fitting in, part 1

Watch out for these dudes in about ten years.

Ok, wait. You'd better watch out for them now :)

A couple days ago the boys asked me if I could color their hair.
I smiled.
And said Yes.

(It's just washable markers. Works like a charm, and comes out slick.)

What does this have to do with anything? Namely, the title?

When I was in 10th grade, I colored my hair blue. On a whim. But 15 years ago if you colored your hair blue, you were a freak. Part of the alternative crowd. Now they have cheerleaders...teachers, even, with red and purple streaks. Now its fashionable. Its cool.

Anyway, my blue was totally temporary. (Washable markers, again.) And it was kind of fun...and a little frustrating...to wrap my head around the responses that people gave me regarding my new 'do. One teacher freaked out, seeing as how before that day I was apparently a Barbie Doll, super awesome student. But on this particular day, not so much. Now, I was one of those "alternative kids". I didn't fit the Barbie doll super awesome student mold anymore. (Interesting, since I didn't think I ever really had.)

I was kind of stuck in school, seeing as how the Barbie Doll thing never worked out (cheerleaders weren't too keen on my sarcasm) and the alternative crowd never worked out (they said I was just a poser). So there I was in a suburban mini-city (high school) where people ask "so what crowd do you hang with?" and no answer to give.

People, and their crowds, can be so elitist. Segregating. Rigid. Fenced in.
Fast forward 15 years. Present day.
I'd like to say that things have changed, but I'd be lying.

I've been thinking a lot about the end part of this darling's post, where she talks about having conflicted feelings about unschooling. I've also read (and re-read) the comments that were left. The whole thing gives voice to exact thoughts I've had on the same subject.

I think when you try to define a way of life whose basic belief is freedom, you run into all sorts of problems. How do you put a fence around that? When you start to define it, it becomes less of what it is, sometimes. I mean, if the point of unschooling is that the kids are free to learn, why do we have people snubbing their nose at kids who might want to pick up a workbook one day? Or play a game that (gasp!) might be described as downright edu-mah-cational?

I'm a member of some unschooling groups/lists, and sometimes I don't get it. The way things get picked apart, the somewhat elitist attitude that some seem to carry for subscribing to that way of life...or the you-clearly-haven't-done-your-research-about-unschooling-because-what-you're-doing-is-not-unschooling conversations that go on. Oh really? So if I'm not unschooling, what the F am I doing? I've never really understood how something based in freedom and flexibility can sometimes be so...rigid.

I mean, really. How can you not "fit in" to freedom? Isn't the point that everything fits?

I just get tired of groups. And rules. Boundaries that make no sense. Definitions that change. Trying to fit and knowing you don't. But still wanting a name. Wanting a way to identify yourself, if only to find other people like you. It was the same 15 years ago as it is today. Is it ever ok to do just do what we want? To hop in between groups...and maybe not fit into anyone of them?

Perhaps, when people ask what kind of homeschoolers we are, I should just answer...
well...
"we do what we do".
and smile sweetly.

Unschooling Therapy, Motorcycle Style

I just got back from 550 miles on the back of a Harley. And although I'm sure the bones in my backend might have worn through the butt of my jeans, it was well worth every minute. And for more reasons than I would have expected.

Hubster requested a couple days off work and showed up here with his brother's Harley. (Hubster's bike isn't quite built for a lengthy ride.) He said, "I'm off work for two days. Grandma and Grandpa volunteered to keep the boys. Wanna go somewhere?"

So we did.

Wait. Back up. I forgot to mention I haven't been on the back of a bike since I was 12. That was 18 years ago.

Its also worth mentioning a year ago, if Hubster would have shown up and tried to take me somewhere without a month's worth of planning taking place, I would have flat out refused. Without knowing exactly what route we were taking, where we were stopping, what we were eating, where we were staying, I wouldn't have been able to breathe.

Things are different now.

So we hopped on the bike (with very minimal things packed in the side compartments), the boys waved us off, giggling and cheering that MamaTea was a "Hot Motorcycle Mama"
(direct quote from the boys, by the way), and we sped off. We had a map. Our only plan was that we didn't really have a plan. We were going to enjoy the countryside and each other's company. Stop when we wanted to stop, for as long or as little as we wanted to. Look at what we wanted to look at. Eat where we wanted to eat. Stay wherever we wanted to stay.

It was kind of foriegn to me, as far as traveling goes. Its the first trip I've ever been on that was so unplanned. And yet it was total bliss. Really quite freeing. Totally relaxing.

It didn't take me long...somewhere around Stillwater, I think, when I started to realize that this motorcycle trip was much like unschooling.

1. The motorcycle trip was so much about something my husband and I wanted to do. Something we needed to do, for whatever reason. Something we believed would bring us closer together, to reconnect in a life/living situation that can sometimes be hard to connect in. (For those who are new to this blog, we share a home with my parents, and my husband spends his work week away from us, only coming home on his days off.)This time together was just about us being together and exploring whatever came along.

Unschooling is the same thing. Something the family enjoys because we want to do it. We feel like we need to do it, for whatever reason. We believe it will keep us close together in a life/living situation that might otherwise be really stressful. Its about us being together...and being free to explore and experience all the awesome things that come our way.

2. The motorcycle trip was really more about the journey than it was about the destination. We didn't really know where would would end up. We just rode. We watched. We smiled. We stopped. We hung out. We saw parts of the state I didn't even know existed. And where we ended up staying overnight wasn't even in Minnesota. It was awesome.

In unschooling, we have to focus on the journey, not the destination. How can we even know what the destination is? Can we really know where we're going to end up? There is something peaceful and yet so energizing about welcoming the adventure that is wrapped up in a day, instead of worrying about what the whole purpose of the day was.

3. The really cool thing about being on the motorcycle is that everything is right there. You could reach right out and touch it if you wanted. The wind is right in your face. The smell of the lake or the farm or the woods or the dirt is right there. You are smack dab in the middle of life exactly as it is happening...instead of seeing from the other side of a car window, within the safety and comfort of the climate controlled interior.

Unschooling...well, that's the beauty of it. You're free to be smack dab in the middle of life exactly as it is happening. Everything is real, because you are in it. Your senses soak it up because its all around you. Its not a picture in a book. Its not some far off hard to grasp concept. What you want to know is right there. You can reach out and touch it. That's the best part.

So, regardless of the fact I need to sit on an ice pack to soothe my poor back side, I had an awesome time. Then again, maybe that's another parallel between the two: Motorcycle riding, if done with zest and an unwillingness to give up, can leave you with (seemingly permanent) marks (bruises). I'm sure, in some way, unschooling and learning through life will do the exact same thing. But just like the marks from the motorcycle ride, it will be well worth it.

Proven by, of all things, Pokemon

Iggy has just recently discovered the world of Pokemon and was fortunate enough to score a "Pokemon handbook" from a garage sale. Yesterday he got wrapped up in his own sweet and lovely world and sat down to read it.

It always tickles me when he grabs a big ol'book and wants to read it. Because it consistently shows me, at least with my experience, that if a kid wants to know something, he will plow through those words he might not know to find the information he wants.

In this case, he wants to know all about pokemon.

And so he pushes through words like poison. And psychic. And a million pokemon names. He starts telling me all the attacks they have.


How do you know that? I ask, with a half grin.

Mom, it says it right there.

And so it does.

Lo and behold, working through those bigger words wasn't the only accomlishment. We also had to find out what a phrase such as 3' 11" meant. When Iggy realzied it referred to height, a whole new world was opened. I mean, figuring out how tall all the pokemons are, and how that relates to how tall Iggy is, or Mom is, or Dad is...that was the most interesting thing in the world to him.

So this little seed Pokemon is only an inch? he asks.
Yep.
He holds out his fingers to estimate an inch.
Wow. I hope no one steps on him.

Then he wanted to go through the book and figure out who was the tallest, who was the littlest, who weighed the most, etc. And I sat back and marveled at all the concepts he was sucking up into his brain. From a Pokemon book.

I'm sure I have friends and relatives who might suggest that Pokemon is useless crap.

I have to disagree.

Staying out of their way

A couple years back when I was publishing a lot of stuff, I wrote this article that compared raising children to growing a garden.

While in the garden today, I had another thought about gardening and how it relates to raising children...

These are the very beginning of the acorn squash plants that are currently growing in my garden. Aren't they lovely? Coming up so green and strong? Far more healthy and robust in their quest for growth than most anything else I planted thus far.

Here’s the thing. By all rights, they should NOT have even sprouted. I don’t know how they had the strength to push their lovely greenness up through the dirt. The hills were thrown in at the last minute. Where they ended up was much shadier than I had wanted. And as far as watering, they are just out of reach of the sprinkler’s spray. So if my brain isn't fully attentive to the garden, they go a bit thirsty.

But they grew. They are healthy. Strong. Just going about, doing what seeds do.

I didn't do anything but plant the seeds. I haven't watered them nearly enough, and any expert would say that where I planted them was terrrible planning.

But they grew.

And so it goes with kids. And school. I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever do anything. I've come to find out that is totally NOT what unschooling is. Sandra Dodd says, "When a mom thinks unschooling is doing nothing, she's not doing nearly enough." And this is totally true. So please don't think I'm suggesting don't ever water the garden or care in the least where you put the hill of squash to grow. That would be the equivalent of saying "The kids are unschooled. I'm watching Oprah and eating cheesecake. All day. They will be fine."

What I am saying is I think sometimes (or most times)we try way too hard. We put our nose and cheeks and entire face into places where we aren't necessarily needed. We interrupt things that might otherwise happen naturally if we'd stop interfering all the time. Seeds sprout up sometimes, regardless of what we did or didn't do. They grow because its their purpose.

I'd venture to guess that with kids and learning, its much the same.

Learning. Without Any Help From Me.

Iggy (6) has an Eyeball Animation drawing book – creature edition. A little gem he found at the Goodwill one day a couple years ago. Its a neat book with two giant googly eyes permanently fixed to the last page of the book and then sheets of blank paper that fit over and around the eyes…so the stuff you draw has googly eyes. He filled up all the pages with his own lovely creations and then the book was forgotten about. He recently found the book again and discovered that in the margins, there are little facts written by the author…mostly about greek mythology. Medusa, Centaur, etc.

Well, Iggy has suddenly decided that Greek Mythology is the coolest thing ever. He keeps going back to that book and plugging away at the reading (because he wants to know the facts, no one told him to know the facts) and then coming out and saying “Hey, did you know…”

This morning was the best though. He sits down to watch “Scooby Doo, Where Are You”, and apparently the mystery machine gang was dressed up for some party. And Iggy is in the living room and starts talking to whoever is within earshot, telling them who all the Scooby Doo people are dressed up as. They happen to be characters from Greek Mythology. Iggy identified them as: Daphne is Medusa, Shaggy was Cyclops, and Scooby was Cerberus “the three headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld, Mom.”

I had to smile. He’s all into exploring this subject. He wants to go to the library and get some books and he heard of an old movie that has lots of greek mythology characters in it.

The best thing about it though, is it has nothing to do with me. He’s all into it, and its his own thing. Which just goes to prove they are perfectly capable of learning billions of things without me having to hover over or make up lessons on certain things. Can you imagine someone saying they were actively teaching their kids Greek Mythology in kindergarten? They’d put you in the nuthouse.

It’s amazing what kids can come up with. All by themselves.

Unschooling...and record keeping?

When people ask me what I use for curriculum, I shrug and say “Whatever presents itself during the day.”

When people ask when we will be finishing up our school/learning for the year, I jokingly ask them when they plan on being done breathing for the day.

Unschooling makes me giddy. Excited. And never ceases to amaze
me. I’m finding that the most beautiful things happen when I toss a bunch of opportunities out there…and just watch. The boys find something delicious to lose themselves in and want to soak up everything they can possibly know about that thing. I’m ecstatic to be join them in the adventure. Its good to be free!

Then again…

There’s that pesky issue of record keeping (and norm referenced standardized testing) that comes with living in certain states. Mine included. So as awesome as it is to have come to a completely different definition of what learning is, and to know that every second my kids are learning millions of things….as far as the state is concerned, if I don’t document that learning, it never happened.

I remember being at the Minnesota Homeschoolers’ Alliance conference last year and hearing the keynote speaker talk about the lovliness of unschooling…and yet she was from out of state - a state that didn’t require record keeping or annual testing. So while the whole premise of unschooling was absolutely enthralling to me, I didn’t really see how it could work in a state that was regulated or monitored like ours.

So…how does one unschool…and keep the state happy?

My first idea:
What I first came up with was since there are only five required areas of teaching in our state (per the MHA handbook and several other sources), I figured I would just record the things we did in our daily life that fit into those areas: Communications, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Health/Phy Ed. (All other areas of education are optional, or so it says.) So I made up something on Publisher that was basically a chart of those five things which I intended to keep notes for the week on various things we did…and plug them in where they fit. Great, right?

Amazingly enough, there was an issue. And it wasn’t necessarily a bad issue to have.

There wasn’t enough room.

After one day of using this system, really looking at what the boys were doing in a day, and how it could be written down to appease the state…the chart that was intended to hold a weeks worth of learning “stuff”, couldn’t even handle what we’d done in a day.

So, back to the computer. I did a little research about other unschoolers who need to keep records and was brought to Leaping From The Box. Her method of recordkeeping is a great idea, and is something we have put into practice here (with a few tweaks for our own usage). Its been working well. The front of our page has Communications, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Health/Phy Ed. The back has Art/Music, Foreign Language, Religion/Philosophy, Independent Living Skills, Out and About, and Misc.

We've been using this system for the past week now and it seems to be a good fit for us. It should work fine for the state, and other inquiring minds (relatives)who want to know what we could possibly be learning. Its also a nice reminder for me, should I (when I) fall into a funk of thinking somehow we just aren't doing it right/doing enough/etc. It amazes me to see how much learning you can pull out of one day of just "being". Its a completely different way of seeing the world.

Where is middle?

I don't even know what I want. Isn't that crazy?

I love homeschooling. But every so often, I struggle with the question of what the hell am I doing. Not in the sense I'm not sure in what order to teach American history or what to cover in 1st grade science. I'm talking more along the lines of...well, everything else.

Daily I struggle with how much structure. We can't be super structured, because as has been mentioned before, planning school out with no wiggle room doesn't work well when Dad, who we all enjoy to spend time with, may be home. Or might not. Or maybe he will be. But wait, I guess not. (Law enforcement, I tell ya.) But no structure? My insane little men can drive me insane when left to their own devices for more than 4 hours at a time. I know adults who can't handle non-structure. So once again, the answer lies somewhere in that elusive middle. The middle part that isn't easily found. I am completely convinced that throughout the course of life, "middle" shifts around many times.

We have an issue right now with groups. We used to be a non-group homeschooling family. Now, we essentially belong to three. That meet every week. Its not working. Plop swimming lessons on top of that, and seriously. Are we doing school, or are we learning how to behave in a car? We went from nothing to everything. And not even really on purpose. Where is middle?

I've decided some of the same things that make homeschooling so absolutely awesome are the same things that make it really really hard. For instance, homeschool celebrates our individual decisions. The differences between us. The freedom to teach our kids the way we want. And while those are the things that make homeschooling so great, its also what makes homeschooling tricky. Its great to be different, but everyone is different. A homeschooler is not a homeschooler is not a homeschooler. So try to throw us together in a group setting and have a suitable outcome...hmmm. It can be chaos! Where as in public school things are planned out and you know what is expected (regardless of whether or not you agree with it)....things are planned out! (easy!) You know what is expected! (Easy!) (Amazing how the emphasis changes the meaning, eh?)

Homeschooling is awesome because its up to us. But its also scary as hell because its up to us.

I'm just a little caught up in that right now. That sometimes I don't know if we will ever find the right method of learning. Or the right group for what we're looking for. Cripes, sometimes I don't even know what we're looking for.

Like I said in the beginning, I don't even know what I want. Except, perhaps, happy boys. :)

Sun and Dirt = Happy Girl

I hate winter. That's been mentioned before.

This time of year, however, is perfect. You can smell the dirt. You can walk barefoot in the grass. You put the new-to-you (but previously used) clothesline into the ground and watch all the clothes whip around in the million-mile-an-hour wind...which is exactly what we did yesterday. It was fantastic. Nothing will lift your spirits like a sunny day and the smell of dirt.

Call me weird.

Life has heavily revolved around Earthy things lately (with Earth Day, weather, and Arbor Day...which is today) and its been fun to see how the boys learn and apply. And question. Yesterday when we were hanging clothes, Iggy mentioned that by not using the dryer, we were saving electricity. I agreed. He then wanted to know how we could wash the clothes without going inside. Without skipping a beat, he answers his own question by pointing to the creek that runs through the backyard. So apparently he thinks we are doing a load of wash in the creek sometime soon. "You know, like in the old days, Mom." He did suggest that if the creek wasn't an option (seeing as how there's a ton of algae), that we could warm a big pot of water over the fire and wash them that way.

Aw, my little pioneer. He's got it all planned out!

Thursday Three - Why We Love It

"It" being homeschooling. Or unschooling. Or whatever label you want to give what we are doing.

1. We don't have to deal with homework. I will never have to worry about how my kids will get off the bus at 4 pm with two hours worth of homework that we have to attempt to fit into our family time. For this, I'm thankful.

2. Alarm clocks aren't necessary. This is not to say there aren't situations my kids need to be up at a certain time, or that my kids don't have a decent hour they should be in bed. But it does mean that I don't have to worry about (as a friend said about her kids) "plucking the sleeping children out of bed in time to shove them onto the bus looking halfway decent". It also means that we CAN have a campfire or visit people (and stay late!) or have a movie night, and I don't have to worry that they have to be up at 6 am the next morning. They can sleep in until 8, and its ok.

3. We can just be ourselves and do what we want to do. Which basically means being a crazy family, exploring everything we can, going until we crash into a giggling heap on the floor.

Call us unschoolers, if you must...

Our family doesn't/can't operate on a real schedule. With a law enforcement husband, the grandiosity of Saturday/Sunday quickly faded because very often, days we can hang out as a family are not the traditional weekend, but instead some random Tuesday/Wednesday combo. Trying to plan, or relying on the days my husband is told he has off, doesn't much fly. I've done this cop wife thing long enough to know that when my dear husband gives me a supposed "work schedule", it will most likely change completely within the next 72 hours.



I came into life as a total anal retentive planner, and yet, homeschooling was sold to my husband partly as a great way to work around his schedule. (You can see where the issue might arise...) So in the very beginning it was me trying to plan school-at-home around his work schedule. Which was fine when his schedule didn't change. But when it did, I was freaking out about my lesson plans being behind. I would map out the month, and within two weeks, we were already "off". We'd not "do school" when Dad was home because, seriously...what kid, if they haven't seen their dad for a week, is going to care the least about long vowel sounds or counting to 100? Bring on the Daddy Love! Which was great for them and Dad, but then I was left with this Nag Lady in the pit of my stomach silently trying to change lesson plans while I was supposed to be enjoying the fact that my husband was home. Makes a great deal of sense, I know.

Long story short, I read some books (which I'll eventually get into a list on the right side) and changed our song and dance. There are so many different ways out there to learn, and I think you have to just find the one that works for your family. I think "unschooling", at this point in life, is our gig. The label can be a little wonky; from what I have read, there are about a gazillion definitions to the term. But at the heart of it, I think those dreaded "unschoolers" are what this family is destined to be.

9/11 = Transformers?

So...continuing on the September 11th thing, I basically gave my kids two books to look at (I'd ordered them a long time ago and they are full of tons of pictures, nothing too graphic in my opinion) and just said we can look at these and if you have questions, we can talk about it. Iggy mostly was just interested in 1. why someone would want to fly a plane into a building if they knew they were going to die, and 2. who in the world could hate America, like who exactly are the bad guys? Now you might think this is totally weird, but the only way I could think to explain anything remotely close to the whole September 11th thing was to delve into the boys' world of Transformers. Then, oddly enough, there were a lot of things they "understood"...as far as good guys/bad guys goes. Then the day morphed into us writing a Transformers story, and them each making a book from it and illustrating it. (They turned out really neat, actually.) And there you have it. The September 11th disaster in a kindergarten-like world.

Today, our learning took us to issues like "Mom, why doesn't this frog we found have any legs?" to "Maybe instead of reading this book, Mom, you could sing it." (Um, what?) We played badminton, went goose "hunting" (which basically meant the boys sat in the backyard with a lunchbox full of snacks and the "duck boats" they made a few days ago and made a lot of noise), and also spent some time explaining to Ooky why swinging a three foot long metal pipe at various fixed objects could be dangerous to anyone within eye or earshot. (We have yet to figure out where he found the pipe. In all "fairness" to the child, he was being Optimus Prime and it was his ax. I told him I didn't think OP had an ax, but what do I know?) We harvested all the carrots from our garden, made four loaves of bread and some chili, helped Grandpa haul things to the burn pile...man, I'm exhausted just typing it all down. As far as anything actually academic...Ooky told me that if I wanted to spell "cube" (this was during another Transformers spazz out) that it would be spelled "Q" and "B"...which I suppose, if the English launguage made any sense at all, would be correct.

The evening ended with another rousing game of Slamwich, and I was again told I was the best mom ever. (Wow, if that's all it takes...)I love doing games with the kids. I enjoy the time with them, and there are so many billions of things you can learn from games besides the rules of how to play. Any favorites that you gals like to play with your darlings?