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.