Summer's Half Over, And We're Busy As Bees

I just realized today that summer is about halfway through. This one has seemed to go unusually fast. My hubby's been out of town a lot more than he's been in, which makes my days a whirlwind of trying to do all the stuff I normally do (take care of 14 animals, two kids, all the kids' activities, housework, etc.) plus all the stuff he normally takes care of (mowing lawns, fixing things, pumping bicycle tires, all the little things I never notice he's doing until he's gone and then Wow, they add up!). Still, we've managed to do a lot of cool things in the last couple of weeks since I posted last (as you can tell, getting around to blogging is much more difficult when he's gone, and I'm asleep before my head hits the pillow on more nights than I can count!)

So, since a picture's worth a thousand words (and it's 11:34 pm already and I'm running short on both brain power and words), here's a little picture history of our last two weeks:

We went to a homeschool park day, took a hike up a local butte, and discovered an Eagle's nest complete with at least one baby eagle we could hear (we've seen the parents flying out over the playground to the river to bring back some dinner). The nest is huge!



















The very next day, I crazily packed up the car to go camping at the beach with some friends. The walk-in campground that we love to go to was full (and they don't take reservations) but we used that as an opportunity to discover a new campground (at 6:00 in the evening, hoping we weren't going to be sleeping in the van at the side of the road!)
The beach was beautiful. It was warm and sunny and there was lots of sand and blue water. We had a kite. Who could ask for more?
The next day we went to a different beach, with a small river coming in, a lighthouse, tide pools, and lots of seashells to find.

The very next day, after unpacking all of our camping gear, and packing all of my triathlon gear, we set off for Washington so I could do a triathlon. I qualified for the National Age Group Triathlon Championships next year! And Asa did her first triathlon ever: 50 yard swim, 3 mile bike, 1 mile run. Hubby ran with her the whole way (including trying to keep up while she biked) so she would feel safe. She finished with a big ol' grin!
And a medal, of course. Now doesn't that just make this triathlete-mama's heart beat with joy!

















After the triathlon, we got to have dinner with my sister and brother-in-law who live in Washington, and also with an old friend of my husband's who lives in Texas but was up for a wedding and to compete on the bagpipe at the Highland Games. So of course, we had to go see her play. It was really cool to watch, I've never seen an individual bagpipe competition before, and she is amazing (she has been playing since she was old enough to hold a set of pipes)! We got to watch her father compete as well, and enjoy the rest of the games, look up a family clan (each clan had a tent there, ours is the Kerr's), and watch big burley guys in kilts heave big stones and hammers and poles around a field. Unfortunately it really started raining and we took off for home.

Once back at home, we took our newly adopted cat to the vet to have her spayed. I also wanted to ask if we were feeding her too much as she was getting rather round. Surprise! She's pregnant! We are about to have kittens. The kids over overjoyed. Cat may never give birth with children hovering over her every move.

Also on the homefront, our spring chickens began laying. The Aracanas lay the green eggs, aren't they cool?

And finally, this past weekend, we went to a Living History Festival at a local historic ranch/park. They had lots of old-fashioned kids' games like fishing. Here's Mackenzie hoping to pull out a cool prize.












And of course, the piece de' resistance, the Civil War re-enactment. Lots of big booms, horses rushing around, big guys playing soldier. Fun!

Well, that's two weeks of summer in a nutshell. Imagine all of this plus our usual karate, Asa's violin lessons and playing at the local marketplace, the kids' never-ending play, crafts, creativity, playdates, science experiments, trips to the library, etc. Wow! Think I'll go to bed now before I nod off at my keyboard

The True Magic of Harry Potter

One of the best things about unschooling for me is how I get drawn in to my childrens' worlds. How the things that interest them, I find interesting. It stretches my own imagination and boundaries to encompass the things that excite them. In a sense, that is a truly magical thing. Which is why, of course, Friday found us running around to thrift stores, a beauty supply store, and an Asian food market to buy supplies to wizardize ourselves for the Harry Potter release parties on Friday night. Asa went as Hermione, I couldn't talk Mackenzie into going as Draco Malfoy (though he looks so much like him when he gets out of the shower with his hair slicked back!) and the kids thought I should go as Tonks. My mom was visiting and came with us in costume too.!

Now of course though, I have to fight them to get to read the book myself!

Fun at the Science Museum, and Body Worlds

We went up to the science museum to see the traveling Body Worlds exhibit. It was really fascinating! I didn't anticipate how much information and presentation there would be along with the full-size bodies, and was pleasantly surprised. The kids didn't want to go in, I think they were a little intimidated by the idea of the dead bodies, and their friends we were there with also did a little bit of persuading because they didn't want to go in and wanted to go have fun in some of the rest of the science exhibits. So my mom friend and I took turns hanging out with the kids and each got to go in to see the Body Worlds exhibit. Now, after hearing me talk about it, the kids are interested in maybe going back up to see it, so we may be revisiting the skinless people. I thought it was really fascinating, once I got past the fact of seeing people without their skin on. I'm glad I got the time to walk through it alone without a million discussions with the kids because there is a lot of information presented about the human body, but I would also enjoy going through it with them and seeing it through their eyes! There was a wealth of information presented, not just on the full cadavers but on all the little body parts like spleens and joints and lungs and stuff (including these bizarre thin slices through the body that let you see a cross-section of organs.) Very cool stuff!















Meanwhile, the kids had a blast at the various rooms at the science museum. Asa and I merged our faces together in a magic mirror, with the eerie effect of aging her into a teenager (or reducing me to one, I don't know which!), and of course the kids spent a ton of time in the foam ball room, and some in the Chemistry lab, and the other experimental areas. I wish we lived closer to a really big science museum because the kids really enjoy hanging out there. I love how each time we go, it seems like we find some other new little exhibit or experiment we haven't seen before. It's so much fun.

Look Who Adopted Us!

This lovely little thing just followed us home one day. The next morning, she let herself in and was helping herself to our cat's food! She hasn't left yet. Apparently, she followed our neighbor home the week before, and she put up some posters but nobody has called. One day this week when the kids and I went for a walk, to our surprise the kitten tried to go with us! When we got to the busy street, she got very freaked out by the cars, but instead of going back she just tried to keep coming with us, but then kept running into peoples' yards to hide. I'm pretty sure this is how she got lost in the first place. I'm betting that she went for a walk with her original owners (perhaps without their knowing she was following) and then ran off to hide. Well, this time I didn't want her to get squashed by a car so I tried carrying her back home. She does not like being carried. I had to carry her by the scruff of her neck like her mama cat would've done. In any case, she's safely at our house and now that a week has passed with no phone calls from previous owners, we told the kids they could get her a collar and we'll order a tag for her. That way at least if she gets lost again, anyone who finds her will be able to give us a call.

She has been named Patches, and other than not liking being held is a very sweet little thing. She has even slept on the bed with us once! She is pretty thin and was obviously very hungry, so she's in the kitchen under my feet a lot and is a very accomplished little beggar (being fed by the first person who wakes up, then pretending she has not been fed for the next successive people who appear in the kitchen). But she's plumping up a little bit. We definitely have to keep her away from our cat Noggin's food while he's eating as he is now fourteen and a grumpy old man, and he's given her a piece of his mind when she gets too close to his food.

Other than that, Noggin is adjusting remarkably well. Previous attempts at introducing other cats (such as when my sister stayed with us and brought her cat with her) have not gone well, but he seems to tolerate this little newcomer with remarkably good graces. Perhaps he can sense that she needs us too. Or perhaps since the kitten is not a lap cat, he doesn't feel that his territory has been too encroached upon. Whatever the reason, he's doing fine and so we are now officially a two-cat household.

A Day In Our Lives

On a discussion board that I frequent, people have been doing "A Day In the Life" photoessays, so I did one the other day. It wasn't a totally typical day since my husband was at home and I used the afternoon to run a lot of errands by myself (not very usual) but it more or less shows our daily existance (even our tupperware drawer!) So if you happen to want to see a day in our lives, represented photographically, here it is: A Day In Our Lives.

Grandma Used to Have an Ass

Don't you just love the kinds of conversations you can get into with kids? This was the killer line in one this week, along with "and grandpa had a favorite bitch." We were talking about swear words and how they became swear words and what their original origins were. So we discussed bitches and bastards and why "shit" is a curse word but "poo" is not.

A couple of years ago, one of my kids' friends came up to me visibly upset. She confided in me that she was really afraid because she didn't know what "the F word" was and was very worried that she might accidentally say the "F word" out loud and offend people. This word held so much power in her head because of its mysterious status that she was very disturbed about it. Many people inadvertantly give swear words enormous power in kids' minds because of the prohibitions against saying them and the mysterious and "bad" aura that hangs over these words. Since that incident, I became even more convinced that the way to take the power and mystique out of such things was just to address them as we do everything else, with open communication and dialogue.

So this week the subject just happened to come up and we discussed them all (well, almost all. I'm actually a bit relieved to say that I didn't have to explain "bugger" because my kids didn't ask, that one would've been just a wee bit more delicate). We talked about where the words come from and why they got their power. We discussed cultural mores through the centuries and why it used to be a terrible insult to be called a bastard, whereas nowadays such a condition is much less rare and not nearly so stigmatized. And of course we eventually also talked about why some folks are offended by curse words and where it is and isn't appropriate to use them.

Surprisingly to some folks (but not really to me) although my kids are well acquainted with these "curse words" and though they are able to use them around me with impunity (I've assured them that I'm almost impossible to offend), the kids don't really curse. Even when stubbing their toe or anything, which is impressive given that I have to work pretty hard to curb my sailor-mouth at times. It's something I struggle with and have to consciously think about in mixed company. I'm happy that my kids are curious about such things, but also show the good sense to know what is and isn't appropriate in social circumstances.

And yes, in case you're wondering, my grandma's ass was named Dolly. She was grey and fuzzy and lived to a ripe old age in the back pasture.

The Coolest Thing Ever

...is when you're standing in the kitchen late at night cutting up strawberries, because you and the kids picked about a million pounds of them and you need to get them in the freezer. Your kids are waiting patiently for you to finish so you can sit together and read a chapter book, your nightly ritual. This month it's a re-read of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, before the movie comes out. They decide to take turns reading it out loud to you while you work.

It's one of those moments when you realize everything has clicked. I mean, I knew my kids were both avid readers because, well, they read all the time! But they rarely read out loud, especially this kind of book. M. will read all kinds of non-fiction to me (his latest is a Mythbusters book from the library Don't Try This At Home that he finds fascinating), especially over the breakfast table, and Miss. A. will read me little picture books about cute fuzzy things until the cows come home. But to hear each of them reading aloud from Harry Potter was just really something. They've both done it - made that transition from halting sounder-outer to easy reader to picture books to this! I know it's been said in so many ways on so many websites and lists and unschooling blogs, but it's wonderful to watch reading happen organically and naturally and beautifully.

I had the privilege of talking with a couple of twin toddlers yesterday. At almost two, they were in those beginning phases of language where one must purse up the lips and screw up the face with concentration to form the word "ball". The excitement when I understood and said "yes, I see your ball!" was wonderful to see. It reminded me that it's really all the same. We can make learning so difficult. We can wrap it up in packages of educationalese, we can quantify it and try to measure it, define it and parcel it out into subjects and time slots. But it's really no different. It's all about trying, failing, succeeding, and trying some more. With love and encouragement, learning always happens.

A Day Like Italy

Almost all of our classes are done (with the exception of ongoing stuff like karate and violin) and the warm summer weather is here. We've been re-adjusting our daily routine to coincide with the best times to be outdoors. I headed out to pick cherries first thing in the morning while it was still cool, and the kids worked off some debt (yard work pays well around here) and then they set to work on "Kiddyville" which is a series of "houses" or shelters down in the woods by the creek.


















M. worked for quite some time on building Miss A. a new home, making a lean-to and then covering it with branches. Once he showed it to her, she moved right in and made herself at home. The kids and their friends each have a home down there, so I'm trying to clear out the newly-sprouting blackberries as much as I can so that they can run around and play. It's cool and shady there through a lot of the day, so it's a nice spot for them.

After we got some lunch, we decided to come inside during the hottest hours of the day from about 2:00 to 5:00. Our projector is set up in the cool, dark basement, so we can go down there and lounge around and watch movies while the sun roasts outside. We had a mid-afternoon lunch in the coolness of the house and ate cherries until we just about burst. Then in the evening, we headed out for a walk to the store and a very late light dinner, as well as some more outdoor time while it was cooling down. One of the neighbor kids was here until 10:00 when it was finally dark.

Taking advantage of the natural rhythm of the summertime weather feels so wonderful. It's like all the day is aligned just perfectly. Miss A. said "We're having a day like Italy!". We have been discussing taking a bicycling trip to Italy in 2008, and had been talking about how in many places there they still have a siesta time as they do in Spain, where we went a couple of years ago. In fact, we totally got caught by the siesta hours when we visited the city of Burgos, because we didn't have any food with us and everything was closing down. We ended up going by a little cafe and getting some pasta to go, but they didn't have any plastic silverware like they would here in America. I guess most people take it home or someplace else that they can eat with their own silverware. So we ended up eating pasta in a park with our fingers like the American barbarians that we were. It was November and bitterly cold, too. Next time we're in a country that has a siesta time, we'll be better prepared. In fact, we'll have lots of practice at it by then!

Like Sand Through the Hourglass...

I had the disconcerting experience last night of going to watch a dance recital and seeing a boy that M. used to play with (like play as in build sandcastles and vroom trucks and all that kind of boy play) up on stage dancing Salsa with a girl and flinging her over his knee in a sultry kind of way. This kid is now somewhere over six feet tall, a smooth dancer and can hardly be referred to as a boy anymore. Yet he's only 3.5 years older than M.! At going-on-11, M.has morphed into a fast-growing weed with a ever-huskier voice that seems to mostly say variations on "I'm hungry, mom". He grew an inch in the last six weeks. Could it be so very far away that he too will be six feet tall and twirling teenage girls in red dresses? It seems impossible, yet when I watched his former playmate on stage, it just seemed like a blink of an eye ago that they had Hot Wheels cars and Bionicles all over the driveway. Some days it still seems like I have a young boy, zooming spaceships or excitedly telling me about his Pokemon cards. On another day, he's far too cool to drink from my pink water bottle ("humiliating" is the latest descriptive word for such actions).

Couple all of this with watching Miss Diva onstage in her snazzy jazzy dance costume doing her routine and looking just way too grown up (yet flashing me her jack-o-lantern missing-toothed smile afterwards) and you've got a season of awe-inspiring growth going on. Just about every day I am shocked by something one or both of them does that just seems so much older than the day before. Might be the way they answer the phone, the way they hang out together on the couch and chat or read books next to each other, the phrases they use that are less childlike than what they might've said a day, a week, or a month ago. It's both beautiful and utterly frightening to see them changing so quickly before my eyes. I guess I was prepared for this in the early years when milestones come fast and furious. But sometime in the last few years I got lulled by the fact that they seemed reasonably the same from one day to the next. I think though that we've hit another one of those times when growth and change comes quickly and catches me off-guard.

At least the lazy summer days are finally upon us, we can spend plenty of time just relaxing and enjoying each others' company. We finally got a digital video camera, so at least I can capture some of what they are like in this moment on film (when I can wrestle the camera away from M., who seems to delight in making "Garden Roller Coaster" movies, where the camera zooms sickeningly around the yard, or movies in which his little sister is some kind of roaring monster).

Gone Missing

It's been the usual end-of-term craziness around here. One would think an unschooling family wouldn't be so affected by the school calendar, but the rest of the world hinges on it too. All of the recitals like karate, dance class, violin, all seem to get piled at the end of the school year so the last two weeks have been very busy. The kids and my husband all graduated to gold belts in karate, their first colored belt and a very exciting experience! Miss A. had her violin and dance performances, and I'm sure I'll be putting up photos at some point.

Right now, I'm almost dead in the water for photos or writing because my computer went belly-up. Of all the files on a computer to become corrupted, your system files are the ones you really don't want to lose. I'm going to have to get a whole new hard drive, and then see what can be salvaged from my old one, if anything. I did have most of it backed up (photos, writing, etc.) but all the little fiddly details like notes, calendar, email are lost. And my email address book, which is a big loss especially. I hadn't realized how much my computer was my work center for our unschooling lives, even little things like checking what library books we have out were quickly done with links saved on my computer and library card numbers already entered in. Everything has to be redone.

So if I don't blog a whole lot for the next week or so, it's because I'm using borrowed time on everyone else's computers. And no photos, that's a horrifying prospect for me! But we'll plunge on into the first few lazy weeks of summer and enjoy the time off (the kids generally cut down dramatically on classes and activities in the summer, so we can camp and hang out more.)

Magic of the Garden

As my interest in photography has been rekindled by Flickr (it's kind of like having a non-stop photo gallery, show, art class, and coffee shop all at the same time), I've been turning my own attention to the magic of everyday things. Often in the morning or evenings I will prowl through the garden or woods, just looking with my photographer's eye. The kids have accompanied me, sometimes just one of them and sometimes both. It's become a wonderful time to spend together looking at things.

M. and I discovered these tiny spiders hatching on a sweatshirt in our laundry hanging outside. It's amazing how fully formed they are, and that they can spin perfect tiny webs, yet they are not much bigger than the head of a pin. I took this photo with my finger in it just for the size comparison. Within a few hours, all were gone from the sweatshirt, off to make new lives for themselves. As we just watched the new version of Charlotte's Web, we were reminded of the scene where Charlotte's babies all float away. We could imagine these spider's tiny voices as they walked around on my shirt.

On another morning, after a night's rain that left the garden smelling wonderfully green, Miss A. and I walked around looking at the raindrops on spider webs on the ground. I love how just the presence of a child can make you see the magic in things you might otherwise miss or take for granted. Since the weather has been unusually hot this week, the kids discovered mirages on the road. Ever since then, they practically shriek with excitement when they see them, and then there is the running mirage commentary "it's shrinking, it's shrinking, it's gone...". Something I haven't noticed for years is suddenly fantastic and wonderful when they get so excited about it.

Once again, I find myself amazed by the journey my kids are taking me on. They turn my eyes outward in new directions, or allow me to see old things in new ways. They see the magic of everyday things, and beauty everywhere.

Blogs That Make Me Think

A couple of weeks back, while I was on vacation, my writer-friend Dorcas, whose blog is here, tagged me as one of the blogs that make her think. Besides feeling very honored, since Dorcas is one of those people who can write about Ordinary Days in a way that makes each moment extraordinarily beautiful, now I actually have to think about which blogs make me think (though I have been assured that my toaster will not explode if I do not tag anyone else, which is good since I've been taking my sweet time thinking about this!)

Pondering this, I've realized I don't really go out of my way to read blogs that make me think. I don't read a lot of political blogs, activist blogs, historical or geographical blogs. Mostly I like reading people's personal journeys with the topics that inspire them the most. So on that front, I've been most inspired to thought by blogs from two triathletes:

J. at Ironman Life, who can write about Ben Gay and being stuck on hold with Verizon's customer service and make it all so hysterically interesting you just have to keep reading.

and TriJack, who often intersperses his journey of training for the Ironman with writings about his life as an ER doc and single father to four young kids. I will sometimes find myself days later pondering something he said.

On the Unschooling front, Sandra Dodd has made me think for years and years, and re-examine assumptions and question old realities. She's not afraid of putting her strong opinions out there, and while I don't always agree, they always make me think.

There's also Doc's Sunrise Rants. Not confining herself to just matters of homeschooling, Doc touches on diversity, events in her life, her farm, and all kinds of matters of interest. She also puts together a blog carnival called The Country Fair that's always inspiring.

And a blog that has nothing to do with unschooling, triathlons, or any of that, but always makes me think is Allison's An Unsealed Room: A Window on Life in Israel. I "met" Allison on a due-date email list. The only thing all of the women on the list had in common is that we were all due with a child in September of 1996. It's one of the things I am most grateful to the internet for: the ability to see and hear about lives that are very different from our own. Allison is a great writer who always has something interesting to say, from a perspective I might not have considered.

All in all, the internet brings such a great variety of people, ideas, and viewpoints to our doorstep. It's an everyday miracle that we typically take for granted. Just thinking about this post has made me realize how much I would miss these faraway voices if I didn't get to hear them again. So here's a moment of gratefulness for the internet, and for the people who choose to put their thoughts out here for the rest of us to ponder.

Catching Up

It's been a busy couple of weeks since getting back from our Disneyland trip. Immediately on our return, we were thrown into a pretty hectic week with dress rehearsals for the play Little Women that A. was in, then two performances on the weekend and her violin recital that same weekend as well! I also played a duet with her at her recital, which means I had to really knuckle down and practice so as not to embarass her (I am much more likely to mess up on stage than she is!). I was also training pretty hard for a triathlon I did this weekend. Of course, there was also Mother's Day which I meant to blog about (and may still do so), but suffice it to say that we had a wonderful day together - the kids and my hubby brought me breakfast in bed, we went on a family bike ride, enjoyed the sunshine and, as with every day, I was grateful for this amazing opportunity of motherhood that has come my way.

But despite the overall activity, many small and wonderful things have also happened. M., who has had long hair for a very long time now, decided to cut it all off and donate it to Locks of Love. He had been mulling it over for some time, but the decision came very rapidly one morning and we took him up on it and took him to the hairdresser's. Wow, he looks so much older (and of course just as wonderfully cute and handsome) but very very different. I'm still getting used to it! We've also had the tadpole project going (they have front legs now!), the usual activities (another Karate belt test coming up in two weeks and we are all practicing hard for that, A.'s end-of-year dance recitals will be the same weekend, planning summer camping trips, too!), and on our way to my triathlon this weekend we took a side-trip to see a B-17 that landed at our local airport.

This was perfect timing since we've been watching a fair number of WWII movies lately. We saw Memphis Belle again, one of M's favorite movies, and we also watched Tuskegee Airmen and had some great discussions about racial discrimination stemming from that. So when I was out hanging up laundry and I heard the unmistakable rumble of four radial engines overhead, I called the kids to come quick and we saw this beauty flying above. She's been out at the airport all weekend and we got to take a tour and crawl through all of the spaces inside. When you see a movie like Memphis Belle and then you're actually in there looking at the real plane, it has such a huge effect. Looking at that ball turret hanging below the plane and imagining being squashed in there and completely exposed to enemy fire, well it's pretty chilling. We found, as usual, that the people who fly around with such a museum piece are always willing to talk about it and talk history. They've immersed themselves in the history of the era and love to share. The last time we were looking at an old warbird like this, the gentleman talking to us about it started telling us about when he had been on a ship at Pearl Harbor and had to jump overboard into the harbor and watched all the boats going down. It is amazing to be able to hear history from a first-hand perspective, and as the people who experienced this amazing era are starting to become few and far between, it's great to have the opportunity to talk to them while they are still here to tell their own stories.

Elephants Don't Play Video Games

It seems that in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings (and other random acts of publicized mayhem), every internet group is discussing violence and its causes and implications in our society. This is no less true on parenting groups, where it seems to tend to settle on culprits such as violence in movies, TV, and that devil incarnate, video games. These are what I tend to think of as external influences, perhaps even tangential ones. Much is made of them, but sometimes I wonder if they act as does the purposeful wave of the magician's hand as he diverts your eye from the truly important action. Now I'm no defender of Mortal Mayhem V6.0 or whatever the latest blood-n-gore action on the screens and movie theaters is, but I think to be mistaking such things as causal factors is to either deliberately or inadvertantly ignore the greater societal truths.

When we were on vacation last week, we had the benefit of getting Animal Planet on our hotel TV (a channel we don't have in our cable lineup at home). So we were watching a special on Rogue elephants. In the past, rogues were rare - often a newly-matured male on a testosterone-fueled rampage. But these days they are becoming increasingly common, purposeful, vindictive, and downright violent. Elephants are killing rhinos (a previously unheard-of act) at astonishing rates. In one game reserve, officials shot three bull elephants responsible for the deaths of 63 rhinos. And they turn on each other as well: in Addo Elephant National Parkin South Africa, up to 90 percent of male elephant deaths are now attributable to other male elephants, compared with a rate of 6 percent in other, more stable elephant communities (does that sound similar to differences among human communities?) A biologist studying these elephants on the television show we were watching offered up this bit of wisdom (I paraphrase from memory here): Young elephants are experiencing traumatic incidents as youngsters, and are being taken away from their elders and family structure and left in scenarios where their only social encounters come from equally immature peers. In these scenarios, they resort to bullying other elephants and to killing elephants, rhinos, and humans. Funny, though, they don't have access to violent video games.

I was instantly struck by the parallels between the elephants' behavior and our current society's issues with violence, particularly among adolescent males. Breakdown in social structure, kids who do not grow up with the influence of stable family elders, or kids who are removed too early from family relationships and intimate bonds (elephant studies have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, an age by which the average American child has spent a huge percentage of their hours in daycare, preschool, schools, and before and after-school care) are all factors we share with elephants. In elephant herds without the older matriachal females who have typically presided, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and more inexperienced mothers, in a downward cycle that mimics one being played out by younger and younger teenaged mothers in our own culture.

Not that there are any easy answers to this dilemma, either for the elephants or for ourselves. The New York Times has a fascinating and informative ten-page article from last fall called An Elephant Crackup? that I found while searching for more information online about these issues with Rogue elephants. One take-away that I got both from watching this TV program and from reading the article is that no act of human connection, either with each other or with animals is unimportant. I know when I was a new mother, I was very passionate about Attachment Parenting, breastfeeding, maternal bonding, mom-care over non-necessary daycare, and parental attachment over larger school institutions for "socialization". But that passion felt unanchored by much more than my own intuitions that such things were of huge and overwhelming importance. Too often they are seen as personal choices, and any discussion thereof must be tempered with a necessity to validate all other choices as somehow equal. When looked at from this ground-level viewpoint, a mother's choice to breastfeed or to put her child in daycare is a very small and personal choice. But when we look at overall patterns of attachment and social fabric, the choices we make on a daily basis combine with everyone else's choices to weave a pattern that either draws us closer to a society of cooperation and harmony, or one of destruction and violence. These small personal choices are of the utmost importance, and anything we do to help parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and community members draw together and form strong bonds benefits our entire society.

As for those pesky video games, I see them as symptom, not disease. They're the snot that sprays out when a rhinovirus has invaded a sinus passage. But they're not the virus. What possible lure would choking a virtual victim hold over someone who is intimately connected to their family, friends, and community? Such acts are like the rhino-murdering elephants: sad aberrations that point to a disintegrated social fabric.

Dispatches From the Frog Kingdom

They have legs! And we seem to have at least six survivors out of seven so far, though there may be seven. They've got a nice big habitat and like to lurk around in the plants and the mud, so we might still have all seven with us, it's hard to tell. They're getting rather fat and turning greenish and growing these cute little legs!

We did have an issue with stinky tank syndrome and I had to start changing the water out more frequently and scrub off some algae, but they seem to be eating well and obviously growing so I think we're doing okay. Of course, my husband asked "so tell me again why our dining room table is pushed all the way against the window and being taken over by a giant tank?" Why darling, it's because the little froggies need some sunlight every day, and, well, because this is a household of adventures where magic and excitement trump having a perfectly set dining room table. Same reason there's a tent in our front yard today, and a Lego "movie backlot" that M. built on our livingroom floor. We clean up well, but at any given time there are adventures going on here.

Speaking of adventures, it's cool to see how something fun from vacation (visiting Universal Studios as well as the "Hollywood Backlot" area of California Adventure park and taking a drawing lesson from a real Disney animator) has spawned a whole lot of creative playing here. M. has built a movie lot for his Lego guys and is urging me to finish up downloading photos from the camera so that he can use it to make another animated film of his little Lego guys.

Back From Vacation

I'm having one of those "I can't believe it's Monday" moments right now, which tends to happen every week but this week will be more of a shock than most. It's always hard to re-adjust to the hustle and bustle when you come back from vacation. Although, since this vacation was extremely busy, maybe it will be easier this time. We took yesterday and didn't do much of anything (including unpacking suitcases) just to relax and unwind. We were only gone for a week, but managed to hit Universal Studios, the La Brea Tar Pits, Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, and three days of Disneyland. Phew! More photos and observances to come, for sure.

This is my third trip to Disney with the kids, and this time my mom met us there to kick off her newly-retired journey around the country. Luckily, the kids are early risers and very hardy sorts because we were at the park at opening time, came back to swim in the hotel pool in the afternoon, then were back until the park closed each day. They probably walked five or six miles a day, maybe more. Homeschooling definitely gave us an advantage for this vacation, because we managed to go right after Spring Break but before the summer rush. Disney wasn't open the longer hours that it is in spring break, but we found that 12 hours a day was plenty, and the lines were very short, the park uncrowded, and the weather lovely but not too hot. We were able to do things like go on the new Buzz Lightyear ride about ten times (trying to better our score) and walk right up to get on Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain. With three days at Disney, we were able to see pretty much everything we wanted to, and many things twice or more.

Adventures With Tadpoles

This week we went out to a local marshy area and the kids got some tadpoles. It was just gorgeous out there with camas bulbs blooming everywhere and red wing blackbirds calling to each other. A friend of mine who is a local field biologist (and homeschooling mom) suggested the outing. I love going places like this with her because she comes armed with spotting scope and more knowledge on local flora and fauna than anyone I know. The kids loved romping around in the fields, watching pond turtles through her scope, and finding the cute little tadpoles in tiny ponds. On the way home, we picked up a used fish tank at Goodwill and have filled it with water from our creek. We're going to try to raise these little guys into frogs so keep your fingers crossed for us.

The internet is such a wonderful resource for this kind of thing. I wouldn't have even thought twice about filling the tank with tap water, but fortunately I Googled "Raising Tadpoles" first, so we went for the creek water. It was a little murky at first, but it has settled out and all seven of the little guys (Taddie, Taddles, Tad Tad, Tadmina, Teddie, Link, and Zelda) seem to be quite happy in their new home.

The Mischief Team

When the kids were about five and two, M. said to me one day "I'm the leader of the Mischief Team!" with a proud smile on his face. And was he ever! He could get his adventurous little sis to do just about anything. Still can, as a matter of fact. This is what they got up to the other day: emptied out the craft closet and he made her this "Inside-out suit" also known as "the alien costume", including wrapping her up in crepe paper and making the helmet out of bags. I love how in this photo he's trying to look like he didn't have much to do with it. Of course, the house looked like a craft bomb had exploded, all of my tape is now gone, and we need to get more streamers before the next party occurs, but hearing their giggles and fun makes it all worth it.

Learn (Many) Something(s) New Every Day

Every now and then I jot down all the things that the kids and I have talked about and learned about in that one particular day, just for fun. I always come away from the experience amazed and awed at the things we talk and think about, the learning that happens without us even noticing it. On any given day, if I thought about it briefly, it would seem like we "didn't do much". The kids and I like to hang out together, or they're at their friends, we might read a book or go for a walk, we might have an activity (of course, activities like a violin lesson look a lot more like the "learning" that people are used to - formalized, taught, timed, structured), or we might bounce on the trampoline or play Yahtzee.

Unschooled learning doesn't look like a parent sitting down and teaching their kids, or the kids working their way through some set of materials aimed at learning some certain thing. It's a lot more fragmented than that, a lot more integrated into daily life, and a lot more interactive on the part of the parent. I have to stay on my toes, as I never know when I'll be called on to pull an answer to some esoteric question out of my hat. "Mom, what's the crush depth of the average submarine?" Hmmmmmm, I'll have to think about that one for a minute.... The other thing that amazes me is how good kids are at putting together the puzzle pieces of learning in their head. They make connections between disparate pieces of information, or things we have talked or read about days, months, or years apart. This is as true of numerical facts and figures as it is of history or literature, or scientific ideas. You don't need "Well Trained Mind" timelines glued to your walls or fancy curriculae for the kids to get how it all hangs together.

So all of this was illustrated in the day's little snapshot of unschooled, interactive learning, which looked like this:

The kids made Eggmen with leftover Easter eggs, glue, tape, boxes, crepe paper, twistie ties, crayons, and anything else they could find in the craft drawer. This is Commander Eggman next to his spaceship. They came up with some funny, punny names too: a baseball-playing "Eggo Martinez", the ever-artistic "Egginardo DaVinci" and the thespian "Eggo Mortensen".

Diva Girl and I practiced violins. She's playing in a recital next Saturday, so she was polishing up a Bach Minuet. I was trying to explain how to get more out of her dynamics when I decided just to stop in the middle and pull out some CDs. We listened to Mozart's Requiem (Confutatis Maledictis), Dire Straits' Telegraph Road, and Andrea Bocceli's Con Te Partiro. The latter piece sparked a discussion about the Italian Language. We've been watching Rick Steve's guide to Italy's Countryside on DVD lately and are hoping someday to take a bicycling trip there. We discussed how I could read some of the Italian lyrics in Bocceli's songs and understand some (because I can read French and some Spanish) and how the Romance Languages are tied together at a common root (and since the kids both studied Latin for some time, they could also find the roots to some of the words.)

Returning to dynamics, we listened to the music and the ways that dynamics influence the presentation of many different styles of music. I later did a little bit more research on dynamics and found out some interesting facts to share with the kids that I didn't know previously (like the fact that some composers have used more than three fff's or ppp's: Tchaikovsky marked a bassoon solo pppppp in his Pathétique symphony and ffff in passages of his 1812 Overture, for instance!) When Diva returned to her violin piece over an hour later (a bit of a long diversion), the difference in dynamics and presentation were really incredible. It wasn't any planned "lesson" but a divergence from what we were doing that interested all of us.

We took a walk to the store, talked about what to have for dinner. Since Italy was on the brain (and since Rick Steves shows off a lot of wonderful Italian cooking in his series), we decided on pasta and picked out fresh ingredients at our corner market. On the way home, we talked about how going to market and cooking were similar and different between our lives and the small Italian towns we'd been watching on the video (in the segment on the Cinque Terra, they talk about how a traveling marketplace comes to each of the small hill towns on the coast once a week.)

On the way home, we saw a smashed soda can. That's what got us talking about the crush depth of a submarine. That conversation led to discussing where the deepest spot in the ocean was (I said I was pretty sure it was in the Mariana Trench, but looked it up when we got home just to be sure - there's always finding new places or new measurements.) Along the way to finding that fact online, we found some other cool ocean facts, like where the tallest underwater waterfall is (who knew there was such a thing!) or the 50+ foot differential in the tides at the Bay of Fundy.

A wonderful family pasta dinner later and we were watching another Rick Steve's Italy episode, and then a Nova special on cuttlefish (truly amazing creatures). In between all of that we did plenty of different things. The kids played, we went outdoors, we took care of all of our animals, I gardened, they trampolined, M. told me all about his newest adventures in the DS game RocketSlime, Divagirl picked out some tunes on the piano and sang to the chickens (to help settle them into their new enclosure.) We talked with shopkeepers and friends in the neighborhood, rescued worms stranded by the rains, discussed worms, went home and looked up info about whether or not the giant earthworms still live in Oregon (did you know that some giant earthworms here grow up to three feet in length, but that they may have gone extinct in the last decade or so?), discovered that Charles Darwin played the piano for earthworms to confirm that they were deaf, and that there are over a hundred species in our region alone, and many many other things.

Those are just a few things I jotted down. None of them seemed outstanding or spectacular in their moment, just a few threads here and there. It's only when you step back and look at the whole rich tapestry by writing it out like this that you can see how beautiful it is to live and learn as an unschooler.

The Path to Unschooling Goals

Every now and then I like to write about examples that show up in my kids' lives that address those nagging unschooling questions and doubts. Things like "What if all they do is play video games all day?" or "How will they ever learn anything?", or, a biggie: "How will kids ever work toward a goal if you don't make them?". None of these things are serious concerns of mine after seeing the way our kids go after the things in life that interest them, but this week is a really shining example of how they work towards their own goals.

Miss A. (seven and a half years old now she tells me since this last week) loves animals. Perhaps loves is not a strong enough term. She adores them, pets them, cares for them, tames them, she could probably meet a wild rhinoceros and have it follow her home for tea. She is also a really caring kind of person, and one of the things she loves to do is give massages. Even with her tiny hands, she's pretty darned strong and can do a good job of it (which I have really appreciated at times!) When our dog Sabre was alive, she would massage his back and legs and you could tell that he really appreciated it, and it helped him be less stiff and relieved some of the joint pain as he got older.

So our neighbor is an acupuncturist, chiropactor, and specializes in sports medicine, among other things. He also has a very cute dog named Rocky. Although Rocky is a very vocal dog, which might be intimidating to some, Miss A. isn't fazed by that at all and is always loving on him if he's around. So our neighbor mentioned off-hand one day that he could show Miss A. how to do acupressure on animals, and A. got very excited about that. So excited that she waited patiently the next morning until the polite hour of 9:00 am to run across the street and talk to him about it. He was busy that day, but they ended up setting a time of 4:30 on Monday to meet up.

All weekend she would say things like "Only two days and 3 1/2 hours."
"Until what?" I'd ask.
"Until my meeting with Nathan."

It was obviously a very big deal for her, and she was not going to miss it. When Monday finally arrived, she set an alarm, then the timer on the stove. She was going to be there right at 4:30 (as a former businessperson, I would only wish that all adults were so conscientious and prompt!). As the appointed hour arrived, she donned her shoes and marched across the street to knock on his door. She came home totally excited about all she had learned (he demonstrated the pressure points on Rocky) and the happy effect it had on Rocky ("he just melted to the floor, mom!").

As always, I am grateful for the wonderful adults that our kids manage to encounter. Certainly our luck in having such a giving neighbor is great. It's awesome when adults who have special skills or talents are willing to take the time to share them, especially with such a young kid. And as always, our kids amaze me with their tenacity, their drive to learn, their desire to follow their passions and interests until they are satisfied that they have all the information that they need. Our neighbor's business card is now one of Miss A.'s prized possessions. A business card! I did have to stop her from calling his office number to enquire about the next time they could meet up (enthusiasm does have its boundaries), and suggested she wait until he was not busy with clients and such. I'm sure she will return for more information and practice, and maybe someday she will make her career in the same field (I wouldn't be surprised), or maybe it will just be information she files away and uses on her own pet some day (or her entire farm full of animals, more likely). Either way, it's wonderful to see her following her dreams.

Words to Make a Mother Wig Out

"Mom, I'm growing a mustache."

Especially when this is said in that husky, cracking, boy-turning-to-man kind of voice. Oy.

Easier Bake Oven

The kids have been wanting to do more cooking on their own, and I found these cool silicone flexible muffin pans, just small enough to fit in our toaster oven. So they can bake tiny muffins all on their own. M. treated us to a batch of chocolate chip muffins. He saved out some batter for me, since I'm not a fan of chocolate chips in anything but cookies. I made mine with cranberries and walnuts. Yummmm!

I had originally bought the toaster oven instead of a regular toaster because I knew it would do double-duty as a miniature oven for the kids. Why get an "easy bake" oven when you can cook for real in the kitchen with one of these? Maybe we'll do mini-pizzas tonight.