TRAVELING!!!
One of the things that I enjoy the most about unschooling is the flexibility we have to travel. In November, we were very generously offered the chance to stay at our friend's condo in Whistler for FREE!! Eli, Avery and Emily have been skiing quite a bit for the past 5 years and I taught Dante and Sophia to ski about 2 years ago. Nicole is still learning and wrestling with the ski boots, which are often uncomfortable, though she did manage to fit into Dante's and ski two days!).
Whistler is a very desirable (and nearby for us Washingtonians) destination. Eli (13) went to Whistler when he was 12 with his grandparents (just AFTER the Olympics), and he loved it! After this trip, he says he wants to live there (at least during the ski season).
So for Thanksgiving this year, we spent a week just steps from the Creekside Gondola at Whistler in British Colombia, Canada! It was totally awesome. Something for which we were all very thankful!
So much learning is always involved in traveling: Do we need passports? (adults yes, kids under 16 no) Where are we going? (north, south, another country?) How far away is it? How long is it going to take? (where do we stop for lunch - Vancouver Chinatown) What's the weather going to be like? (good snow coverage, raining, icy?) Do we need Canadian money or can we pay with US dollars? (oh cool - Canadian money is so much prettier!) How much does this gallon of organic milk cost in US dollars? (OMG - $9!!)
You get the picture.
LOTS of natural learning happens before, during, and after a trip like this - which is what I love about living this unschooling life. Obviously, anybody (including people who attend school) have such opportunities and also learn a lot about life through travel, but I do notice that their trips are relegated to weekends and holidays, whereas we have more flexibility (only limited by my work commitments at our cafe) to make traveling (near and far) a regular part of our lives (and we do).
An extra bonus for this trip was that Eli and Avery got to meet up with a Canadian family of unschoolers and ski with them for a day. (The day of the blizzard - which was fun and exciting!!) Eli met Gemma at Not Back to School Camp this past summer, and it turns out that her family is big into skiing as well, and had plans to ski at Whistler while we were there! Unfortunately, I missed meeting them as I didn't ski that day, but we look forward to skiing with them again sometime and have made a nice connection with another unschooling family.
I put together a slideshow of some of the pics from our trip. Maybe it will inspire you to want to go skiing at Whistler. If you do, let us know. Maybe we'll meet you there! We all definitely want to return!! (It's an easy day of travel for us here in Washington.)
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Happy Birthday, Emily!!
Today Emily turns 9 years old! Happy Birthday, Emily!
Emily was born at home in Clovis, CA during the morning of December 13, 2002.
Her birth was pretty quick and very sweet, without complications. She was born into the arms of me (her mom), her dad, the midwives and her brothers and grandparents. It was a very exciting day for all of us! What a blessing to welcome another beautiful being into the world!
Even though she was born in California, we have lived in Port Townsend, WA her entire life (we moved here when she was 2 months old). Many things have changed for our family over these past 9 years and we are all adjusting to a way of living that includes two separate households.
At 9, Emily is a beautiful, creative, fun-loving, active young girl. She is an amazingly creative person who enjoys all types of artistic endeavors, including painting, drawing, making things, sewing, singing and playing the violin. She enjoys nature classes and loved playing soccer this past fall. She is healthy and happy, and we all love her very much.
Here are some pictures from her birthday party that she had this past weekend with friends, most of whom live here at Rosewind Cohousing and some pictures of our awesome dinner that we all helped prepare tonight - deviled eggs, Chinese orange chicken, broccoli, rice - and for dessert Eli made cream puffs with chocolate ganache. They were divine!
Emily was born at home in Clovis, CA during the morning of December 13, 2002.
Her birth was pretty quick and very sweet, without complications. She was born into the arms of me (her mom), her dad, the midwives and her brothers and grandparents. It was a very exciting day for all of us! What a blessing to welcome another beautiful being into the world!
Even though she was born in California, we have lived in Port Townsend, WA her entire life (we moved here when she was 2 months old). Many things have changed for our family over these past 9 years and we are all adjusting to a way of living that includes two separate households.
At 9, Emily is a beautiful, creative, fun-loving, active young girl. She is an amazingly creative person who enjoys all types of artistic endeavors, including painting, drawing, making things, sewing, singing and playing the violin. She enjoys nature classes and loved playing soccer this past fall. She is healthy and happy, and we all love her very much.
Here are some pictures from her birthday party that she had this past weekend with friends, most of whom live here at Rosewind Cohousing and some pictures of our awesome dinner that we all helped prepare tonight - deviled eggs, Chinese orange chicken, broccoli, rice - and for dessert Eli made cream puffs with chocolate ganache. They were divine!
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Applesauce Business - AppleBlade
This morning Emily, Sophia, and their friends Tiger and Violet have been working on an applesauce business - something that emerged about an hour ago.
First they harvested the apples from a community apple tree here at Rosewind Cohousing - the community where we live. They came back with a HUGE amount of apples and proceeded to cut them up and put them in pots to cook.
They got their Rollerblades on and began taking orders. They wrote orders on the calendar, discussing who had called and when they will have to deliver the goods. Emily said she'd check the phone messages and Violet would check emails.
They were cleaning up some of the apples from the floor and I decided to help, so they said that I could be the boss. "But she doesn't have Rollerblades on?," says Violet. Emily says, "That's okay. Bosses don't really work much. They just pay the bills."
This whole game is very entertaining for me, as I sit at the computer actually paying bills and working on various projects. They are taking it very seriously. That is, they aren't just playing a game; they are really an applesauce company/restaurant. They are discussing taste-testing their product, taking and fulfilling orders, paying bills, recipes ("should we add cream?") and discussing whether they should just do deliveries or have people make reservations to come for tastings, etc.
Now they are pretending to take calls and special orders. They are taking reservations, returning calls to check on orders, and discussing what to do since there are only 2 aprons and 4 girls.
From what I can tell, they have a pretty good understanding of what goes on in a business. And if someone suggests something that doesn't make sense in the "game", they discuss and decide what to do. Oh, now they are catering children's birthday parties, too! Their business is expanding already!
What a fun way to spend the morning!
First they harvested the apples from a community apple tree here at Rosewind Cohousing - the community where we live. They came back with a HUGE amount of apples and proceeded to cut them up and put them in pots to cook.
They got their Rollerblades on and began taking orders. They wrote orders on the calendar, discussing who had called and when they will have to deliver the goods. Emily said she'd check the phone messages and Violet would check emails.
They were cleaning up some of the apples from the floor and I decided to help, so they said that I could be the boss. "But she doesn't have Rollerblades on?," says Violet. Emily says, "That's okay. Bosses don't really work much. They just pay the bills."
This whole game is very entertaining for me, as I sit at the computer actually paying bills and working on various projects. They are taking it very seriously. That is, they aren't just playing a game; they are really an applesauce company/restaurant. They are discussing taste-testing their product, taking and fulfilling orders, paying bills, recipes ("should we add cream?") and discussing whether they should just do deliveries or have people make reservations to come for tastings, etc.
Now they are pretending to take calls and special orders. They are taking reservations, returning calls to check on orders, and discussing what to do since there are only 2 aprons and 4 girls.
From what I can tell, they have a pretty good understanding of what goes on in a business. And if someone suggests something that doesn't make sense in the "game", they discuss and decide what to do. Oh, now they are catering children's birthday parties, too! Their business is expanding already!
What a fun way to spend the morning!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Immerse Yourself
What I have noticed about our children is that when they find something they are interested in, they like to immerse themselves in it. Do you do that? I do. Maybe we all do, when we get the chance.
When I was learning how to do website design, I spent hours learning HTML code. My mom often questioned why I was spending so much time on something that wasn't bringing in money. (I was about 35 at the time and worked at home on my computer doing medical transcribing). Funny thing is that later I landed two great-paying jobs because of my computer/web skills, though that hadn't been my reason for spending so many hours learning about website design. I was learning because I liked it, because that is what I chose to do at the time. Time flew by as I learned how to change colors and fonts, add images, make tables, and fool around with various designs.
Lately our children have been immersing themselves in video games (Halo and Minecraft), movies/TV shows (X-Men and Rugrats), soccer (Dante played on 3 different teams this season!), parkour skills (Eli and Avery) and rollerblading (Emily and Sophia). Of course, they still partake of their regularly scheduled events, like violin and guitar lessons, horseback riding, and nature classes, but during the day, when they have nothing else scheduled, they spend hours immersing themselves in these activities.
And what I love about our unschooling life, is that they can.
There is no bell ringing every 50 minutes to move to the next subject or the next building, a new teacher, or whatever. They have no artificially imposed interruptions to their own rhythms. I love that they have the time to immerse themselves and get in the flow that comes from being so engaged in learning/doing something so meaningful (to them).
I also love that they can do it just because they want to, and not with the intention of later having to do something with it - pass a test, get a job, build a career...
Sometimes people worry about children (and adults) being addicted to TV or video games or obsessed with horses or Barbie dolls (or whatever - you fill in the blank), but I see that our children immerse themselves into a variety of activities, and when they have their fill, they move on. Sometimes they move on after a short immersion experience (a day or two), and sometimes their interests become passions, and they continue for years.
When Eli (now 13) was 6 and Avery (now 11) was 4 they were totally into BMX racing. We drove 1 hour (each-way) to Port Angeles two or three times per week so they could practice and race. We traveled throughout Washington, Colorado, New Mexcio and California to race. They amassed a HUGE amount of trophies and Eli won the Washington State Championship race when he was 10. He was ranked 3rd overall in the state for that year. Avery won many BIG races and was 7th in the state for his age (8 at the time) that same year. After about 4 years of pretty intense BMX racing seasons, and after having both become Experts (winning over 35 races to pass through beginner and intermediate designations. Eli wants me to tell you that he won way more than 35 races.), they decided to move on to other interests (mountain biking, skiing, soccer). They loved BMX racing while they did it, and then they were ready to try something new.
I love immersing myself in my own interests (right now it is Words with Friends on Facebook pretty much every night until midnight!) and I most certainly love being witness to the variety of experiences the children decide to pursue, whether it is for a few hours, a few days, a few years or their lifetime!
Here is a very short video of Emily and some friends rollerblading around the kitchen/living room. They have been doing this daily for hours. Emily is in the middle. Eli is at the computer. He's their DJ.
Here is a slideshow that shows the kids involved in various activities that were really important to them during the past couple of years. They are older now: Eli (13), Avery (11), Sophia (10), Dante (9) and Emily (8). Some of these things they still do, and others are just sweet memories. Activities include: cake decorating, Lego animation, building with Lego blocks, soccer, skiing, BMX racing, trampoline, dressing up, swords, playing at the beach, and welding.
ADDED BONUS: While Eli and I were making this slideshow, we discovered a new musician Chris Joss, whose song "I Want Freedom" plays during the slideshow. Great beats on his site - check him out!
When I was learning how to do website design, I spent hours learning HTML code. My mom often questioned why I was spending so much time on something that wasn't bringing in money. (I was about 35 at the time and worked at home on my computer doing medical transcribing). Funny thing is that later I landed two great-paying jobs because of my computer/web skills, though that hadn't been my reason for spending so many hours learning about website design. I was learning because I liked it, because that is what I chose to do at the time. Time flew by as I learned how to change colors and fonts, add images, make tables, and fool around with various designs.
Lately our children have been immersing themselves in video games (Halo and Minecraft), movies/TV shows (X-Men and Rugrats), soccer (Dante played on 3 different teams this season!), parkour skills (Eli and Avery) and rollerblading (Emily and Sophia). Of course, they still partake of their regularly scheduled events, like violin and guitar lessons, horseback riding, and nature classes, but during the day, when they have nothing else scheduled, they spend hours immersing themselves in these activities.
And what I love about our unschooling life, is that they can.
There is no bell ringing every 50 minutes to move to the next subject or the next building, a new teacher, or whatever. They have no artificially imposed interruptions to their own rhythms. I love that they have the time to immerse themselves and get in the flow that comes from being so engaged in learning/doing something so meaningful (to them).
I also love that they can do it just because they want to, and not with the intention of later having to do something with it - pass a test, get a job, build a career...
Sometimes people worry about children (and adults) being addicted to TV or video games or obsessed with horses or Barbie dolls (or whatever - you fill in the blank), but I see that our children immerse themselves into a variety of activities, and when they have their fill, they move on. Sometimes they move on after a short immersion experience (a day or two), and sometimes their interests become passions, and they continue for years.
When Eli (now 13) was 6 and Avery (now 11) was 4 they were totally into BMX racing. We drove 1 hour (each-way) to Port Angeles two or three times per week so they could practice and race. We traveled throughout Washington, Colorado, New Mexcio and California to race. They amassed a HUGE amount of trophies and Eli won the Washington State Championship race when he was 10. He was ranked 3rd overall in the state for that year. Avery won many BIG races and was 7th in the state for his age (8 at the time) that same year. After about 4 years of pretty intense BMX racing seasons, and after having both become Experts (winning over 35 races to pass through beginner and intermediate designations. Eli wants me to tell you that he won way more than 35 races.), they decided to move on to other interests (mountain biking, skiing, soccer). They loved BMX racing while they did it, and then they were ready to try something new.
I love immersing myself in my own interests (right now it is Words with Friends on Facebook pretty much every night until midnight!) and I most certainly love being witness to the variety of experiences the children decide to pursue, whether it is for a few hours, a few days, a few years or their lifetime!
Here is a very short video of Emily and some friends rollerblading around the kitchen/living room. They have been doing this daily for hours. Emily is in the middle. Eli is at the computer. He's their DJ.
Here is a slideshow that shows the kids involved in various activities that were really important to them during the past couple of years. They are older now: Eli (13), Avery (11), Sophia (10), Dante (9) and Emily (8). Some of these things they still do, and others are just sweet memories. Activities include: cake decorating, Lego animation, building with Lego blocks, soccer, skiing, BMX racing, trampoline, dressing up, swords, playing at the beach, and welding.
ADDED BONUS: While Eli and I were making this slideshow, we discovered a new musician Chris Joss, whose song "I Want Freedom" plays during the slideshow. Great beats on his site - check him out!
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Living (and Learning) as an Alternative to Educational Reform
Before I had children, I worked for 5 years as a bilingual elementary school teacher in Fresno, California. Both my maternal grandmother and mother were elementary school teachers, 20 and 40 years respectively. I have heard a lot about educational reform over the years, and I am still hearing it, pretty much daily. It is all over the internet, in the news, on ballots, and on people's minds.
There is some good information out there to help people understand how our brains work and therefore what types of experiences really promote learning - and it is definitely NOT what is still happening in many schools these days.
Here is an example of such information that I came across today via some postings on Facebook - an animated video entitled Born to Learn.
Unfortunately, even with such clear information, people are stuck in still trying to reform schools and the "educational system". Why must we continue to separate learning from life, almost as if they had nothing to do with each other? Living is learning, and education doesn't "prepare" you for life because you are already living life.
At this time in human evolution we don't know what the future will hold, so it is important to encourage and support the creativity, curiosity and intense internal drive to make meaning of the world around them that children naturally have - and NOT KILL IT.
You probably know first hand what killing it feels like and looks like in your own life (and luckily if you are reading this blog you regained it somehow, probably by having children of your own). Some of what killed it for me included being tested, compared to others, kept indoors, and held at a certain grade level working on curriculum that I found tedious and boring, and frankly, too easy, not to mention having to spend hours each day with teachers who really didn't care what I wanted to learn or what might be happening to me because of such indifference and inability to deal with individual student concerns, passions and interests.
With so many people talking about reforming schools and the problems of our educational system, I just sit here in gratitude to John Holt and the many other pioneering homeschoolers and unschoolers who have shown us another way. They didn't need any research scientists to tell them about brain development, they just looked at what works for humans and did that, namely connection to each other, freedom, respect, love, fun, passion, play, exploration, time and well, simply put, life being lived.
I hope more people stop worrying about test scores and such and get back to living and learning, and realize that this is all there is.
Play, explore, discover, create, live, learn, grow, enjoy - repeat until you die - and then go somewhere else and do it all over again - perhaps.
Some photos of us living and learning over the past two years.
Emily and Sophia looking at books at our local library.
Eli had an interest in cake decorating for several years, and so my mom took them to a place in Fresno, CA (where she lives) so he and Avery could learn how to decorate with fondant.
The kids love to sleep outside. They know how to make fire by friction safely and how to stay warm outside, even in the cold weather of Washington.
Emily and Sophia spend most of their days creating. Here they are working on some sewing projects.
Shelter building on the beach is always a favorite way to pass a few hours. Sometimes they create entire villages.
Avery found a turtle on a trip to Victoria, B.C. with his nature class. The nature class is made up of about 12 homeschoolers who meet once per week for 4 to 5 hours with two local nature mentors. He loves it!
There is some good information out there to help people understand how our brains work and therefore what types of experiences really promote learning - and it is definitely NOT what is still happening in many schools these days.
Here is an example of such information that I came across today via some postings on Facebook - an animated video entitled Born to Learn.
Unfortunately, even with such clear information, people are stuck in still trying to reform schools and the "educational system". Why must we continue to separate learning from life, almost as if they had nothing to do with each other? Living is learning, and education doesn't "prepare" you for life because you are already living life.
At this time in human evolution we don't know what the future will hold, so it is important to encourage and support the creativity, curiosity and intense internal drive to make meaning of the world around them that children naturally have - and NOT KILL IT.
You probably know first hand what killing it feels like and looks like in your own life (and luckily if you are reading this blog you regained it somehow, probably by having children of your own). Some of what killed it for me included being tested, compared to others, kept indoors, and held at a certain grade level working on curriculum that I found tedious and boring, and frankly, too easy, not to mention having to spend hours each day with teachers who really didn't care what I wanted to learn or what might be happening to me because of such indifference and inability to deal with individual student concerns, passions and interests.
With so many people talking about reforming schools and the problems of our educational system, I just sit here in gratitude to John Holt and the many other pioneering homeschoolers and unschoolers who have shown us another way. They didn't need any research scientists to tell them about brain development, they just looked at what works for humans and did that, namely connection to each other, freedom, respect, love, fun, passion, play, exploration, time and well, simply put, life being lived.
I hope more people stop worrying about test scores and such and get back to living and learning, and realize that this is all there is.
Play, explore, discover, create, live, learn, grow, enjoy - repeat until you die - and then go somewhere else and do it all over again - perhaps.
Some photos of us living and learning over the past two years.
Emily and Sophia looking at books at our local library.
Eli had an interest in cake decorating for several years, and so my mom took them to a place in Fresno, CA (where she lives) so he and Avery could learn how to decorate with fondant.
The kids love to sleep outside. They know how to make fire by friction safely and how to stay warm outside, even in the cold weather of Washington.
Emily and Sophia spend most of their days creating. Here they are working on some sewing projects.
Shelter building on the beach is always a favorite way to pass a few hours. Sometimes they create entire villages.
Avery found a turtle on a trip to Victoria, B.C. with his nature class. The nature class is made up of about 12 homeschoolers who meet once per week for 4 to 5 hours with two local nature mentors. He loves it!
Friday, October 21, 2011
Back to Blogging
Okay, so I have been away from the blogosphere for a while, and now I am back.
My three children (now 13, 11 and 8) have been unschooled their entire lives. Most recently we have embraced the "radical unschooling" approach, which to me means that as a parent I trust my children's interests and preferences in all areas of life and view the act of living as an act of learning. That is, we are learning all the time, whether we are reading, playing, using media, being outside, inside, talking, listening, and on and on. This means we no longer limit media or control their food choices, which is something we had done in the past.
I recently got back into the Unschooling Circles: chatting with Dayna Martin on FB, joining Sandra Dodd's Always Learning Yahoo Group, and reading Sandra's Big Book of Unschooling, and registering for our second Life Is Good Conference in Vancouver, WA. All of this was getting my blogging juices flowing, but it wasn't until I saw this segment on Unschooling on the Today Show that I decided to blog once again about our experiences as an unschooling family. (I blogged about our unschooling life years ago, but that blog was deleted.)
The commentary on this segment showed such a general lack of understanding about what living and learning is all about that I decided I wanted to share our unschooling experiences with others so that people who are open-minded and interested have examples of people living and learning and loving life. There are many other blogs where families share their unschooling lives and I appreciate so many of them. I hope that this blog will be a welcome addition to the Unschooling Blogs because unschooling certainly is a viable parenting and educational option for many, and people need to know that it exists - and that it works (whatever that means).
So, here we go - the life of a regular unschooling family. Well, maybe not so "regular", but you'll read more about that as this project moves along.
It's two healthy unschooling boys - Eli (13) and Avery (11).
My three children (now 13, 11 and 8) have been unschooled their entire lives. Most recently we have embraced the "radical unschooling" approach, which to me means that as a parent I trust my children's interests and preferences in all areas of life and view the act of living as an act of learning. That is, we are learning all the time, whether we are reading, playing, using media, being outside, inside, talking, listening, and on and on. This means we no longer limit media or control their food choices, which is something we had done in the past.
I recently got back into the Unschooling Circles: chatting with Dayna Martin on FB, joining Sandra Dodd's Always Learning Yahoo Group, and reading Sandra's Big Book of Unschooling, and registering for our second Life Is Good Conference in Vancouver, WA. All of this was getting my blogging juices flowing, but it wasn't until I saw this segment on Unschooling on the Today Show that I decided to blog once again about our experiences as an unschooling family. (I blogged about our unschooling life years ago, but that blog was deleted.)
The commentary on this segment showed such a general lack of understanding about what living and learning is all about that I decided I wanted to share our unschooling experiences with others so that people who are open-minded and interested have examples of people living and learning and loving life. There are many other blogs where families share their unschooling lives and I appreciate so many of them. I hope that this blog will be a welcome addition to the Unschooling Blogs because unschooling certainly is a viable parenting and educational option for many, and people need to know that it exists - and that it works (whatever that means).
So, here we go - the life of a regular unschooling family. Well, maybe not so "regular", but you'll read more about that as this project moves along.
It's two healthy unschooling boys - Eli (13) and Avery (11).
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