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

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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poetry, unschooling

Friday

They started with Pokemon watching and animal mazes and lego play.

We spent quite a bit of time watching construction on the street outside our house.  “What are they doing now?”

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Gavin worked on more letters to friends, each with a drawing, while Lilah wrote a message and drew a picture on a card she started yesterday for her friend.

There were spinning like a top in the living room breaks and an Ironman Uno game.  They made a maze out of cardboard and clear plastic packing for the stuffed animals, stuffies as they call them.  Then more letter writing.

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We followed a conversation round and round (as I like to) beginning with horse riding, then horses riding us, then horse writing, which was explained by Gavin as writing letters to horses.  We spent many minutes telling each other what we’d put into our letters to horses.  “Dear Horse, do you prefer apples or carrots?”  “Dear Horse, do you like bunnies?”

There was lunch and then good friends visiting, with lego play, stuffed animal festivals and an imaginary school session before goodbyes.  Gavin did some research online about how to make a robot.

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I read Pippi Longstocking to the kids.  She went to the circus and then danced with some would-be burglars.  We love Pippi.  She went up against the strongest man in the world, but as she pointed out, she’s the strongest girl in the world, so of course she came out on top.

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Afterward, there was dinner and poetry reading: Margaret Atwood, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot.  We all took turns choosing and reading.

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You Begin

You begin this way
This is your hand
This is your eye
That is a fish, blue and flat
On the paper, almost
The shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
Or a moon, whichever
You like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
Is the rain, green
Because it’s summer, and beyond that
The trees and then the world,
Which is round and has only
The colours of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
And more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
With the red and then
The orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
You will learn that there are more
Words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
Like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
Your hand to this table,
Your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
Which is round but not flat and has more colours
Than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
This is what you will
Come back to, this is your hand.

Margaret Atwood

It was a peaceful day full of reconnecting with friends and small important moments.

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