Monthly Archives: September 2014

books, unschooling

books we’ve read and loved and books I hope to read

books we’ve read (and loved!) with the kids:

(in no way comprehensive)

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

George’s Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl

The Ranger’s Apprentice series, books 1-3  by John Flanagan (reading #4 now)

James And The Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia Wrede

Searching for Dragons by Patricia Wrede

The Guardians of Childhood series by William Joyce

The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz

The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins

Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

Juniper by Monica Furlong

Wise Child by Monica Furlong

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (reading now)

picture books:

Happy Pig Day by Mo Willems (& anything else by him)

Lost And Found by Oliver Jeffers (& anything else by him)

The Rainbow Goblins by Ul De Rico

Possum Magic by Mem Fox (& anything else by her)

Tico And The Golden Wings by Leo Lionni

The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

Dinosaur Kisses by David Ezra Stein

Leaves by David Ezra Stein

When Owen’s Mom Breathed Fire by Pija Lindenbaum

Fox in Socks by Dr. Suess (& anything else by him)

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett

books I hope to read with the kids:

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Cotton In My Sack by Lois Lenski

Prairie Schoolhouse by Lois Lenski

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

the Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper

The Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander

A Wrinkle In Time series by Madeleine L’engle

Holes by Louis Sachar

Naya Nuki: Shoshoni Girl Who Ran by Kenneth Thomasma

The Princess Bride by William Golding

anything by Anne McCaffrey

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

 

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I’ll add to these lists as we read and discover or remember more books we’d like to explore!

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unschooling

Wednesday

There was ninja character play with legos.  “Wheeeeoooooo, wheeeeeoooooo, ninja alarm!”  “And then Kai sat here to control his spaceship.”  “But he can’t see if he sits there!”  “Well, but it’s much easier to control it if he’s sitting here.”  “Mmmhmm.”

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We spent some more time on the puppy puzzle.  Then we played a game where I draw something and make a speech bubble with an unfinished statement and the kids fill it in.  Today it was a sasquatch speaking to us.  The kids like it plus I get to draw!

Then the kids built with legos while I read a few chapters of Juniper.

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Lilah looked through a National Geographic magazine, pored over the pictures.

Lilah and I played a round of Rat-A-Tat Cat and then all three of us played the next one.

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Next we were off to get a few new fall clothes for the kids and made a nice long stop to play in the fountains.

We came home and ate and then headed off to a co-ed whole family Spiral Scouts meeting to see what that’s like and if we’d like to join.  It was fun and good to be around a bunch of kids of varied ages including a few friends we know from school last year.  We enjoyed it and we’ll definitely be going again.

 

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unschooling

Tuesday

The kids watched the storm outside this morning, with lots of lightning and thunder.

After breakfast they played with tangram blocks. They are some of my favorite things to while away a morning with.

So I played too! I made a self-portrait and then got to share that vocabulary concept with the kids when Lilah asked “What is a self-portrait?”

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They thought it was silly and they played with what I’d made, making the mouth open and giving it a tongue.

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The car tracks were brought out and built.IMG_0836

We had a three-way game of Magic the Gathering.

Someone unearthed an old fortune teller, so then we worked at making some new origami fortune tellers with new fortunes. “You get a diamond.” “You get a gem.” “You get to go to work.”  (Notice the positive language there?!)  “You find a gigantic seed.” “You have to wear your pajamas all day.”  It was fun to see what they came up with!

After lunch we headed to the planetarium where we played with perpetual motion displays, played with their huge new infrared monitor, looked at cloud forming, played with static electricity and a display showing how magnetism effects orbits.

We came home and watched a fascinating video of bowling balls moving in phase.

There was computer play.  And then gymnastics for Lilah and I and Civilization for Gavin and Dad.

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After dinner we read a handful of Gwendolyn Brooks poems.

to the Diaspora

you did not know you were Afrika

When you set out for Afrika
you did not know you were going.
Because
you did not know you were Afrika.
You did not know the Black continent
that had to be reached
was you.

I could not have told you then that some sun
would come,
somewhere over the road,
would come evoking the diamonds
of you, the Black continent–
somewhere over the road.
You would not have believed my mouth.

When I told you, meeting you somewhere close
to the heat and youth of the road,
liking my loyalty, liking belief,
you smiled and you thanked me but very little believed me.

Here is some sun. Some.
Now off into the places rough to reach.
Though dry, though drowsy, all unwillingly a-wobble,
into the dissonant and dangerous crescendo.
Your work, that was done, to be done to be done to be done.
Gwendolyn Brooks

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Uncategorized, unschooling

Monday

Gavin started off with some Chima online while Lilah slept in a bit.

Then they watched They Might Be Giants Here Come the ABCs together.

There was lego play and organizing and other building toys.

We puzzled.

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After eating lunch, I read the last three chapters of Pippi Longstocking to the kids.  Gavin remarked at then end that he does not want to be a pirate when he grows up.  I’m a little concerned.  Wink.

Then it was time to go pick up Lilah’s friend from school.  They played a bit on the playground and then we came home and played school.  We walked to our neighborhood park and played there.  There was tag and swings and toss the stuffed dog while swinging.

We came home and built with magnetic toys and played hide and seek with stuffies.

After we said goodbye to friends, we went out in the garden and picked cherry tomatoes and tomatillos and checked progress of our pumpkins, and fleet of butternut squash.  They are huge plants!  I’d never grown them before and they are taking over our garden plot!

We walked to the local elementary after dinner to play soccer and enjoy the playground before bed.

 

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unschooling

the Learning we are working on most

Since we’ve started unschooling, I’d say that although we’ve done lots of science, math, art, literacy learning, using our bodies, the majority of what we’re tackling right now is relationships.  By relationships I mean the whole spectrum of feeling and how we recognize and act on those feelings and how that affects our selves and others throughout the day.

The way kids are managed in school, where the only choice they have is to do what’s expected or to “disobey” leaves little room for emotional learning, for self-regulating awareness and skills, for conflict resolution, within self and with others.  Additionally, when kids are in school they spend much less time with their siblings and parents.

We have opportunities all day for this now, where many opportunities were just boxed up, shelved and never opened while the kids were in school.  If the kids watch shows for 3 hours, they feel yucky afterward.   Then they sometimes take those yucky feelings out in conflicts with others.   This applies to me too!  If there’s a problem, it’s all the other persons fault.  They were the one who [insert complaint here].  On top of the multitude of opportunities we now have with one another learning at home, we also have more need to resolve them because we all live together and are spending a whole lot of time together!

I’m trying to demonstrate and share in conversations with the kids that it’s important to ask yourself, especially when upset, am I helping?  Am I making things better, more the way I want them to be by my actions and words?  It’s so hard to let go of the anger, the feelings of being wronged, misunderstood, of the yucky inside and instead try to help but it’s the only way to move forward, so it’s important.

Today the kids had a communication breakdown that left both of them upset.  I went over to them to try to help, while a bit upset myself that both kids were hurt and angry, and after I’d finished talking about how we can all do better to be kind and give others space, the kids told me that I’d upset them by the way I’d been talking.  I acknowledged that I raised my voice a bit, apologized and then reminded them that often when we realize we’ve hurt someone or contributed to a problem, it hurts.  It feels uncomfortable.  That’s an important tool to help us make different choices later.  Often the conflicts in our house come from a need for loving connection that’s not being met.  Usually when we have conflict, what we really need is some meaningful, loving time together, really being aware of the other person.  I am working to be more aware of this and to find ways to help us all to recognize this and ask for what we really need from each other.

I’m working on how to talk with the kids and not to them when there’s a problem.  It’s harder when I am upset!  But just as I expect them to try to help, that’s what I expect of myself too.

I expect it will take a long time to normalize in these areas and that we will continue to work on them throughout our lives.  I also recognize that there needs to be space for these kind of things to bubble up for progress to happen.  I’m certainly still working on all this and will be for as long as I’m alive.

It took me years and a lot of work and motivation to get to a place where I can be angry, realize I’m angry and make decisions that (most of the time) are not just anger fueled, but are made in order to create the solution I want, whether that’s understanding, comfort, being heard…  I hope to be able to share what I’ve learned with both my kids.

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unschooling

Friday

They began with Pokemon and My Little Pony watching.

Then we made double chocolate muffins together.  At the end they put the chocolate chips on top.  “Mama, I don’t have enough.”  “Well, if you have two muffins that each have two on top and you want three on top, then how many more chips do you need?”  “Two!”

There was lego and pony play.

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After lunch we headed up to Storm Mountain where we love to hike up to the stream and then climb up and down the rocks in the stream.  On the drive up, Lilah noticed a truck blowing exhaust out of a pipe on the top. “Look, that truck keeps doing that.  Yuck!”  Which led to a conversation about pollution, what pollutes and what doesn’t.  Gavin remarks, “If people want to see the North Pole when it’s all melted they’ll have to build a platform for people.”  Lilah says that to build it without polluting more, they would have to use divers instead of machines.

As we are hiking up the trail, we hear some birds.  Gavin asks, “Mama, is every sound in music a note?”  I try my best to respond and give him a few ideas in answer: Every musical tone is a note.  There are 8 notes and then they repeat.  They are called A through G and that the whole group is called an octave.  And, that everything in a piece of music can be written and read.  “Maybe we can learn how to read music?”  We continue and observe what’s around us.  A grasshopper jumps on my ankle and the kids are fascinated.

They found a nice flat slanted boulder to slide rocks down into the pool below.  They had races and decided big ones moved faster and made larger splashes.  We looked for frogs, but didn’t see any.  We did spot a bird taking a bath in the stream and bobbing up and down.  Lilah called it the bouncing bird.  It was fun to watch it as we moved along behind it.  We kept our eyes out for stinging nettle (We are learning to recognize more plants in our area and that and poison oak are what we started with) and found some beautiful maple leaves to bring home and press.  The leaves are beginning to turn!  Gorgeous!  We watched the clouds swim across the sky and found a new trail down to the car.

A stop at the store and then we came home to dinner with Daddy.  A wonderful day.

 

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unschooling

Thursday

Gavin watched some Pokemon while Lilah slept in.

We got some balloons at the dentist’s office so they tried tying things to the strings and seeing what would weigh down a balloon.  Large legos do, as well as toy ponies.  Then there was face drawing on the balloons, and looking through them to see the world in different colors.

Lilah and I pulled up a few carrots in our garden.

A last thank you letter was written, with fancy lettering.  If you wonder why it takes so long to finish up thank you letters, that’s because Gavin has left school with an ongoing anxiety and upset triggered by writing or even talking about writing.  There was what I feel was too much pressure too early on him and now he has little confidence and rarely can find any sense of achievement or enjoyment in writing.  It’s something I am hoping can change in a more patient environment.  I wish that he’d been left to his own timeline and been encouraged to find ways of enjoying it.  Now we have an opportunity to find ways for him to build confidence and enjoyment at home.

Every time he’s asked to write he asks for help from me, no matter if it’s actually challenging or not (I always help him and sit with him to support him) he says he feels scared about doing it wrong.  Today, he enjoyed making fancy lettering, though he still felt anxious and began to panic several times.  I’m calling it a small victory.

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Then there was lunch and then we all agreed on a plan to go to the Museum of Natural Curiosity.  The kids read library books for the half hour drive.  When we arrived, we felt very lucky when we discovered there weren’t very many people there.  We spent a lot of time climbing in the rainforest area.  Lilah felt safe enough to try the spider climb today since it was relatively empty.  She really enjoyed it.  I went in with her and Gavin for a few minutes.  It’s the kind of thing I could have spent a whole day in as a kid.

We went into the water works area and experimented there with water pipes, wind power and earthquake resistant building.

Then we explored Kidopolis, painting with tempera and bubbles, making floating heads in the Magic Shoppe, pretending to be employees and customers at the bank, and playing with stop-motion animation, making their own short films.

We came home, ate together and then off for an evening walk.

It was a very good day.

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unschooling

Wednesday

They started off playing coolmathgames.com (Duck Life, for those of you in the know).  Then we watched Pokemon and Pingu.

Then there was lego play and organizing, and a letter to grandparents written.

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We pulled out the marimba, steel drum and our other drum and played scales, Oh Suzannah and experimented.  “What does it sound like when you drop a lego person in the drum?”  “…on the marimba?”  “He’s playing music!”  “I like to just try different things!”

There was puzzling on the puppy puzzle we’re in the middle of.

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We watched John Oliver And Cookie monster, On The News Beat

and checked out An Icy Solution To The Mystery Of The Slithering Stones, an article about the moving boulders in “The Racetrack” which I visited as a kid.

An Icy Solution To The Mystery Of The Slithering Stones

There was some balance beam play.

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They played a game of Magic The Gathering;  a practice round, because Lilah is still learning how to play on her own.

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Lilah and I went to pick up a friend from school and played on the playground together.  We came home and read Elephant and Piggie books and played with legos and hexbugs and stuffed animals with Lilah’s friend.  Oh, and there was some hula hooping.

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All of it was wonderful.

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unschooling

Tuesday

They played on the computer at coolmathgames.com, helping each other when they got stuck.

Breakfast and request for me to read more Juniper by Monica Furlong.  We only began yesterday and are halfway through because they keep asking for more.  It’s a wonderful story and they are fascinated.

They built spaceships for their lego characters and then animals with magformers.  “I need a tongue!  A triangle piece!”

There was some more letter writing to friends.

We cut open the celery stalks that we put in water and red food coloring over the weekend and checked out the red xylem inside.  The color went all the way up the stalks and into the leaves!  They really enjoyed cutting it and checking out the inside and comparing our dyed and undyed celery.

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We mailed letters at the post office and learned what a parcel is.  We talked about where post offices are in our city.

Back at home, we had lunch and lego play.  They made geysers today, thinking of our recent trip to Yellowstone and recalling geyser names they’d seen there for their creations.  Then they watched The Lego Movie while I did a bit of weeding.

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Afterward, more lego building and reading Beautiful Lego by Mike Doyle.

 


Then, we are off to the library where choose books to bring home.  Then Gavin reads aloud while we drive to pick up our CSA share and back home.  And more reading of new library books and a chapter of Juniper.

It was a wonderful day together.

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