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First I set out a little inspiration!
I cut up some sponges into long petal shapes and shorter ones into leaf shapes. Squirted a little tempra paint onto a tray. Squirted a little more tempra onto a dish with some q-tips and voila…..
The kids got down to business!
And made many , many beautiful poinsettia sponge prints!
Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle for the idea! I especially love her blue ones!
Where to start?! The media is, well the media. They are a business. They feature stories that will boost ratings. They use shock value to stir up attention and in turn receive more viewers.
So why we are surprised by both the Good Morning America and the Discovery Health reports on Unschooling? They are typical examples of biased reporting. Both were short segments filled more with shock value than facts and true glimpses into real unschooling.
Mainstream America just doesn’t get Unschooling. They aren’t going to. For heavens sake only about 25% of American adults have a face book account. I thought everybody was on face book! So imagine how the majority of the world could possibly understand Unschooling? Especially with the shows that Discovery Health and Good Morning America put out. Yet, it is so easy for me to forget that we are radical. It is so easy for me to forget that my family is so different than almost everybody else.
Partly because I don’t reflect the mainstream and haven’t for so long. I have my own fairly large community that I identify with. I belong to a food co-op and rarely shop at Kroger and I love my public radio station where they don’t play anything you have ever heard of. —–That’s weird…… Yeah, I guess. I recycle, compost, use cloth napkins, shop at the thrift store and line dry my clothes—-Oh, your one of those hippies!….. OK. My kids don’t go school—-Oh, you homeschool? Will you always do that? Do they socialize with other kids? ……No,we Unschool—— Huh?????? Like those crazy people on TV? Did you see that, they let their kids eat donuts for breakfast—– That is main steam media for you!
I don’t sit round and think about how different we are. We just live. We aren’t purposeful in every move we make. We aren’t living for “the unschooling movement.” We don’t look different. We don’t walk or talk differently. (well maybe a little differently 
) Our daily life is pretty uneventful to the outside world. We get up and go about our day just like everyone else. Only we have learned a little secret that seems so unfathomable to the rest of the world. Choice
We all have them. Really we do have choices in everything we do. Yes, some choices make life harder than others but we have choices in life. And as Unschoolers we have made many, many unpopular choices.
Kids don’t have to go to school–gasp! They don’t have to get up at a certain time of day to be productive—gasp! They don’t even have to be told to learn! No, really, it’s just automatic. Adults may think they have control over what kids are leaning but kids and adults everywhere are learning ALL THE TIME!
I googled learning and Wikipedia gave me this: (from a very mainstream source even!)
Learning is a process you do, not a process that is done to you. Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without it being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant
These choices we have made are hard. And Unschooling is a journey of sorts. The vast majority of unschoolers did not wake up one day and decide to make all of these radical choices in one day. But it is easy to forget that.
Beginning with following your heart and letting go of what other people think. It’s your life –who care’s what other people think. Really–let that go and be the real you. We only have one this one life to live. Live it the way you want to.
Then giving up the ” should do’s” and the “have to’s”. Really question why you are doing things. Do you really want to? Or are you just doing them because you should do them? What will really happen if you don’t do them? Can you live with that result? Can you make a different choice to get the end result you want? Then make your decision based on that. It is a process. These choices we have made seem so normal and automatic to us now that sometimes we forget how the other 99% of the world is living. There really are so few have to’s in our lives but we assume that we must do way too many of them. Don’t follow blindly. I want to make my life just what I want it to be. And fill it with what I want. You can to. You have a choice.
So to the outside world our life may seem uneventful but really it’s just the opposite. Really we are choosing to exercise our choices. We aren’t living lives full of have to’s. We are living fully everyday. Not just on the weekends or when we go on vacation. Not just when we have time. And you can too. You have a choice–to put your kids in school or homeschool or really trust yourself and live your one life freely and Unschool.
Last Thursday I promised to share a new Friday feature and here it is Monday already! More about that in a minute. Last Friday we went to Slate Run Farm. If you are not far from Columbus, I highly recommend a visit to this 1800′s historical, working farm. They often hold programs here too so be sure to check their schedule.
As often happens in the Spring, babies are born on the farm-a few sets of twins even!!
So back to my new Friday feature— What’s On Our Table. As I said last week - I love to strew and leave interesting stuff around for my kids to play with. When I taught pre-school this was one of my favorite things to do; set up the environment for the kids. I have a small table in my dinning room that I like to leave stuff out on for the kids to find. I usually change this every Thursday (when I clean). I try to change it up as much as I can. So one week it may be a game or magnets or a card making station. I never put anything messy here. It’s usually something they haven’t played with in a while, an interesting book, things that wouldn’t normally go together or something that has a connection to something else in our world. Here is a wooden marble game the kids played with at the farm.
And here is What’s On Our Table this week.
Strewing is a great way to expose your kids to different ideas and activities. Things they may or may not find interesting. By no means are my kids expected to read these things I leave out or they must solve the puzzles etc… My only hope is that they find it fun or interesting. Who knows what will catch their eye and then they will be off looking for more information or a different way to do something. Sometimes these things spark an interest and sometimes not. I am always leaving interesting stuff all over the house but I make a conscious effort to change this table up once a week.
My hope is to post What’s On Our Table on Friday’s—feel free to share what you have strewn at your house too!
The week between Christmas and New Years. I am feeling like I am on vacation. We don’t have too many commitments this week. We still have family visiting and a few more Holiday events to look forward to. I might put some stuff away or not. I might start an organizational project or not. I might just stay in my jammies and eat cookies until I have to be somewhere at 7pm tonight!
But this is what the past week or so has looked like!
I made a cool mosaic at Big Huge Labs, but couldn’t get it to work! So you have to settle for a few photos posted haphazardly.
We have new games to play, books to read, a new trampoline covered in snow that needs to be jumped on, movies to watch, new toys to play with and lots of treats that still need to be eaten. What do you plan to do with your week between?
We have been very busy around here!! We read Sun Bread by Elisa Kleven and used her recipe to make a little sun of our own! I love, love, love her books. The illustrations are beautiful.
We made tin can lanterns
We made fire starters by dipping pine cones into melted bees wax
And we made these beautiful bees wax lanterns to hold a small tea light, by repeatedly dipping a water balloon in melted bees wax.
And then there has been the baking…………….
And the eating of course!
We are almost ready but still have a few last minute things to prepare and gather. Looking forward to the next week full of celebrations with friends and family from both near and far. We’re almost there!! Almost………
Not only was it dark because we only had 9 hrs of day light today but we also said goodbye to our much loved Rudy dog this morning. RIP boy. There will never be another Rudy dog!
Tonight we are reading books by lantern and sleeping in the living room by the fire. A little change of scenery for the darkest day of the year. Sniff, Sniff
