I am blogging over at Ohio Moms Blog today

My post is about saying Yes to my kids more often. Below is a snipit from the post

……..As my kids and family size grew so did my impatience! “No” had become my knee jerk answer.  “Can I ……NO!”   “Will you….NO!” I started sounding much like a toddler with a new and powerful word and I imagine it was really irritating for my kids! Soon my predictable yet arbitrary NO had lost its power.

I think I am going to write more about this soon. Saying yes is just the begining, the start of so many possibilities.

This soup is so yummy and so simple with only a few ingredients. I am pretty sure this is a Martha Stewart recipe but I got it from a friend.

Roasted Cauliflower Soup

cut up 1 to 2 heads cauliflower into medium size pieces, toss with a few teaspoons veg oil and sprinkle of salt

roast at 450 for 20 to 30 minutes on a baking sheet

(try not to eat all the cauliflower at this point-once you roast, you’ll never go back to steamed!!!)

cut 1-2 onions and sautee in a Tablespoon or 2 of veg oil  or butter-I use oil and add a pat of butter for flavor.

add 1-2 teaspoons curry powder and roasted cauliflower

add 4-5 cups or 1 carton veg broth cook for 10 minutes

puree in blender–add more broth or water to make it as thick or this as you like.

note-My handy dandy very old vita mix is still kickin’!!

add salt and pepper to taste

I added a few pita chips on top…delicious!!!

It ended up being dinner for 2 tonight, so I made it extra special….because she ’s worth it!

Wednesday night on Discovery Health at 8:00PM there is going to be a Radical Unschooling piece as part of a Radical Parenting episode. Sarah Parent of Clan of Parents and her family were filmed to be part of the show. Her blog has more details on the filming process.

I am still floating around on my post conference high! I am re-reading Deschooling Our Lives and I just picked up Nurture Shock and Raising Our Children Raising Ourselves from the library tonight. I am also LOVING these podcasts called Whatever, Whatever Amen!!! Our local unschooling group is getting together so we can  watch this Astra Taylor lecture together and discuss it. I have already watched it once-it is long but well worth it. Very inspiring!!

Any body have any other recommendations for unschooling books, blogs, podcasts or websites I should be checking out?

Today I am blogging at Ohio Moms Blog

Relating all of our adolescent antics and high school foolery in and around the Cleveland area made me a little sad that my kids were not going to experience some of these same stomping grounds. I love when our neighbors here in Clintonville tell tales of when they were kids; the local schools they attended; Whetstone, Watterson, IC. Or when they recreate our street into farmland and our house into “The Doctors” house.

We haven’t been too crafty around here-well Ginger and I haven’t been. Molly on the other hand decided to make a hat on Sunday so she sat down with a measuring tape and paper and pencil and started measuring her head in all different ways and then doubling some numbers and dividing some and even quadrupling some. Asking me what I thought and honestly I had no idea. It really didn’t make too much sense to me but she is touched in that creative,       “I can see things in 3D”, sort of way so I knew she didn’t really need help, just needed to say it all out loud. She was making the hat with several panels, hence all the math.  She used tissue paper to make sort of a pattern and then a quick trip to the fabric store with her money and coupon in hand. She remembered Lina had a hat shaped like the one she wanted to make and thought it might be a good idea to look at hers. That hat was made a little differently than she had patterned. About 30 minutes later she came upstairs wearing this!!! Complete with her first time using the  zig zag stitch for the  eyes. Well done!

As someone that barely sews-Can you tell how impressed I am????

And it fits perfectly! All that real math. She did not use a typical equation or traditional route to get her answers but obviously by the fit, her answers were correct. It’s moments like this that re-enforce my unschooling choices!

I have been spending lots of time reading unschoolers blogs and really wanting to learn more about unschooling. Although we have been unschoolers for a while I am feeling the need to learn more and the need for more support lately. Not because I doubt it but more because I want to embrace unschooling more fully. I feel as though I may have been just talking the talk so to speak. Like giving my kids freedom to make choices with their time, money etc… and then inserting my opinion or worse taking back the control. I am feeling the need for an unschooling boost. So I have been reading Swiss Army Wife,    An Unschooling Life,   Kelly Hogaboom,   The Expanding Life,  The Organic Sister,   Childs Play,  Radical Unschooling,    Joyfully Rejoicing, Organic Learning. Whew! That is a lot of reading!!

But I am so interested in learning all I can about unschooling. I have even been listening to a few podcasts.  So between reading, writing, listening to and discussing unschooling, I have really immersed my self in learning all I can about it. I seem to do that often.  For awhile I will eat, sleep and breath recipes and cooking or raw food or photography or running. I seem to devote all my time to my current passions and then when I feel I have mastered the subject or exhausted all there is to know about soup, or I lose interest and find something else to investigate, I move on.  Often times I come back to the things that interest me although sometimes not.  Sometimes I have learned all I need to on say, how to make my own laundry soap but not really interested in the chemical make up of it. Leave that to the scientists, the people that are interested.

I see my kids acting quite the same way. They fill their time getting their questions answered or their activity, level, or project mastered whether that takes an hour or several days.   Once their needs are met they feel satisfied to move on.  They are setting internal goals and following their own timetable. How appropriate! And how real.  As Molly demonstrated it often involves math and reading or science and history and all those school subjects that seem to continually creep back into our lives as a measure of competency.   Can’t it just be what it is. Can’t it just be Wow-Molly made a great hat without all the educational baggage that comes with it.( For Molly it was this way-she didn’t know she was “doing math” she was just figuring out how to make the hat fit her head.)

I say educational for lack of a better term, school curriculum? I am constantly learning and educating myself as is everyone else in the world every second of every day-yet it often goes unnoticed when it occurs outside of formal school. The term “self taught”  usually comes with a wow factor or a a sense  of  “can you believe he/she learned that on their own?”   Really??? We are all self taught when it comes down to it. Even those who went to school for umpteen years-you didn’t learn everything in school. Some stuff we learned on our own, by following directions, looking on the internet, watching other people and by doing it ourselves.  It is those that earn that self taught label that followed their passions far enough to be accomplished publicly or are making a living at something they loved enough to practice and perfect.

The way that I am pursuing my interests isn’t any different from the way my kids are living their lives-yet no one is looking at me funny. Giving my kids the freedom to learn all the time in their own way, whether it be all crazy, and mixed up front to back or back to front or for two weeks or two minutes is huge. Imagine the possibilities. Imagine if you could spend your time learning  what ever you wanted. In the way that best suits you-reading up on the subject, joining a group, watching movies about it, talking to others that have knowledge on the subject. Really immersing yourself in that topic. Well our kids are doing that every day. And not just in one area because as so often times it  happens that one thing leads to another. So many things are related to another and learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in life. And in real life math is not separated from english from science from history. Only in school.

OOps I see it’s been a week since I last posted. We have been busy skiing, cooking and eating and trying out some new homeschool classes. I have been spending way too much time in front of the computer changing email addresses and joining a new blog group (more on that soon).  I hope to post more projects in the coming weeks.

We have been eating this for breakfast and dessert this week. It tastes like a home baked treat but really it is healthy enough to enjoy any time of the day. Or even multiple times!

Apple Crumble

You will need a 9×13 pan and about 10 apples

In a food processor puree 1/2 cup of raisins (I used 1/2 dates and 1/2 raisins), 2 lbs apples (about 10 small apples) with skin on, 1 tsp cinnamon

Line the pan with this mixture

For the crumble process 4 oz almonds, 5 oz pecans, 4oz oat groats soaked 8 to 12 hrs and 2-3 oz honey or agave. Add more dry oats if this is too wet.

Crumble over top of apples.

For the banana ice cream break up 4 frozen bananas into the food processor and blend until they reach a creamy consistency. This will take a while so be patient.

We added 1/2 a scraped pod of vanilla beans and a few squares of dark chocolate for chocoalte chip ice cream. Even my picky, junk food loving, husband like this ice cream!

I have seen many different additions to this ice cream–chia seeds, nuts, fruit–frozen or dried, carob powder or almond butter. I think next time I will add some mint leaves to make a mint chocolate chip.

This ice cream is really smooth and creamy and the banana flavor is not overwhelming at all.

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………