More farming and fall fun

We just had such a huge breakthrough today that brought tears to my eyes.  My husband and I tend to read through all the philosophies on learning and pick out from that what fits or resonates.  We tend to be fairly unstructured in our home and agree with Holt "... the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it."  But at the same time both my husband and I have experienced that without some guidance we tend to get overwhelmed with choices, discouraged by the difficulties finding focus when the path is unlimited.  My independent 4th year college French was fun, but I was frustrated that I really didn't progress much with it.  So we try to have a blend of structure and choice.  We plan our schedule-which is also determined by my part time work-but we roll with changes or with sudden inspirations.  This year I chose a Waldorf curriculum that gives me an outline that fits where our boy is developmentally and interest-wise, but we are not limited by that at all.  Do know, dear reader, that this is what works for us now and may not for you and yours,. What I hate most about many parenting trends is the need to insist that there is one-size fits all, and to waste negative energy criticizing another's paths smacks to me of insecurity about your own.  I come from a long line of teachers and respect their work, and am thankful for all those that help teach my son.  But I did feel a further vindication and happiness this week knowing that what we are doing, imperfect as we may be at times in our process, is working despite us as my son conquered one of his greatest challenges, writing. 


We have had things run pretty easy for us with most subjects, math, history, science.  We do math in lots of ways, books  some of the time, more often in games, measurements (cooking, building), observation, and he grasps concepts easily ahead of what I remember doing.  Reading he seemed to pick up himself overnight when we really held back from pushing it formally.  We read to him daily and for long periods, we played some phonics games in kindy year but our first years of language were pretty unstructured.  One day 2 years ago he picked up "The Hobbit" and read it through.  The same with science and history, he loves them and he wants to learn more, well above what he would if in a classroom.  But his writing, eh, has been his least favorite.  Spelling and grammar actually come to him quite well from his reading.  But the act of putting pencil to paper, painful.  I sensed that with all the ideas in his head one day he would just take off, so just kept nudging him without making it a horrible chore, trying to find any way to slip some short and fun writing time in.  Today he resisted again but I asked for 15 minutes.  And at 15 minutes he was so absorbed he didn't want to stop.  When he brought me his story he said "I never want to sit down and do it, but today I realized that when I sit down and start that suddenly I really love writing and I didn't want to stop!"  


But lest you think it is all fairies and fun here, there are painfully hard times, too.   I am not going to focus on the moments where we realized he has misplaced his weather journal he has written in for 2 weeks, nor the not so stellar mom moments where I became frustrated at being the only one looking while he was playing with the dog/Legos/or the piece of lint that crossed his path.  Oh so much pain comes along with the joy, but don't they make it all worthwhile?


In other news, we toured the local salmon hatchery with homeschool friends, saw enormous spawning salmon filling the ladder and learned many interesting facts about the process, all of which brought up just as many questions as answers.  Conor then went off that evening on an overnight at a sheep farm, details of which he will tell you  below.  We practiced some form drawing skills, pulling out some patterns which tend to help kids who still have a few issues with reversing letters  from time to time.  We met with friends to practice a play we will perform together to celebrate Michealmas, the automn festival.  And although not very Waldorfy, I introduced Conor to the online game "Timez Attack".  He was at first intimidated and frustrated by the speed of the game as it tested his level and tested much lower than where we have been working.  But we have never really memorized times tables well, and he suddenly got very into the game and is moving along rapidly.  


And the masterpiece, only slightly edited.  The best part is that when I went to copy it tonight I found that he had it hanging in his room proudly.  

Tilth Fair!

We continued our foray into our farming theme with a weekend trip to the Tilth Harvest Fair.  Here Conor fell in love with the idea of making a new chicken coop, and since carpentry is on our list of projects for this year, this might be our second project, after our workbench is built.  This would be for the baby chicks he would like to get in the spring.  We have plenty with our 5 gals, but 2 are getting on in years and it might be handy to have a few more for the eggs.  And we rescued all our girls so never went through the egg to chick process, which he really wants to see.  So maybe in the spring...  Other highlights from Tilth for Conor was the beekeeping booth, honey being one of his favorite treats.   We learned more about queens, drones and worker bees and how the bees make honey.   We also are continuing to enjoy "Farmer Boy", today learning about oxen yoking and block ice cutting and storage.  Since I have been incorporating more and more permaculture into our home life, doing this is almost just an extension of what we do regularly in our house.

Seeing our homeschooler friends again at the community center where we take drama was great fun, and the class even more so.  Since this community center was once a navy base, it also now has large grounds behind the building in use as a pea patch, off leash, playground, playfields and more.  So the kids love just being able to run free there for an hour or two.  Hah, those poor, unsocialized homeschoolers!

We have also faithfully kept up our daily weather journal, and very excited about our new weatherstation to take our own measurements!

Conor would now like to tell you what he has learned about sheep in preparation for a farmstay this weekend with his dad, masterpiece to follow after the trip since today we are off to drama.  Tomorrow we have a field trip to the salmon hatchery and then piano! 

Sheep Facts

Sheep are ruminants, which means they have 4 stomachs and that they cough up their food and chew it up again.  They also call them cud chewers.  Sheep can provide us milk to make cheese, butter and milk.  Sheep also provide us with wool to make coats and sweaters.  They can also provide us meat and also use their skin for clothing.  Sheep can also be used to keep your grass down, they eat grass, clovers and forbs.  A forb is a flowering, nutritious plant.  You can tell the difference between a sheep and a goat by their tails, which are usually down in sheep and up on a goat. 

Third grade begins!

Once again it is fall and we are not back to school again!  Funny, we really are life learners and have experienced huge leaps in development during the summer when we weren't formally "doing" anything, but my son really enjoys the excitement of starting a new year of school.  When we order new books or materials it is like Christmas, and he loves to tear into them.  We also do report our progress with a local school district in order to get funding for our adventures, so we do follow their schedule when kicking off a new year.  But it is fun to start anew, thankful that we have the chance to follow what works for us now, that we are truly comfortable with it, and we can also change it whenever we need. I am not one to follow the rules of any one philosophy of homeschooling that sometimes seems as controlling as the schools they scorn.  Really, I don't need to trash anyone else's choices to justify mine, we don't all have the same needs and most certainly not the same children.  I came from a line of teachers and don't disrespect them at all, I love how the other teachers in my son's life influence him, and also love how much he teaches me.  We prefer to take from lots of ideas, keep them all loose, and fit what works and what he seems to need this year.  

This year we are excited by just a little more structure and routine, something I know I need a little more of because it does not come naturally and I see that my son, like me, has a hard time focusing if the choices are unlimited and no clear direction.  We also resonated with many of the aspects of Waldorf education that manifested in developmentally appropriate learning, simplicity, focus on the whole child, heart, hands and head.  The third grade year of Waldorf seemed to fit perfectly with where our boy is at in this year from 8 to 9 years, so I used those school funds for a curriculum for that lets us fit what works for us, at our own pace and schedule.  Which means we kick off with a Farming theme, which also goes well with the 5 or more farm related events we were planning to go to in the next month.  Already Conor is jazzed to get up in the morning and have some little rituals to start the day.  Daily weather journal, and starting the morning with a candle and a good morning song are his favorite things.  He baked us some zucchini bread (how that went from yuck to yum) with the overabundance shared from a friend (ours just weren't that prolific this year), skillfully measuring and remembering without cues his fractions.  It was eaten up very quickly!

 

We get outside at least twice even during our totally home days, even if just for short walks. We are already writing more than ever, and just generally excited about learning.  And of course, about reading, this is how I see him most of the day when not running, nose in a book!

And yesterday kicked off our outside classes where it was fun to see our homeschool friends, some of whom we haven't seen since classes finished in the spring.  Drama started at the community center, with our beloved teacher, Ken.  I peeked in and saw the kids enthusiastically following the exercises and just happy to be back.  After class was the usual 2 hours of free play around the grounds outside, I never caught the full story but I know it involved royalty, seeing as my son was disappointed I interrupted him before a crown could be made for the leader, Tui.  No children were harmed despite the proliferation of long sticks.  Aikido topped off the day, another enthusiastic and energetic hour of discipline and form.  Since dad was at a late meeting we celebrated our first week with a shared pizza a la Tutta Bella before returning home from our long day out.  We have another fun day home ahead topped with another favorite, piano, and then this weekend the Seattle Tilth Fair!