~a month of unschool~ how did paul revere text?

this past month was very full! as all summer months seem to be.

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~games~ quinn has been pretty fired up lately about angry birds games, and though we do limit his screen time to 30 minutes per day, he seems very focused on games in general. he is exploring how to make his own games (with paper and for example, using the paint program on my laptop to play dots-and-boxes) as well as playing games with us. he also seems to be in full-time project mode, always making something involving paper, markers, scissors and tape. often the paper games are angry birds oriented, but other times they are based on other themes. he also has invented quite a few angry birds games that he plans to develop, (you know, once his computer science training is wrapped up) including angry birds “ice” (which is about penguins) and angry birds “hedwig” which is, of course, about owls.

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~quinn is interested in map-making, and we have done some maps of our garden (i had drawn one to help myself plan my planting, and made him a copy of it to color in and utilize however he wanted.) this was his drawing of foxglove from the garden.~

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~we’ve been attending one day per week of the our living school summer program. quinn has become fully steeped in the culture surrounding the ols show-and-tell morning ritual, which involves tea and closing chant and various rules of decorum such as saying “does anyone have any questions or comments?” and then saying the name of a person who is raising their hand (rather than just saying, “what?”) quinn has showed his photo of the bird who visited our house, his map of the zoo from goodnight gorilla, his star wars sticker book, and a small notebook he made by cutting out small pieces of graph paper, stapling them together, and enlisting me to write out his agenda for the next time he visits the aquarium, as a checklist.~

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~one of the lessons we got to be a part of at ols was for the 4th of july.  we got to look at a replica of the declaration of independence, and watch re-enactments of the ride of paul revere and the battle of lexington. the best part of quinn’s day was watching the battle of lexington reenactment. for me, it might have leaned towards listening to the kids animatedly discussing how slowly word traveled from the colonies to england in the late 1700s, when there were (gasp) “no cell phones?!? how did they even text?!!!!!!?”

“they must have had to go home and send it from there!”

“or maybe even… write it down on paper!”

~

we also took home a fourth of july crossword and did it together, from which discussions of george washington and the first 13 colonies were started.

quinn expressed to me that he wanted his own hook and cubby at school. it makes me happy to see him feel a sense of ownership for this school. since we were going just one day a week, we arranged for the time being to have a hook (with his name above it) and will see about a cubby this fall. this fall’s outlook for school is still a bit up in the air, but i will talk more about that soon.

 

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~camping~  so much learning going on at the campsite. quinn learned about the inside of a firework from a word scramble worksheet, and then got to set off some of his own at the campsite. there was also lots of river fun, bucket helmet pretend play with all the kids, and all manner of outdoor fun. ~

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~we spent about a week hanging out with my mama friend vanessa whom i’ve known for 6 years (practically ancient times in internet years) but only just got to meet in person! we had a lot of fun, and quinn and noble seemed to sense they had been pisces brothers since before this meeting. in fact, they took right off, discussing how “we are almost exactly the same!” listing their age, the fact that they’ve both lost teeth, that they both almost skipped the same number when they were counting landmarks on the map of the trail we hiked, and that they both like to collect sticks. there is a whole world of background to the story of my friendship with vanessa and the dozens of other women i met through her online, and it ranges from mind blowingly beautiful love and support i have received throughout my journey as a mama, to other times that were incredibly ugly and painful and heartbreaking. but i really feel like the boys summed so much of it up for me in a nutshell how i feel about all these women, my online tribe, which has fragmented over time. i think if we could ever get past the surface of things, the outer bits where we see how we differ as parents, women, citizens of the world, and focus on what’s inside, we really are almost exactly the same.~

 and of course, more of the usual:

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~kitchen elfing~ also not pictured, car washing and vacuuming.~

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 ~beach romping. quinn has been having fun picking out his own clothes to wear, and this general theme revolving around his red/orange shorts has been popular. he wears it with either a red or an orange shirt, often with red socks if they are clean, and sometimes even a red hat and his boots or sneakers with red on them. he usually has a theme he is going with, though i am not sure how this red/orange look relates to being an ewok. (it just does.)~

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~oh, and you know, the inescapable learning that goes on due to living, as we do, on the discovery channel.~

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3 comments to ~a month of unschool~ how did paul revere text?

  • Leticia

    I want to meet Vanessa too!! (pouty face)
    re angry birds: felipe plays it when he is with his dad. at home, he re-creates it with blocks and marbles and seashells etc. He builds things and then knocks them down, basically. I love it when Quinn and Felipe do the same thing at the same time! Maybe they are the same person too… (wink, wink – because we all are!)

    • i love that! it is so fun to know they do the same things. yes, quinn plays a lot more at his dad’s but i do have angry birds star wars on my phone. he definitely re-enacts it the same way felipe does. how cool! they would have such a blast together.

  • […] games last month quinn was in game-making mode, and he made another one this month. it was once again inspired by angry birds star wars, but this one i could actually follow, and we played a successful round of it. i was all for borrowing dice from another game to get playing, but he came up with his own unique idea for rolling how many spaces we could advance. he grabbed a penny, a nickel and a dime, and we shook the coins, advancing the total value of change of the coins that landed on heads. it kept it very interesting, because we could go anywhere from 0 to 16 spaces, with various numbers in between. once you arrived on one of the planets, you had to roll a perfect 16 to get back out again, and you had to visit each of the three planets before you could advance to the game’s conclusion. […]

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