's been enlightening to see the balance he strikes between playing outdoors, playing inside, often with Bionicles, often imaginative games with his brothers, and reading. He often starts playing with Bionicles after breakfast, then runs outside after half an hour or so. He plays outdoors and then comes inside, settling down with one book or another. Finished with that, he often starts a project, something to do with Bionicles, usually. He really seems to naturally balance his periods of physical activity and rest, as well as mental activity and relaxation. Maybe that's my own perception, though, regarding his mental activity. I suspect his mind is always going, whether he's reading a book, cleaning up his toys, or swinging outside, staring up at the clouds.

In the last week, he's made a Bionicle book, a necklace from small, square cards on which he had drawn various Bionicle symbols--they're quite pretty--and their meanings (things like Unity, Purity, Speed, Will-Power, Strength, Courage, Strategy, Loyalty, etc), a thick deck of flash cards with Matoran language on one side and English on the other (words like shrine, wildlife, elite, spirit, energy from a star, primal, regeneration, telepathy, levitation...), and a bunch of Bionicle masks out of cardboard. He wants me to memorize the flashcards, and though I was hesitant (I'll admit it sounded like a boring endeavor to me, but I'm trying really hard to shift my paradigm over here, and was successful in this instance) it's been fun to exercise my brain and realize that I'm not addled and forgetful as I thought I was. We've also had lots of wonderful conversations about these words and what they mean to him. He's memorized the whole language and alphabet, and writes me secret messages in coded Matoran which are much more difficult for me to translate than they are for him to translate and code.

This deschooling process is as much for me as it is for him. I'm trying to eliminate some words from my vocabulary (words like teach, school, school-year, grade...basically following the very good advice found here) and haven't found it as challenging as I thought it might be, but I still find myself thinking in those terms occasionally. I don't even like the term unschooling because it puts what I'm trying to accomplish in terms of schooling. I like that it opposes "schooling" but I wish I could think of a way of expressing that without reference to school at all. All I've come up with is saying, "We're life learners," but I'm positive that won't go over in general conversation. To your average person, I'm sure that I'm a bit freaky, but I don't necessarily want to advertise that, you know?

I've felt really good about everything so far. I'm doing lots of reading from re-visiting books I read when Jonathan was a baby, to reading new suggested books from unschooling lists, to reading the unschooling lists themselves. And then there are the Little House books that we're reading every night before bed. All good things.