We love Halloween around here! Luckily I had my act together before we left for vacation and was able to decorate the house before we left.
In the midst of post vacation laundry we had time for a little fun this weekend.
I found this cute and easy boo branch idea at Paint Cut Paste.
Yes indeed…The longest day!! It was amazing for it to still be so bright after 9:00pm tonight! I love these long summer days and nights. It is beautiful sunny days and long bright evenings like today that get me through the long dark winter here in Ohio. I am already storing up as much as I can!!
To welcome Summer today we went creeking
Ate lots of watermelon
Made wreaths from different plants in our yard
and set out some treasures from our creeking adventure
Happy Summer–here is to hoping it is filled with fun and adventure!
A couple of posts ago I told you all about my new hooping obsession. I also told you I invited Lara from Superhooper.org to come to Columbus for some free classes—And she did!
She loaded up her tunes and her hoops and drove her car–yeah, I know I was a little disappointed she didn’t drive the green bus—-to my house. I invited everyone I knew and a few brave and wild women showed up–along with lots of kids!
Here she is pumping us up and talking to us about the moves.
We all learned so much in a couple of hours it was so great. Everyone had so much fun. Even a little rain couldn’t scare us away from the hoops!
This woman was awesome!!! She could move!! And this was even after she ran 5 miles that morning for her half marathon training!! She is my inspiration!!
Thanks Lara!!! I have been practicing the moves that you showed us!! Can’t wait to hoop with you again sometime!
If you ever pass me while running you may wonder why I am smiling or giggling-it’s probably because I am listening to a funny podcast. I love to listen to podcasts and while I run is a good time to try keeping up with them all. Lately I have been listening to The Moth, RadioLab, This American Life, Fresh Air—Love NPR!
Recently I listened to House On Loon Lake on This American Life. The story takes place in the 1970′s –back when I was a kid. The main character, Adam, and his friends are pretty young-I think the story begins when he is about 10. (I listened to this several weeks ago so I forget the exact details but have been stirring up this post in my head ever since) Adam and his friends discover an abandon house during their summer vacation. To quote from the website:
Adam Beckman tells the first part of his story, about how, back in the 1970s, he and his friends broke into an abandoned house in the small town of Freedom, New Hampshire. The home turned out to be a perfect time capsule, containing the furniture, letters and personal effects of an entire family … abandoned for decades. It seemed like the family just vanished one day, leaving salt and pepper shakers on the table, notes on the bedroom mirror, and a wallet with money still inside. Adam and his friends read the letters, saving some as clues, and never forgot.
The thing that really struck me about this story is the fact that these young boys spent their summer vacation-unsupervised, sifting through this abandon house for an entire summer.They were having an adventure of a lifetime. But the fact that they were actually having this adventure is what is so cool to me. Their time was their own. It was their summer vacation. It wasn’t over scheduled with sports practices and games and camps and mini-classes and summer gym to free up an hour during the regular school year to cram in more credits for real classes. Nope–no schedules. It was summer vacation.
I too grew up in the 7o’s with this same sort of “supervision”. “Where you going? Be home by dinner time ” mentality. My parents weren’t any more permissive than other parents. They weren’t driving us around and taking us to see every cool thing that came through our town. We occupied ourselves. We rode our bikes, played in the woods and in fields. We went to the pool and ate candy and ice cream and drank pop on a regular basis. There were few parents at the pool and even fewer at the park. We weren’t obese, we weren’t hovered over, there weren’t too many expectations of us other than maybe 1 practice and 1 baseball game a week, don’t leave your bike behind the car or in the sun because your kick stand would melt into the hot asphalt( and my Dad didn’t like that.)
We ran the neighborhood and beyond. On Friday or Saturday nights my family would gather at my cousins where we would eat steak ,baked potatoes , baked beans and salad and then run their neighborhood, sneaking into the golf course and playing kick the can across all the neighbors yards until well after the 11 o’clock news when Hoolihan and Big Chuck would start.
I would often spend the night at my cousins and in the morning we would get up and have our “cherry bread” for breakfast. (white bread dunked in cherry kool aid–it was awesome!) Then we would get on our bikes or skate boards and ride down the big hill and hang out on Euclid Ave and in Coulby Park for the day. When we got too hot we would head over to the library for some AC. If it rained we played in the garage. We didn’t have cell phones and we didn’t keep ID in our pockets “just in case.” There was no talk of “stranger danger” or Mean World Syndrome. (it’s a real phenomenon- I didn’t make that up! But why would we be surprised by this–there is fear and distrust everywhere). And kids today are missing this freedom.
They are missing spending their childhood in a child like way. Kids are tagged and numbered and scheduled and carted around. They are safely delivered to their destination that is well with in walking or biking distance. They are helmeted, sun-screened and not allowed to trust their instincts. Don’t walk in the woods, check for ticks, watch out for poison ivy, stay out of the mud, call as soon as you get there and wash your hands. Don’t talk to strangers, don’t dill dally and who are you talking to on the Internets? Parents are making sure to cover ALL the safety bases these days! Kids have so many rules and regulations that when they do get a little bit of free time they don’t even know how to handle it. Let alone how are they going to handle life with out Mom and Dad breathing down their necks and telling them what to do. Can you say–go crazy with all the new found freedom?!
I will not and do not live like this. I want my kids to do daring and dangerous stuff. I want them to know their world and have a handle on it. Go–be independent and figure stuff out with your friends. If you need me I am here. ( But funny thing is, they don’t need me too much for that kind of stuff. They are self reliant and self confident in their world. ) I am a hands on parent but only to a certain degree. And I think living in the real world where they are making real decisions makes all the difference. I am not scheduling their days or their play dates or their bed times. I want them to go into the world, the park, the woods, the bus, the mall, the library, to restaurants and stores by themselves without me there controlling what they buy and how they spend THEIR money. They are perfectly capable to interact with kids and adults and make most of their own decisions.
At a conference I attended John Taylor Gatto talked about how when Richard Branson was young his Mom took him for a drive and then stopped the car and asked if he knew the way home. He said he did and she told him to walk. He did and said it was one of the greatest learning experiences of his life. Extreme-yes. But following your kid around with an appointment book and a bottle of water and a protein bar is also ridiculous. Let them go. They crime rate in this country is at a 30 year low!!! For goodness sake–turn off your 24 hr news updates and quit reading all the bad news in the newspaper. Read this article about how CSI Changed Parenting. Don’t be so afraid to let your kids play outside and maybe even unattended! Let them have adventures. Chances are more than good that they will be unharmed and fine!! And the chances are even grater that they will have fun and learn more real life stuff than you could ever artificially schedule for them.
So who is going to join me on Saturday May 22 for TAKE YOUR CHILD TO THE PARK AND LEAVE THEM THERE day??? Maybe this could be a small step for those who fear the reaper…leave your kids for just a short amount of time until you can get used to the idea that they will be fine with out you. And they can realize just how powerful they are to be able to navigate the playground on their own. There is still time. Summer break is still about a month away. You have time to wean your self from each other just a little bit so that kids can have real, unsupervised adventures this summer!
And don’t send them with water–send kool-aid–they like it better and chances are–that’s not gonna kill them either 
Taken from Enjoy Life Unschooling’s April blog carnival theme
This months theme is “To Open”.
Have fun, get messy, make mistakes 
What does open mean to me? To be ready to experience things that come my way. To let go of preconceived ideas and notions of things or the way things “should be.” Not letting fear run my life. This is something I have to work on everyday. Acceptance of things the way they are. This is hard for me because I like to be in control. It is comforting for me. In some ways this is a really good trait. I am organized and love taking care of details. But I can go overboard too. Yet, the more I let go and open myself up the easier it is becoming to really live in the moment and trust that things will work out the way they are meant to. I don’t have to try to control everything to go my way. What a relief!
What doors do Radical Unschooling open for me? Most of my control is just an illusion but still a comforting one. So I get how hard the idea of unschooling is for some people. Just the idea of letting go of all that control you think you have is really hard. But when I do let go, little by little it becomes easier to free myself of so much baggage. I can really see and feel who I really am. Not who I was” supposed to be” or how my neighbors see me or who friends think I am. But who I was meant to be. Learning to let go of the seeming control I had over my kids has been huge! Fighting over arbitrary rules because I thought that they were necessary. Doing things just because everyone else was and what would they think if we didn’t?! How awesome that my kids can have this true love and acceptance now. They don’t have to wait until they are adults to lose all kinds of crap; assumptions and expectations that were put upon them just to eventually find themselves—the selves they were born to be. They were born to be just who they are supposed to be until we try to change them to fit a mold to make things run seemingly smoother. I say seemingly because now I know how much easier an unschooling life is. How much easier it is to live life on our terms everyday instead of the school systems way or our parents way or the mainstream way. Our life is not an illusion. It is everyday real!
How have I opened since discovering unschooling? Unschooling has opened this path for me. The real trust that you have to find and develop to unschool has opened my family up to so many possibilities. To choices I never knew were there. We really are free to make decisions, not coerced or biased decisions but what we really want. And we can do that because we are open to support and trust each other. And now to show just what an unschooling geek that I am: I relate everything in my life to unschooling. It is so weird how I find evidence everyday, multiple times, that shows me just how right and perfect this unschooling path is. I hear a story on the radio or I read something, I see someone loving what they are doing. All things that don’t have anything to do with unschooling per say–but somehow I can find a link. Just another way unschooling has opened me up to hearing and seeing more and more just how natural unschooling really is—ok I’ll stop now! 
(I told you I was a geek)
I tried to fix the funny spacing–(that isn’t there on purpose)–but the spaces aren’t on my draft-sorry.
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!
