unschooling

Kanab: animals & wildnerness

We’re just home from Kanab, Utah where we went to volunteer at Best Friends Animal Society’s Sanctuary. We went early so we could spend the weekend visiting a few of the beautiful areas nearby with Chris.

On our drive we listened to the last chapters of The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and on the way home we began Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville.

We stopped at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes the first evening and explored. It was beautiful, though my color senses would classify the sand color as orange, not pink. Maybe right at sunrise or sunset the dunes would look pink. We saw animal tracks and wind patterns and sunk our feet into the dunes, slowly climbing to the top of the tallest dune we could find and then ran and slid down the steep sides.

The next day we went to Zion National Park and made our way up Many Pools trail where thanks to lots of snow and rain there were many, many pools.

We spotted lizards and birds, chipmunks and frogs, tadpoles and eggs in the upper pools which was so much fun! We did a little research at home and think the frogs are Canyon Tree Frogs. There was lots of paintbrush in bloom and a few bushes with flowers the bees were enjoying.

We saw tracks of rabbits, lizards, and deer or possibly great horned sheep. There was lots of climbing rocks and playing with sand. It’s a beautiful place and I want to go spend more days there soon.

On Monday & Tuesday, Chris worked while the kids and I headed to Best Friends Sanctuary. We cleaned rabbit houses and filled their water bowls and said hello to any inquisitive rabbits on Monday morning. Gavin watered grass outside for the rabbits to play on and Lilah and I refilled the outdoor areas hay supplies. We each held a rabbit for a few minutes too.

After lunch we went to one of the cat houses, for older and special needs cats. There were forty to sixty cats in each house, split into four rooms of 10-12 each, every room with an indoor area and huge outdoor area. We visited all the cats, petting, feeding, grooming, lots of playing with and talking with them. Each one has a story and unique personality. Gavin particularly enjoyed playing with the cats with toys. We fed one bunch of older cats baby food which they loved. One of the cats jumped on my shoulder and stayed there, purring in my ear for quite a while. We took some cats for walks in cat strollers and Lilah decided we need one at home right away!

Tuesday we visited the parrot area, cleaned up the cockatiel room, scrubbing windows, tables and cages clean and putting fresh newspaper out, then scraping and sweeping the floor. The birds were interested in what we were doing and even flew down on the floor to check out the sweeping process.

We also said hello to the parrots, macaws and cockatoos there and heard about how they care for them from a caretaker.

One of the wildlife caretakers took us on a walk to visit all the wild animals who are permanently living on the grounds and showed us a barn owl’s warning dance and turkey mating dance tracks in the sand. It was fun to see the animals there and even more exciting to hear about the wild animals in the clinic who they are caring for and hoping to release back into the wild when they are ready: a baby hummingbird, four baby cottontails, a pygmy owl, a screech owl. Most of the animals permanently at the sanctuary were there due to human interference; either wild animals as pets gone wrong or car accidents.

In the afternoon we headed to a different cat building and met more cats, mainly healthy cats in this one. Lilah made friends with a shy tortie while Gavin played with many cats very excited to enjoy toys to chase and jump at. I visited with some of the shyer ones and petted any who were interested. There was a beautiful cat who jumped on my lap and stayed there for the next 45 minutes until I had to go. Lilah asked about a kitty who wobbled all over the place and we learned she has a neurological condition that makes her balance off.

It was an amazing experience and we are already planning to go back! It was fun and interesting and the kids were able to help readily and didn’t complain or bystand at all (which I’d been a little worried about, having no first-hand experience with what tasks we might be given.) It made a big impression on all of us and I felt that we were making a difference for the animals and the caretakers both. One of the cat caretakers told me that they are often so busy taking care of all of the animals immediate needs; food, water, cleaning, medications, etc. that they don’t get much time to interact otherwise, but that volunteers doing just that makes the cats more adoptable by increasing and extending their comfort and experience with people and therefore helps find animals homes.

unschooling

what it’s all about

For us at the moment it’s all about play,

togetherness,

helping,

nature,

friends,

making and process,

having time & curiosity & joy enough to spot the amazing little things everywhere in the world like pockets of apple blossom petals on the ground to use as confetti.

Life is good.

unschooling

Spring!

We’ve been biking,

visiting our new neighborhood library,

playing with friends,

baking pumpkin bread,

experimenting in MineCraft with new buildings and animals and researching how to make machinery that functions in the game,

loving the kitten,

painting Lilah’s wolf mask from her Doodle Crate gift,

reading,

building with Legos (Gavin’s been doing a lot of research and then designing and building. Here he has built a house with a hinging wall that opens, and four poster bed, book shelf, lamp and dresser inside. The next day he added another level with a balcony.)

We’ve been puzzling,

spending more time with friends,

waiting in terribly long lines to participate in the caucuses in our state,

watching flowers begin to bloom in our neighborhood.

Lilah asked me about Hindi after we talked about languages other than English and how a language with different characters works and we’ve made a plan to do some learning in that area.

We went to a Hindu temple in our vicinity for a celebration of Holi, a Hindu spring festival which involves throwing and wiping colored powder on each other. It was so much fun and the kids loved it! I have fond memories of the Holi celebrations I took part in in India many years ago and it was so satisfying to share with my family. We’ll definitely go again!

At my parents house we dyed eggs and hunted eggs and enjoyed each others’ company on Easter.

We listened to Rolling Thunder In The Mountains by Scott O’Dell in the car and enjoyed that quite a bit and I’ve been reading The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle to them, a chapter here, a chapter there. It’s one that’s new to me as well as the kids, which is fun.

We went to the hot springs for a soak and a swim. It was rainy today and when we got into the pool it began to hail! We’d brought an umbrella and so we huddled under that in the warm water and enjoyed watching the hail stones plop and splash in the water and make bubbles. After the hail let up the kids went into the cooler pool and there was lots of splashing and chasing and floating on pool noodles.

The kids played with mixing up some gooey substances with their latest Tinker Crate.

Life and life learning is good.

unschooling

our newest biker

Lilah’s now moving on two wheels!

Gavin learned to ride a bike several years ago through a rather grueling process where I would squat and run behind him while holding his bike up while he practiced peddling and balancing. I tried holding the front instead and it didn’t give him the control and independence he needed to progress. It was scary for him, though less scary than trying without me holding the bike. It took several weeks of that and he got it and has been happily biking since. I have at least once or twice referred to that process as the worst part of parenting because of the amazingly awful pain of running while squatting and holding up a bike with a biker who’s going at good speed. It’s seriously not a good time, though of course worth it for the fun of the kid being able to ride.

Lilah has been riding on training wheels for years and last summer I thought she was ready to ride without them and we tried a few times the same way but it was hard and scary and neither of us were very motivated to keep going.

The weather has just turned the corner on warm enough here to want to be out and so I decided to ask if she’d like to try a different approach that my sister who is practically on a bike most of the time suggested. Lilah kept her feet off the pedals and just pushed along and balanced. She was comfortable with it because she could stop whenever and go as slow or fast as she wanted. It was tough going up hills and not very practical at first even on flat ground but she really started practicing going down a gentle hill at the park by us. Today she begged to go “balance biking” and so we all went and halfway through she started putting her feet on the pedals and going!

She’s so proud and I’m so excited about bike trips together and I’m thrilled that we figured out a less scary way for her to get the hang of it!

Woohoo!

Biking and picnics here we come! Gavin asked me to take this picture of his “proud my sister can ride a bike face.”

unschooling

always moving, sometimes faster, sometimes slowly

We’ve been busy, with all the little things and a few big ones.

We’ve been

swimming with friends in the hot springs

finishing our audiobook The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo

picking out legos from bulk lots

learning about elections in the U.S. and talking about the process and the people involved

playing Minecraft and building and dreaming so many ideas up for it together

playing soccer with Dad

playing Connect Four and Carcassonne and Exploding Kittens and WildCraft and Race for the Galaxy and War

working on making a mask from a doodle crate gift Lilah received recently (I think she’s making a wolf mask) with a plastic mask base you shape, then cover in foil and plastic, then cover in paper mache and finally she will paint the dried paper mache mask

visiting a brand new library just blocks from our house!!! The kids each got their own library card and checked out books. Gavin brought home a Lego idea book and Lilah brought home a book about rocks.

We’ve been celebrating Grandpa’s birthday with Gavin creating a game for him and building it and writing up the instructions with Dad and then trying it out with Grandpa. He made a board out of cardboard and used little plastic army men and a purple die that he got at the skating rink for this very purpose.

We’ve been playing with friends (human and animal) at the farm

practicing gymnastics

cleaning our house

building a house for our cats, refining it, observing the cats in it, adding toys and stickers

creating new lego designs based on books and otherwise

enjoying the first warm, sunny days of the year at various parks and gardens, with and without friends. They’ve been having opportunities lately to play with much younger kids (being the oldest) and that has been both fun and challenging. I’m so glad they have these kinds of opportunities!

We’ve been practicing a play at their scout meeting

doing the important work of playing, navigating challenges with differing degrees of confidence and happiness and enjoying each other and the world.

At the moment I write this, the kids are setting up for a game where each of them has a pillow and an umbrella in their bases and they try to hit the other’s area with a squishy ball.

unschooling

Arizona

We spent last week in Tucson, Arizona. It was such a change in temperature from home, going from jacket, hat and glove weather to shorts and t-shirts weather.

The drive was long but beautiful and we finished the very very long audiobook we had been working through, the third in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. We stopped in Phoenix to eat and Gavin spotted something in the sky he wanted to investigate so we walked over and found it was a huge suspended glowing sculpture.

Chris worked and the kids and I adventured during work hours and then we all headed out in the evenings together.

We saw our favorite soccer team, Real Salt Lake at two training matches while we were there. Lilah spent most of the first game watching bats catch moths in the stadium lights and she enjoyed that very much.

The three of us visited both sides of Saguaro National Park, East and West. We saw so many different kinds of cacti, and quite a bit of wildlife. The saguaro were fascinating – I’d never seen them before – and the rest of the cactus were as well.

The kids were offered a Junior Ranger program opportunity, an activity where they are given a bunch of activities/research to do in the park and when they finish a ranger goes over it with them and swears them in as a Junior Ranger. Honestly, I wished they hadn’t done it because they spent most of our first hike trying to fill out their papers instead of looking, listening and enjoying but they wanted to do it and both felt great finishing. If I’d somehow worked out a way for them to do the research, writing back at the hotel during down time that would have been perfect.

We saw jojoba, mesquite, hedgehog cactus, pincushion cactus, teddy bear cholla, pencil cholla, barrel cactus, saguaro, prickly pear, and various other plants on our explorations. There were many jokes about hugging the teddy bear cholla.

We saw cactus wrens, flickers, hawks, silky tailed flycatchers, lizards, bats, squirrels, rabbits, butterflies, wasps, moths.

The kids were so, so excited to see all the differing cactus types, some of them fruiting. None of them were blooming but it was so warm that I don’t know we’d want to go later in the year to see them blooming anyway.

I tried my hand at a new photography technique, shooting through my binoculars. It was tricky, but fun. Here are three of those shots, you have to have about four hands and have the lenses lined up *exactly* right or you get strange effects. I was trying to get a look at the nest in the hole in that saguaro.

The four of us took picnic dinner into the park and visited some petroglyphs and watched the sun set. Lilah took a picture of two different cactus together, saying “Those two look like best friends.”

We swam in the hotel pool.

Lilah worked on reading her Warriors by Erin Hunter, about cat warriors. Gavin finished the 2nd Warriors book, and several more of the How To Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell in between other things and while driving.

We drove past an airplane museum so I asked the kids if they were interested. They were so we headed there one morning. It was huge, which was a bit of a struggle since we didn’t have time to see it all and that is frustrating for Gavin. He really enjoyed it though and immediately started making plans to create new models of airplanes and ships in Legos at home. He asked questions about different parts of the models, especially the landing gear.

One evening we all went for a quick visit at San Xavier del Bac, a Spanish mission that is still active, though it was built in the 1700s. They are restoring the paintings inside as well as the sculpture and relief on the outer walls. It’s a beautiful building.

The three of us went to Colossal Caves for a tour. It was the first cave adventure for both kids. I hope we can go see our nearest local cave this year up at Mount Timpanogus. The rocks are still actively growing there with water moving through the minerals and rock. Colossal Caves are dry due to the hot, dry weather in Arizona but still had plenty of fascinating features and was a pretty easy, short walk; good for a first cave experience. While we waited for our tour to begin, the kids tried their hand at sluicing for gems.

It was a great trip, seeing new places and things and enjoying some warm weather and clear air when it’s cold and polluted at home.

unschooling

backwards glance

Here’s a post about mid-late December of last year.

Grandma picked up the kids for a candle making date at her house!

They played Settlers of Cataan, and then they made up new rules and played it again,

We had friends over.

We watched the kitten climb the holiday tree.

We worked on top secret holiday projects (the kids made bath fizzes, choosing from our essential oils collection after smelling all of them, the ones I use to make my own deodorant and perfume, which I thought was both interesting and sweet: jasmine, sweet orange, lemongrass.

The kids made dried flowers/leaves mandala sun-catchers. Lilah made stationery sets with adorable pictures, mostly of cats.

We made orange and peppermint flavored chocolates in molds of owls, hearts and castles. Gavin worked on his book, and gave a few coupons for copies when it’s ready.

Chris and the kids picked out projects to make on raspberry pi computers. They put together and coded an own-cloud and a motion-triggered camera to take pictures of pets. It was really fun watching them working together on them, eagerly reviewing options, typing, proof-reading, problem solving.

We read.

We sledded with my sister

and shoveled lots of snow.

We went to an animation presentation at the library with friends.

We read. (Yes, we do a bunch of this and yes, it’s worth mentioning several times in the same post.)

We baked.

They worked on Mad Libs, chatting about adjectives and nouns while giggling.

We visited a trampoline park, the first time since Lilah broke a leg when she was five. They were careful and safe and had a wonderful time and were never still enough to get a clear picture of.

Here is a project I worked on for a holiday gift for Chris: an embroidered version of Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle:

We celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day, longest night of the year. We lit and used candles instead of electric lights, made pomander balls out of clementines and cloves, made a lasagna for dinner and had a little dance party in our warm house.

We celebrated Christmas (early) with my parents and sister and baked cookies covered in red hots and enjoyed each other.

We celebrated Christmas (late) with Chris’ parents and read books and played games and enjoyed each other.

There was much, much more goodness, but this is a bit of what we were up to.

unschooling

Today

We spent hours today working on valentines day cards for an upcoming party.

Gavin is making Star Wars themed valentines and Lilah began making heart-shaped balloon cards (the picture above is the balloons drying in their 3D form) and then changed directions into making heart shaped crayons and putting them on cards. All of them came out looking wonderful and the kids enjoyed the process but it took a lot of time! Last week we did some hunting about to figure out what the kids wanted to do and then went shopping to get materials. This week we started making them and they each made fifty for the party so it was hours of printing, cutting, gluing, taping, breaking and melting crayon bits in heart molds and signing them all. Gavin got more comfortable using our paper cutter tool. Lilah was excited to try it too. We took paper off of old broken crayons and cut them and then melted them in the oven. Oh, and we added glitter. It was a beautiful, messy, fun project.

Gavin worked on his book, really enjoying reading through what he’d already written and making adjustments and then added another paragraph or two. His characters are in a tavern at the moment, trying to gather information.

Lilah read a new book in the Princess in Black series and very much enjoyed that.

Gavin worked on his Minecraft mansion and Lilah worked on taking care of her crew of animals in Minecraft on the computer.

We folded some laundry.

Gavin read part of a National Geographic magazine about National Parks.

I did some laundry and made a pot of beans, when I wasn’t helping with other projects.

It was a busy, good day.

Here are a few pictures from the past week or so:

Chris and the kids installing a new oven. Now we don’t have an hour or longer preheat time like we’ve been dealing with as our old oven slowly died. Woohoo!

The face Lilah made when I told her I’d acquired a kid sized snow shovel

Improvising a car and tram track with some wood and the furniture

Loving the cat

Playing at the museum market

unschooling

play and living

A contemporary pre-school teacher whose blog I enjoy says that a kids’ work is play. He means, in my understanding, that when kids are playing it is a serious endeavor that enables them to learn and grow and is the important task they are in charge of as kids. I remember this often as I watch my kids as they play together, deadly earnest and growing with each moment of time spent exploring their interests and challenges.

We went ice skating again, for a second time.

Lilah was nervous but eventually got comfortable and was even trying some tricks. Gavin enjoyed it quite a bit and was trying new moves from the beginning. I enjoyed myself thoroughly up until the point where a lace from one skate attached itself to a hook closure on the other and I fell hard, acquiring some impressive bruises but no lasting damage. It was painful and frustrating but I am glad that my kids know that these things happen to me too.

This week we read and we built and we played. Gavin started and finished How To Train Your Dragon #1 by Cressida Cowell. Lilah read several library books to me. Gavin taught me how to play Star Realms, a deck building card game set in space.

Chris pulled out the keyboard and the kids played some music and we talked about notes and octaves and rhythm and all sorts of music ideas and words. Then they tried every single pre-set the thing has. And then, thankfully, they played more music. Afterward Lilah practiced playing her tin flute.

We made tiny treehouses out of toilet paper rolls and cardstock.

We went to the zoo and watched seals and sea lions, a polar bear, a tiger, two lions, a family of burrowing owls, just to name a few. Lilah’s favorite part was seeing a sand cat. Gavin’s favorite was watching the burrowing owls and mine was hearing a lion shout. What an amazing sound they make!

Here is a drawing of a burrowing owl Lilah made with a mealworm in its tummy (they were having lunch when we visited.) She named it too.

The kids played MineCraft, including Lilah buying and setting up her own account and immediately finding a puppy and two siamese cats in the game.

Gavin learned how to do a load of laundry.

Lilah went to gymnastics class where she is learning to do walk-overs and cartwheels on the beam as well as getting up on the high bar for the first time ever.

The kids watched me knitting and carefully looked at both my process and the instructions of the pattern I was using.

Chris and the kids went to Spiral Scouts and began exploring drama and theatre skills.

We met friends at a matinee peformance of various dance pieces in Illusions by Alwin Nikolais by Ririe Woodbury Dance Co. It was a fascinating assortment and the entire audience was wowed by the costumes, the dancing and the imagination of the offerings. This is the first performance offered to school kids that I’ve seen that pushed the boundaries into challenging and possibly uncomfortable experiences. I mean that the material was a bit spooky to some of the kids and the music was not always fun and light hearted. I’m so glad this was offered as I find only showing kids saccharine sweet entertainment and art is such a wasted opportunity. Kids are familiar with fear and love and life too, after all.

After that we spent the rest of the day playing and catching up with our friends through Chess, more MineCraft, our interactive globe and PlayMobil fun.

Here is one of the pieces that we saw performed. It’s beautiful and fascinating. I’m so glad we had that opportunity and to share it with friends was even better.

unschooling

cold days

We’ve been reading books, of course. Gavin picked out a novel from the library that he says is good called The Mapmaker’s Sons by V. L. Burgess. He also borrowed How To Train Your Dragon, Book 1 by Cressida Cowell. Lilah is reading The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale.

Lilah and I built a canoe and teepee fort with her set of fort building pieces.

Then we had a tea party inside it.

We went to a women’s gymnastics match at the university with my dad

and Lilah’s practicing her own gymnastics in a slightly more challenging class now. Here she is doing a handstand on the beam and then she practiced a round-off dismount.

We all played Civilization on the computers together.

Gavin and I played a game of The Castles of Mad King Ludwig. It’s really quite a good one for kids with longer attention spans.

Lilah watched Song of the Sea again, one of her favorites and mine too.

I baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cranberry cookies and we all ate them.

We pulled out our marble maze pieces and built and experimented and gasped as the cats knocked our creations down and then built them again.

Gavin got out his master builder books and has been making and remaking various different things with his Legos. Today he built a drawbridge that moves up and down.

Lilah made a horde of adorable paper cats and angels and cat angels. She even decided she wanted to make a chain of them and figured part of the process out and asked for help with the rest but did it all herself.

Gavin’s been working more (in tiny bits) on his book.

He and I spotted a bird up close in the parking lot.

The kids made a few different automatons from a kit that came in the mail as a gift. They were fascinated.

So I introduced them to the Strandbeest, amazing huge automatons made by Theo Jansen, and they were even more fascinated. If you haven’t come across these already, you’re in for a treat!

Lilah and I have been hula hooping and working on new tricks.

We went to the natural history museum and learned about DNA and watched videos about Native American history and culture. This was the first time that the DNA has sparked Gavin’s curiosity apart from solving the puzzles they have out in the area. He looked carefully at a display of all the protein pairs in human DNA compared with about twenty other animals and then we talked about how two strands fit together and apart again, creating the spiraling shape.

The kids reconnected with some old friends at the museum who we haven’t seen in years and who play a computer game Gavin and Lilah like so they have been playing a bit together now and then and having a lot of fun sending “letters” to each other and showing off their in-game creations.

I have been thinking a lot about parenting with empathy and reading many articles about how to support kids when they feel anger, in expressing and feeling and then moving forward and if helpful making things right with others.

We’ve been chatting and dreaming about where we’d like to visit this year; Southern Utah, California, Arizona are on the table.

I talked a bit to the kids about yoga and mindfulness and we practiced a few very short meditations together. I found mainly bedtime meditations for kids and I am hoping I can find some more that involve both movement and relaxation and are a little more playful.

We read a few books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and talked about how things are similar and different than when he was alive.

I learned how to knit cable twists and made a pretty good looking hat in a color I call mermaid. Gavin put in a request for a similar one in deep blue.

Chris served on a jury for a trial the past two weeks and so afterward he talked with the kids about what he did and how things work. They were both fascinated and a bit worried about it as it was a pretty serious criminal trial.

Today, Chris was home all day so I got to take a snowy hike on my own. Beautiful!

Yes is a World

Category Archives: unschooling

Kanab: animals & wildnerness

what it’s all about

Spring!

our newest biker

always moving, sometimes faster, sometimes slowly

Arizona

backwards glance

Today

play and living

cold days