Doing

We have been

painting,

drawing,

playing with and caring for a new kitten! A kitten has been Lilah’s fondest wish for years and so after much deliberation we decided she’s at a great age to become a pet care taker and to form a really wonderful friendship with a cat. We told her at her birthday party that she could adopt a kitten. She chose Luna Lovegood, and has been playing with her, feeding her, taking care of her litter box and making beds for her in the doll house. It’s been so much fun to watch them together and to have a kitten in the house. Luna seems to love her new home and we love having her here.

We have been celebrating Lilah’s birthday!

And celebrating more with a tea party in the park with friends.

We have been reading,

hiking,

rafting on a lake which was fun until it was scary and then new plans to try a different way were made,

Gavin’s been trying some photography,

and so have I. Here are a few shots I took with the fall leaves in a pool, and reflections of the trees and myself that I enjoyed.

We have been swimming,

noticing the return of some autumn birds and filling up our bird feeder with seeds,

planning costumes,

building (here is a door with hinges built by Gavin)

playing soccer,

playing Minetest and Minecraft (Gavin did lots of chores to afford his own account to play Minecraft)

watching short animation videos. We recommend this: Fresh Guacamole by PES.

We have been visiting Logan, Utah to see an Australian Aboriginal paintings exhibit at Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art,

watching part of the Democratic Debate and Gavin asking questions about politics, following up with research about the 2 major parties in the U.S. and an article on Time For Kids summing up the Democratic Debate.

picking tomatoes, tomatillos, jalapeños and Thai chiles in the garden for chili making (with gloves for protection from chile oil for Gavin).

We have been gathering with other unschoolers for an afternoon of spooky (and less spooky) science in the park.

They made glittery slime, stewed a brew in a cauldron, mixed colors, watched some dry ice bubble fun, watched various kinds of mentos and coke experiments and Gavin set off a really wonderful water and air rocket.

Every day is a good one, even the ones with hard parts. I’m glad to be able to watch my kids maneuver through their days and help if they want it and sit back and enjoy when they don’t (and share my own discoveries and interests when they are open to that, of course.)

art, unschooling

Lucin & the Sun Tunnels

A few weeks ago we were in need of some bigger adventures. So we headed out west, into Nevada and the desert to visit a ghost town and a massive land art piece on the state border.

It was a rainy morning and the dirt roads were quite an adventure, even though they were drying when we arrived at our turn off the highway.

Well, we thought it was our turn off. In discovering it wasn’t the road we were looking for we also discovered an old mining building to explore. We spotted several lizards, big and small and had fun checking out the ruins.

Then we got back on the road and headed toward Lucin, a tiny ghost town. We explored a bit and saw the pond, a few houses, a concrete structure others say was a phone booth, a big hunk of rock that was mined out there called variscite and lots of paraphernalia. We all decided we’d like to do more ghost town exploring.

Further along we came upon a few sculptures that people visiting the Sun Tunnels have made or brought. One was made of Legos partially and the other was a structure that could be used as a shelter. It was a long walk from the road, past many lizards and several prickly pear plants.

After our fill of those, we ended up at the Sun Tunnels, a massive land artform created between 1973-76 by Nancy Holt.

Those tunnels are huge! They have holes in the tops to represent constellations and are aligned so that the rising sun can be viewed in the center of the tunnels during summer and winter solstices. It’s a fascinating experience to be both out in the middle of the desert and presented with a human-made structure. The light play inside and on the tunnels is beautiful.

The kids liked exploring from inside and outside. So did I!

Those lizards have it pretty good out there.

unschooling

Fall in Utah

We’ve been holing up at home quite a bit playing with Legos, Minetest, skateboarding in the living room and the like.

There was a nice hike up City Creek Canyon to gather stinging nettles leaves in order to brew some nettle tea.

We found a birds nest and lots of berries.

When we got home we looked up the berries and discovered they are blue elderberries, good for jams and syrups. Hmmm, we’ll have to go back soon I think! The area was just full of large beautiful clusters of frosty looking blue berries.

The kids brought their gloves and bags for collecting nettle leaves.

It was cool up there with lots of fall colors and smells.

When we got home we brewed some nettle tea and tried it. It was pretty good.

We’ve been enjoying lots of music listening and dancing.

We went to the library. I chose some more audiobooks for us: Black Star, Bright Dawn by Scott O’Dell, Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. The kids each chose three or four books and then I picked out a handful more. One of the favorites of the bunch so far is Cat Secrets by Jef Czekaj, a charming story where the cats are about to tell their story but suspect a non-cat is reading the book.

We took several other hikes in the fall leaves, including visiting some local hot springs with my sister that we’ve never been to before: Fifth Water or Diamond Fork hot springs.

It’s a little over two miles to the springs on a beautiful path with red rock, a stream and this month, beautiful fall leaves.

The hot springs were quite toasty! The kids took a while to acclimate but did enjoy it quite a bit. I sat near a warm waterfall and it felt a bit like a hot tub with jets on.

There are so, so many things to explore and discover, so much to miss out on if we don’t seize the opportunity to explore the world we’re part of!

unschooling

Salt Point, Gerstle Cove

We went back to California, to Salt Point State Park, this time, an area new to all four of us.

We camped in a forested area a ten minute drive from the ocean, which was the main attraction. There was a tree right on top of where we put the tent and the kids were up up and away within minutes after the very long drive. They are up above our tent here, probably between 12 and 15 feet off the ground, the little monkeys.

We went to the visitors center and asked where to go look at tidepools which is one of our favorite activities. Following their directions the next day we were a bit disappointed, but the following day we struck out in the other direction and soon met a family of seals as well as a plethora of really fun tidepools. I’m left wondering why they would give information about the tidepools being best in an area they really weren’t unless they were trying to keep kids from clambering on rocks and maneuvering between waves which is part of the fun and necessary if you want to see what I call “the good stuff”. Anyway, we found them, the amazing tide pools.

We saw hundreds of urchins,

a bat star,

racoon prints in the sand,

rocks that had had seaweed washed up and dried to them, then peeled off by the water or wind, revealing prints of the seaweed on the rocks in the algaed surfaces,

lots of seals, swimming, sunning, looking at us, patrolling, fishing,

pools filled with tiny swimming orange creatures that Lilah first spotted, not sure if they were fish or shrimp or something else entirely,

mussels, anemones and barnacles, limpets and snails of course,

sea stars,

hermit crabs and dungeness crabs and small fish who rested in the shadows of small pools,

It’s so much fun making discoveries in the pools, and then calling everyone over to share.

Between tidepooling, which is best done at low tide, we drove down the coast to find sandy beaches that the kids love to play in the water on. One day we stopped at a beach which is well known for it’s undertow so we learned about what makes a beach safer or less safe, especially how steep the slope is under the water and breakers area. Gavin thought it was pretty cool that it was one of the deadliest beaches in California. I was a bit less thrilled and watched the kids like a hawk. Another day we stopped at a much shallower beach which had sandy areas and pebbly areas to explore.

Back at the campsite the kids did the dishes, their idea, alternating who was washing and drying and who was rinsing. They enjoyed it and Chris and I enjoyed supporting their interest in helping and having time to get other things done.

On the drive there and back we alternated between listening to music and The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. The kids are enjoying having ipods to listen to music that they choose, when they like. It’s fun to watch them enjoying picking out songs and bands they like and comparing notes with each other.

unschooling

birthdays and books and betweens

We had a birthday party for a 10!! year old boy with a favorite beautiful animated film with lots of fascinating mythology in it: Song of the Sea by Tomm Moore, a cooperative game of Castle Panic, showing off and making use of the several candy dispensing, coin collecting machines the kids made with Legos beforehand, chocolate avocado cupcakes with chocolate ganache and marzipan leaves, birds and flowers on top. Ten years is a long beautifully vast time, and I am hungry for every day I get to spend with my amazing children.

Lilah finished her reading journal (filling out the writing portion) and we went to Barnes and Noble to collect her free book. She chose Princess In Black by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale which turns out to be a charming story about how people have more than one dimension and identity. I love that the perfect pink princess turns into a black wearing, monster defeating leader in secret. I hope it’s not always a secret that getting dirty, wearing black and fighting monsters is awesome. Several weeks on, she’s read the book at least four times. I think we’ll see when the next one comes out!

Lilah has been pretending to be Bartholomew Cubbins (from The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Suess) by collecting hats and then pretending to pull them off in amazement that another has appeared on her head. So much fun!

There was a hike up to Willow Lake where we found a tunnel in the willows. There was a stinging nettle plant and the kids were talking about how you can harvest it to make soup or tea and have requested we try. When we got home they assembled a stinging nettle collection kit, with bags and gloves. Sometime soon we’ll head somewhere with a healthy nettle population. They are learning to identify many wildflowers, trees and plants which is fun for me since it’s been an interest of mine for a long time too.

We started listening to Redwall by Brian Jacques and that’s been entertaining for the kids so far. There are so many stories about warriors or rangers or heros of any kind in fighting roles and the kids have been doing a lot of exploring that idea through role play and pretending.

We took our skates over to the park for some round and round the round-a-bout and then for some trying out the hills with skates both on and off feet.

We met other unschoolers at the park for a not back to school picnic. It was fun but hot and we got tired out after a few hours. There was a parachute to play with!

Our state legislature had a special session lately and they voted to move the state prison so we watched a video of the discussion in the legislature. The kids listened for a bit and then wandered off while I listened to the entire discussion. Later on the kids asked questions about the prison and some other points in the discussion.

We took a family hike up to Cecret Lake. It’s beautiful up in the mountains and there are salamanders there which are so fun to watch but too difficult to get pictures of.

The kids have begun playing Minecraft, a computer game in which you explore a world and collect and mine and build and transform. They love playing it together and seem very excited about trying new things in their worlds every day.

Once in a while I get a chance to do something like take dramatic and metaphorical photos, which I love. Here’s one I took of my reflection with a sunset behind me in an abandoned museum. I could make up twenty stories about what it says and they could all be true. That’s what I love best about visual art. It can have multiple meanings, even at the same time and they can all be equally important or not. There is room for interpretation, feelings, questions, things that words cannot say or do say with no room for more. I liked sharing the photo and why I like it with the kids. I hope they will learn that words are not perfect, though we pretend they are.

We went for a family walk up City Creek Canyon to mark the first day of the school year. Lilah would be in 2nd grade and Gavin in 5th, if we bothered with those labels, which we don’t. We spotted some milkweed and asked the kids what they knew about it. Gavin remembered that butterflies like those plants. I explained that Monarch butterflies need those plants to live and then we discovered some Monarch caterpillars happily munching and traipsing around in a patch of milkweed right by the trail. They are beautiful caterpillars!

This is our “official back to school picture” taken on our walk:

I posted it on Facebook, saying “We’re kicking off another year of learning anywhere and everywhere.” I felt like sharing and celebrating the choices we’ve made but I didn’t want to do it in a way that might make our schooling friends feel hurt so I decided to leave school out of it altogether and just talk about learning and enjoying, which is what it’s all about anyway. I wish sometimes that the moniker for what we do wasn’t “unschooling”. It is reactionary and has negative implications about other people’s choices. A better description of what I see us doing would be lifelong learning or life learning, but to connect with others and the overarching philosophy, the term unschooling is the most widely recognized label. Whatever the labeling situation may be, I love our adventures and we are amazed at how much both kids are learning and the kinds of learning they are doing. They are healthier physically and emotionally as well as coming into their own pursuits more. When I am asked how it’s going, which is often, the answer is, we love it! It’s been good.

unschooling

Del Norte

We visited Grandma and Grandpa who live too far from us, the redwood trees and the beach in California just for a short few days, but wow, was it fun!

We had a few brief but treasured afternoons with Grandma and Grandpa, mostly spent at the beach but with enough time for hugs and catching up.

The kids tried blackberry picking and eating from the wild bushes all along the path down to the beach. They decided they like blackberries freshly plucked and which don’t have any red pips. While looking for berries we saw some small snakes living in the bushes.

We looked in lots of tidepools

and discovered many, many purple and orange and red sea stars, small and big, and one leather star that I couldn’t get a clear picture of because the tide was coming in and making for murky water.

We spotted a sea cucumber,

anemones, giant green and smaller pink and cream kinds, periwinkles and hermit crabs and dungeness crabs,

caves, including one we could go into through one channel and out another,

nudibranchs, animals I’ve only rarely spotted,

lots of iridescent sea weed

some bright orange washed up sponges that were so bright and so rubbery looking I thought they were washed up balloons at first

shells of various kinds

pink and orange sea lichen or algal crusts, not sure which, but I used to think of it as tidepool wallpaper

mussels and barnacles, in the thousands.

We played in the water and on the rocks and read signs about the area.

We climbed on redwood stumps in our campground and spotted a few banana slugs and many jays. Lilah even collected some jay feathers.

On the sandy beach down the road we found hundreds of sand dollars, big and little, bleached and still covered in mauve fur. Here are a few of the most intact sand dollars we found.

The kids spent hours pushing and throwing sticks and logs into the wavelets and watching them come back, running back and forth in the ocean’s edge.

At the campsite, Lilah and Gavin arranged firewood and kindling and Lilah lit the fire, as she had been very anxious to be part of that since Gavin had done the same on his own at scouts just a week or so back. She was successful and we had some s’mores before heading to our tent.

When we pried ourselves away from the beach and drove the hundreds of miles home, our cats and bird and dog were waiting. Lilah made a welcome home card for the dog and put it on his carrier.

Much of the way there and back we listened to Douglas Adams on audiobook, reading his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. He’s particularly good at voicing Zaphod Beeblebrox, who particularly amuses me.

Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into his mind. It was very clear and very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His instinct was to resist them.

– Z. B. by Douglas Adams

unschooling

Here to There

“From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” -Dr. Suess

We’ve been here and there, near and far lately, with trips to Dinosaur National Monument, trips to the park around the corner, lost of museum play, a birthday and another trip to the beach in California coming right up.

Gavin finished his summer reading challenge and picked out a book. He was very pleased. Lilah’s read three times the number of books, at least, but is still working on writing down ten.

We camped near Dinosaur National Monument at Steinaker reservoir with friends and

Gavin started his very own fire

we roasted marshmallows over Gavin’s fire

we swam in the lake

walked right up to amazing petroglyphs

we started boondoggle keychains

the kids prepared kebabs for dinner

there were dinosaur bones up close at the quarry and

both kids earned their Dinosaur Monument junior ranger badges after learning about dinosaurs and then swearing in with a park ranger.

I’ve been working on a long overdue project at home: a big mandala on our wall. I painted a background for it, a large blue circle with drips underneath, 4 or 5 years ago but never got around to working on the mandala. It’s been more fun with kids help anyway! (They would have been too young to help much at all when I made the background.) It’s still not finished but here’s some of the progress. I drew it by hand and then painted it with help here and there from the kids. It feels so good to be doing it finally and I’m really enjoying the process and the progress!

Lilah painted another on her own.

We did some more geocaching with friends and found three caches in about an hour.

It was really exciting, the mapping, the hunting, the eventual victorious finding and the recording of our names in the cache log.

There were games, like Mine Shift.

Computer coding games for kids have been popular at our house lately. Chris has been looking into more options for them to keep exploring. This one involves code writing to make designs which they print out and admire.

Lemon cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are ripe in the garden.

From there to here, from here to there, beautiful learning is everywhere.

unschooling

another good week

We visited museums and took in a new exhibit about how we see, both how eyes work and how our brains work with our eyes to perceive.

We hiked up Storm Mountain and wet our toes, tossed rocks, found a discarded water bottle and played catch with the current with it before taking it back to recycle. We identified stinging nettle and painted with water on rocks. We stacked rocks.

We played with other unschoolers at a splash pad and park. The kids are feeling more comfortable but there’s still a lack of kids Lilah’s age to play with, but a range older and younger. Gavin went with some other kids and was offered a powerade and after he drank it and we left the park we looked at the ingredients and together we decided that it probably wasn’t good for him and that was probably why his stomach hurt.

We did a lot of reading and listening to our latest audio book, Slaves of Socorro (Brotherband Chronicles 4). We just finished Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and The Graveyard book by Neil Gaiman on our trip to and from Yellowstone.

The kids got out their favorite paper airplane book and folded dozens of airplanes.

We watched Inside Out in the theatre. Lilah liked it quite a bit and Gavin had trouble with the confrontations from certain emotions in the film, but the next day decided he liked it very much. It was a good experience for all of us, I think. Especially since we got to chat about emotions afterward.

unschooling

Sulfur & silica & bacterial mats

We took a weekend trip to Yellowstone, our local supervolcano. It was cool there which was refreshing after being so hot at home. We caught Grand geyser erupting.

We saw bison and geese and osprey and marmots and elk and deer and wildflowers. The harebell was Lilah’s favorite. We also saw asters and paintbrush and lupine and others I didn’t recognize.

We saw geysers and mud pots and hot springs and fumaroles and read about how they work and what minerals they have and why the bacteria inside and surrounding them are different colors. We learned that the difference between geysers and hot springs is how narrow the chute the water comes through up to the surface is. If it’s narrow then it’s a geyser; if wide then a hot spring. I told Lilah how the wolves were systematically killed, then reintroduced and are doing well now. We didn’t spot any, though.