Fall

The falling leaves, and many human reminders of seasons coming to an end, have me craving quiet and stillness. As much as I may want to just hole up under blankets on my couch, watching last year's "House" episodes on DVDs all day while I knit baby clothes, unschooling won't allow it - at least not exclusively. This is a good thing. My kids and their friends have films to make and places to go and ideas to help implement. There is no time to withdraw, at least not for too long a stretch of time.

The first several Bionicle based movies were filmed in my bedroom. Here is Jesse's favorite. My bed is now on You Tube. Luckily, I'd made it that day. ; ) The most recent one has been started at the farm, with yet more actors and directors:
Reviewing their work on Eli's Flip camera:In addition, there has been polimer clay to sculpt (This is our newly-unschooling friend Jack):
and Bananagrams games to play with me. Jesse did this one solo:I noticed one word that was missing a few letters and he rearranged whole words and fixed it in seconds. Jesse's Bananagrams ability is something to behold, or to run from , depending on your self-esteem that moment.
Another highlight of the week was going to a fund raiser in a nearby small town. Social Circle resident, Robbie Baldoni, was a passionate skate boarder who had just begun his own well-organized plan to create a local free skate park, when he suddenly died, at twelve, from a brain aneurism. His family has been continuing the work to make his skate park dream come true. Yesterday, a ramp company from Missouri donated ramps for a fund raiser (drove them here for free!) and we all bought Robbie shirts, Robbie hats and lots of food, to help create the dream park. Their story is here. They are home schoolers as well.

At the fund raiser:

Jesse, wearing a hat like the one Robbie always wore when he was on his board:

Endless summer

My watermelon blog banner is in honor of how long we get to grow "summer" fruits and vegetables down south. I went up north again last week and I need to keep reminding myself of all of the perks of living down here, of which there really are many. I like being warm in September and October, while eating tomatoes and watching the guys spit watermelon seeds.

Due to some luck and spontaneity, Gillen and Jesse and I are getting to go to the beach in South Carolina with a bunch of other unschoolers this coming week. Unfortunately, Nicolas has to farm. But I think it might be nice for him to be alone for the first time in many months. We leave tomorrow. I have spent the last two days making soups and chili to freeze and take with us. I will spend my time there hanging with my boys and our friends, knitting baby things, and listening to the ocean.

We are so lucky. Even when the leaves have turned and the wood stove is lit, we will still be experiencing the freedom of an endless summer. Unschooling rules! (interesting oxymoron there)

Because of these guys:

- I didn't have to make dinner last night. Gillen decided to make us omelettes, to order. Because of the kind of guy he is, he added a centerpiece of strawberries and grapes and the really good glasses. - I didn't have to wash the car before our trip tomorrow. They decided to do it, after playing baseball all day. - and how cool they are, I am getting to speak at a conference in Mass. next week.

- I have redefined peace.

The Great "Raid Expansion" (where the whittling led)

So there they were, on the back steps with their sticks and their whittling knives, in boyish whittling communion. That's where I left them, to whittling peace. I asked about the specifics of the game ideas later.

"I'm going to open a weapons shop," said Gillen.

"I'll make more quests for the weekly raiding with the Wilson brothers," thought Jesse. All raids need good weapons (used on trees and crash test hay dummies, by the way, not on each other).

The great raid expansion game was born. The next day, when the Wilson brothers came to the farm, there would be new quests and new weapons for them to buy, with money created by Gillen and Jesse.
Gillen made "AC"s and "Q"s (the money). Jesse made "honor marks" which would lead them to strategically placed clues around the farm. They both made "open" and "closed" signs for the tables where they would display their wares.
Gillen made several weapons.This morning, they rushed to the farm to set up the clues, and their tables, before the Wilsons' arrival. Gillen was pulled away to have lots of pictures taken, by Angelina, for an article about he and his turkeys:Jesse munched on the whites of Bok Choi (handing me the greens) and read his book, his honor marks hidden under sticks and rocks, where they waited for the Wilson boys to get there.

And then, they came!
They loved the quests. After completing each one they came back and used their "AC"s and "Q"s to buy more, and to buy a weapon:Apparently, this expansion of the raiding game is going to continue every week, as long as the quest ideas and armour/weapon improvements keep coming (as well as the raiding customers, of course).

Whittling Brothers

What a good day. It was one of those meandering, never know where they're going to end up unschooling days that I felt privileged to witness, handing them food, drink and other supplies when asked, but mostly trying to stay out of their way. Maybe I'll get to adding in more details tomorrow. If not, this was a favorite bit - the two of them whittling together on the back deck, plotting a new game (which they then perfected for hours).

Fun with maps

I ordered a United States highway map last week. Its arrival on our table has prompted all kinds of realizations. The first was that I finally need reading glasses. Well, at least for this map. (I kind of like them. They make me feel wise.) It's been fun figuring out different possible routes for our trip to the northeast next month. Then there is the fantasizing about a future road trip to Montana; and the planning for next week's much anticipated short trip to hang out with unschooling friends at a state park, down south!

In addition, this map (as well as the road atlas and state maps that started to accumulate on the table) caused Jesse to pull out his old puzzle map. Tonight, after dinner, he asked us to hold this map and play a game of capital guessing with us. Turns out he's been looking at this map a lot lately. He knew most of them! Nicolas, hoping to do better in his world capital knowledge, then brought the world map off the wall. (I too have been humbled by this nine year old. Yesterday he beat me in Bananagrams.)The whole world in his hands:In awe of his Papa. : )

Food freedom - no longer as scary

(It seems to be my time for confessing/analyzing/rambling. I'll get back behind the lens soon. Go have a snack and visit a concise blogger while you can ;)

This morning, Jesse went to his first day of theater camp. He goes every year and loves it. A few hours later, I dropped Gillen off down the street at Charlie Elliott Nature Center, for five days and four nights of camp. He has been excitedly waiting for four years to be old enough to go to the overnight version of his nature camp. I'm sure he'll be fine. My only concern had been that he and Jesse would get sick before these camp weeks - they also have a week of cool day camps while staying at their aunt and uncle's home next week. This "concern" of mine brings me to a past fear it's time I confessed here - the my food issue; the big source of my uncalled for, soon to be dropped for real, worrying. Worrying was the step up from more active protecting. I used to spend too much energy protecting my children from what I saw as the dangers of "bad" food. I felt that bad food had contributed to my mother's death and to my having chronic fatigue and to every bad day I still had. I had learned from my mistakes and hoped I could spare them their own "mistakes". Pretty crazy. I think on some deep level I even hoped that I was protecting them from death.

Eventually, painstakingly, finally, I saw my belief system for what it was. I got real about the fact that this is their journey. Plus, they might just have inherited the better immune systems of others in their families. It sure seems that way. I had an uncle that lived for a crazy number of decades on pretty much nothing but alcohol and cigarettes. And, I started to trust that they might even find their own way to choices that were best for them. As with their educational freedom, these are their choices to make. I can only strew lots of options.

Gillen went to an overnight birthday party this past Saturday night. The hosting mother is infamous for the large stores of Little Debbies, chips, candy, soda and other packaged food she keeps on hand - mass quantities of it that she uses to show visitors her love. She is very generous with this love. For breakfast on Sunday, they had bacon, sausage, biscuits, sweet tea (my favorite), eggs and hot dogs. Gillen came home raving about the sausage, but nauseous.

That same day, Jesse and I spent the entire day at Six Flags with his friend Logan and Logan's mom as both boys' early birthday celebration. You aren't allowed to bring food or water into Six Flags so we bought the expensive food there, all day. We rode the Mind Bender, and had loads of other looping, swirling, bumping fun. Jesse announced that this was his favorite birthday celebration ever. Over the course of the day, Jesse ate a Johnny Rocket milk shake, a cheeseburger, onion rings, a coke and ice cream. Maybe it was the sheer quantity, but I believe it was more to do with the quality, that made him throw up later that night at home.

He and Gillen were both dragging yesterday, due to their exciting Saturdays. Without my bringing it up, they both requested lots of salad and vegetables. They didn't want dessert. Today, they are going to camp fully restored.

This all goes to confirm, yet again (I seem to need lots of confirmation on this topic) that it was the right choice to start letting them make their own food choices, completely, and let them learn to listen to their own bodies. Their organic farming father, their food knowledgeable mom and, of course, their nutritionist grandmother have contributed acres of unsolicited food facts to the playing field. Gillen watched King Corn with us, they've gone to organic farming conferences, to Slow Food events, and many meals have been seasoned with our feelings about industrial farming and our country's food policies.

I no longer make frightening faces when they choose food and drink that I wouldn't choose. I have also noticed that they are less drawn to the foods that we used to ban when they were little. I think they're losing their fear that it will be the last bit of blue dye or high fructose corn syrup that they'll ever see. They choose to eat so many vegetables and fruits and love all kinds of food.

I'm sure that it's not the end of the battle, this fight with my inner demons. But for now, my more trusting side seems to be taking over the helm.

TV or not TV

That is so often the question.

It was my question, when my kids were younger and I'd watched a few too many "Barney" episodes. I also read a book with lots of articulate information about what TV does to our brains. But very shortly after that, due to an article by Sandra Dodd in a homeschooling magazine, I found myself researching unschooling, reading constantly on the old Unschooling Discussion email list, and I was introduced to a radically different way to view television. It was talked about as being just one more resource in the unschooled child's diverse world of resources. Parents talked about what had been sparked in their children as a result of seeing some TV show - not brain dead zombie behavior but rather a journey of connections that started with the excitement they'd felt while seeing an animal or hearing a song or experiencing humor in a new way.

I decided to trust my kids. They weren't the kids from that anti-TV book's studies who used TV after hours of schooling as a means to check out. I watched shows with them and we often talked about what we saw, whether it be commercials (some of which we loved) or kids being rude to one another.

Over the past decade, I've watched my kids be inspired by what they've seen on TV. Jesse loves to recap a show in its entirety and then give commentary about why it was great, or ridiculous.

Plus, they watch about as much TV as I did growing up. Not so much. I was allowed very limited TV, so watched as much as possible, fighting with my brother (while my mother was at work) over whether we got to watch "The Brady Bunch" or "Hogan's Heroes". Because my kids can watch when they want, they don't have a sense of scarcity about it. There are days when it isn't even turned on (until Nicolas or I turn it on at night :).

I'm writing about this because of my recent relapse into the consideration of no TV. This was provoked by being in a peaceful, always filled with good music, TV-free environment in Montana and by the violent (inner) reaction I was starting to have to the Sponge Bob theme music; my kids' primary choice for what seemed like the past six months.

I included them in the discussion of whether we should take a TV-break (or Cartoon Network break). I proposed different scenarios, most of which they were surprisingly open to trying. We were discussing the possibility of going several months without, with lots of netflix and TV from the computer as an alternative, when suddenly, almost mid-discussion, my show entered the dialogue. Jesse mentioned that while I'd been in Montana, So You Think You Can Dance had restarted.

I'd forgotten.

So You Think You Can Dance?

Hmmm.

"Well, how about we just watch one episode of it and see how important it is to us?" I asked.

I watched the shows I'd missed (we love TiVo). They watched with me. Jesse started choreographing dances again in his room. Gillen asked about my old life as a dancer. We got passionately involved with the dancers' auditions. Jesse said that he wanted to try a hip-hop class. The biggest factor - we get break-dancing-in-the-living-room and dancing-on-the-couch intense joy from watching this show!

The decision is definitely to TV. Here's to hoping that our lives continue to be full and interesting as a result of all types of input and exploration, including TV.

Unusual day in the life...

I'm due a description of a typical day in our unschooling life. So I decided this morning that I would keep track of what we did today. It proved to be a challenging one for me to post - not the greatest example of unschooling, for any non-unschooling reader who doesn't know the bigger picture.

9 am - Both boys came out from their room. Gillen played Crusader on the computer.

After hanging out with me for a bit, cuddling and telling me about the rest of "Pirates of the Carribean - Dead Man's Chest" (I fell asleep in it last night) - Jesse made himself a bowl of granola. I sat with him while he ate and I got some very vivid descriptions of all of the "undeads" in the film. It seems Jesse has become less sensitive to scary movies. He loved this one.

Gillen made himself some eggs and I ate granola. Jesse went upstairs to work on his lego creations. I asked he and Gillen if they wanted me to read to them. I sometimes read while they do legos. They said yes. I read several chapters of "My Side of the Mountain" about a boy who runs away from home and lives in the wilderness alone, training a Peregrine Falcon to hunt for him. Jesse made a lego boat with a moving wheel in the back. We talked about paddle boats and steam ships and how they work. This ship did not run on steam, I was informed, but on wind. : ) We stopped reading several times to talk about things that interested us - how the boy's traps (from the book) might be engineered, whether trapping was humane, how to raise a bird, how much Jesse's dressed lego horse looked like the Greek horses he'd been talking about with Papa yesterday.

When they'd had enough reading, I made us a snack and checked my email. Gillen sat at our second computer, next to me, and started an online chat with me. I learned how to create a face that turns from sideways to upright (it actually moves!) on gmail chat.

Jesse brought his guitar upstairs and continued working on a song he's been writing called "Eternity". Gillen (this is not typical at all) decided that he wanted to work on "math"! He often does difficult addition and even multiplication at times, in his head. He wanted to try the math he knew that people in school did. So I taught him written multiplication. We'd looked at it before but it's been awhile. It was amazing to me that he got it so easily. He wanted more! We did division, using the fractions that he'd always used in life experiences like cooking to bridge the path into the written formula.

I am hoping that we get to build something soon as a family. I think it would be fun to have a small guest/teen house in our yard. That would be one way in which I would have imagined math coming up, just as it has when they have needed it to add up totals in their head at our farmer's market. But for whatever reason, he was wanting to see what this "math" thing (as it is used by those he knows in school) is about. He's used math in games, in cooking, at the market. We just hadn't often talked about it in this scholastic way before. Because he felt ready for it and curious, it was easy. I'll have to relearn some harder stuff now, like algebra, which I think can be really fun.

Jesse must have picked up the smell of "subjects" too as he brought out the Usborne History Encyclopedia, flipping through it (backwards mostly) for an hour and reading things as they seemed interesting, sometimes reading out loud to me. He said that his favorite parts were the descriptions of the Hebrews, of the Normans and of the Mesopotamians "because I knew nothing about them before this." I couldn't help thinking about how much exploring this book would have meant to me a few years ago (I worked for Usborne four years ago just so we could have lots of their books). Today, it was just one more interesting resource in our world. This morning, he had talked about the connection between the the Flying Dutchman boat in the "Pirates" movie last night and how he'd also seen it in a "Sponge Bob" episode and he wondered where else it might be. We ended up in a round-about way talking about Vikings. History comes up all the time, without the beautiful Usborne book (though we do now like it very much).

Gillen wanted to go to the farm to watch Nicolas use the chain-saw to cut up some fallen trees. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the sawing was over. Gillen fed his turkeys. I filmed a farm tutorial. Jesse tried a few times to make a mud ball but the mud was too wet. Gillen decided to stay at the farm and I went home with Jesse, who wanted me to help him make a lego video. We spent the rest of the afternoon making and editing this short video. At 5:30, I went to my zumba class.

It was strange to post about this day, once it had included such unusual "subject" matter. Yet another surprising day on our journey.

Amy Steinberg at the Opulent Possum

This weekend, we (including Nicolas!) went to the Lovejoys' in S.C. to be with them and other unschooling friends at an Amy Steinberg house concert. It was exactly where we needed to be - find "exactly" for yourself here. If you haven't yet heard her, check her out. Her CDs are great, and live she is even better.

Cameron and Logan were the sweet opening act:
There was great chemistry and joy with these two on stage. This is at the beginning of the night, when everyone was still sitting down, loving it all in a quiet, orderly fashion:As the sun descended, seats were pushed aside and all rose in dance! Under the Amy Steinberg spell:
Doesn't Gail look like a teenager? That woman has got the moves!For awhile, these three (my guys, and Silas) became the back-up singers:
For the most part, Gillen experienced Amy Steinberg from the land of ham and Jesse was truly taken by the music into his own dancing swirl.
When Amy praised him, he left his dancing place and pulled himself right back to reality : )But he managed to get back to the dance.

There were also Bananagrams, gardening talk, Vietnamese food, swimming...it was a good weekend.

"Yes"es and "No"s; more ramblin' on

Several mentors/teachers in my life have paved the way for me to say "yes" more. The book Jump Into Life, by Arnaud Desjardin was a big inspiration, as was Sandra Dodd.

When Gillen started taking guitar he asked if we could eat at the expensive deli next door to his class. We agreed on this indulgence every six weeks. Today was deli day. He chose Scoops, the ice cream/candy store we hadn't tried, instead. A year ago I would have muttered something about having lunch first or dyes, so the yes would have been tainted.

This was a clear, colorful, bunny and Easter-Pez filled yes. Jesse had orange sherbet with sour dots mixed within, Gillen had strawberry ice cream with gummi bears and I had double chocolate chip. We sat at a booth and watched the rain through the window and talked about what Gillen is going to be practicing next on his guitar - "Ode to Joy" (he reads it as "Odie" to Joy. I so don't want to correct him).

The retro decorations brought back memories of bakery windows at Easter that I'd looked through as a child.

The "no" of the day concerns a cat. Our home has attracted yet another cat.

I was feeling so happy that Fracas is settling into a life without my bedroom in it - you see, here, that she still gets her own quilt covered arm chair in the closed-off art room. Tuki using her dog door was icing on the cake (pale yellow buttercream icing on easter cookies - I've got pastel sugars on the brain now). Then we heard it - a mewing from under the deck. Gillen investigated and found an unfixed male cat with no collar and a broken leg.

The "no" to keeping this cat involved discussion of what he would cost (organic food for all the animals; lots of cats at the farm already), how hard it might be for Tuki to stop chasing him up trees (which happened today, a very tall tree, despite "Cloud's" broken leg), and then there's the still-to-come Papa point of view. It was a no to more cats in our life right now but I did say yes to being responsible. We'll take it to Animal Control or the Rescue League tomorrow (so I guess the yes is still a possibility until then:)

The main objective in our life really has become yes. Even (pretty outrageous, I know) to myself! A few years ago, when my brother emailed about a ten-day job in Australia that I could do to make us lots of money, I immediately said yes. Last weekend, when a long-ago best friend Sally Solomon tracked me down despite my name change and told me about an upcoming school reunion with people I haven't seen in thirty years, my family saw the excitement in my face (these friends from Park School were some really great people) and made sure that I said "Yes". It is in Brookline, Mass. I am going to Montana later that month to see my sister who will have just had her first baby! I could so easily think about this being way too much indulgence, too much time for me. But they made me do it - I said '"yes".

ARGH!

In this case, not the pirate sound, but the name for a semi-annual gathering of autodidactic learners in cabins at Roan Mountain, TN. The kids and I went for the first time this weekend. There were no speakers or much of a schedule and it was so relaxed. On the last night, Jesse declared, emphatically, that we need to go to every ARGH from now on. I think that would be swell. To think, I almost let some torrential rain keep me from making the drive. It was Jesse who convinced me that I must persevere. I like when they persuade me to jump outside of my comfort zone.

One of the highlights was having the blogger/author Patti Digh talk and read to us from her book, Life is a Verb - 37 Days - essays about the question of what she would do differently if she knew that she only had 37 days left to live. I bought the book. It is filled with amazing art and provocative,inspiring ideas. She too grew up a red head, in awe of her library and of Pippi Longstocking. For this, and so many more reasons, I was smitten. Here she is with (the also inspiring) Kelli:Mindy and Gail, just two of the many wise, generous unschooling women that I get so much out of seeing: It's also fun to see the ageless men:and non age-segregating kids (especially the teens):There was henna, beading, knitting, pool, table tennis, nerf gun battles, Bananagrams, Yu Gi Oh, football, In a Pickle, Catch Phrase, a pot luck...Here was the setting, as captured by Gillen on the last morning. He was on his way back to our cabin having generously agreed to venture out and retrieve my camera from another cabin - far, far away - where I had left it the night before. Both of my guys were so generously helpful, and so happy to be on this trip that I feel capable of traveling even further with them alone in the future. I will overcome any fear of fatigue. Argh! I am adventurous woman.

Just look at how humiliatingly foolhardy adventurous I can be. Jesse asked me to jump into the talent show with him at the very last second, and I did, attaching us together first like this - and then leading the patient talent show crowd in "chair yoga". (There's no one more encouraging or patient than an unschooling talent show audience).Thank you Laura and Ren for putting it all together.
Actually, in the picture, they are Ren and Laura. Both tall, beautiful, Converse-wearing , artistic, loving mamas, TN-dwelling and goofy, whatever order you put them in, I think that they are meant to create things together.