Tag Archives: language

a summer of unschool

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tomorrow is quinn’s first day of school! but not his first day of unschool… it’s roughly his 2020th day of that. and counting… by the way, in case you are catching up here after a while away (i know i have been missing some posts on blogs i follow throughout the summer months) quinn is attending our living school this coming year, a radically cool school that i believe will seamlessly mesh with our unschooling life. you can read my education manifesto here, and get excited with me.

 

i haven’t done a month of unschool post in 3 months, so here’s the whole summer in a nutshell! this summer featured lots of gardening of course. i have found that quinn chooses to participate occasionally, and more often than not is content to let me do my garden thing while he does his thing. and this way, the times he does choose to join in seem all the more quality. he participated with abandon, for example, in planting sunflower seeds we saved last fall, and our vast sunflower crop is just about to burst into bloom!

lots of fruit was harvested- huckleberries, cherries, blueberries, and again, there were times i went off and foraged and quinn chose to abstain, while the times he chose to join me were in general very good. (grumblings of “i’m never ever coming to pick cherries with you again!” were heard, but he easily shifted back into eating 1107 more cherries off the tree with sparkle stories coming through his headphones. he’s a good sport.) he helped with other odd chores, such as picking up grass clippings, watering in the greenhouse, feeding our friend’s goats, washing and setting the table, mixing pancake batter, and more, on his initiative.

we worked on interpersonal skills. (i always find it so funny to have to label such things- camping with friends is just life, it’s not just about socialization of children. but we did do some socializing.)

 

we spent time with baby pancake, who is doing her own unschooling, and excelling at it i might add. (here she is working on her fine motor coordination by picking up black beans and dropping them in a mason jar.) we spent time outside as much as possible!

indoors, we learned a lot of new games! we played twister, several kinds of monopoly, and quinn has begun a love affair with chess. he likes it in a box, he likes it with a fox. he likes it in a house and with a mouse. uno was also played, which is not new, but much loved in our family.

artsy craftsy things were a constant. quinn is way into coloring and sticker books these days. we also did some collage art, some computer “paint” program, and a large t-rex drawing in a cool coffee shop that had paper and colored pencils laid out on every table for customer doodling. that last photo shows how even stickers provide real-life skills needed as a bill-paying adult. (there are some in our household who might postulate that we may be approaching sticker excess….)

 

literacy. solidifying his grasp of letter sounds. keeping score at a baseball game.  pretending to read the newspaper. actually sounding out a few words here and there in storybooks (but he is often reluctant to do so and i am not pushing it!) and playing dinosaur train on the computer (one day at mama’s work). books we’ve read this summer: books about dinosaurs, mrs. frisby and the rats of nimh, and my side of the mountain, as well as lots of storybooks i didn’t keep track of. nimh is an old favorite for quinn, while my side of the mountain is becoming a new favorite.

 

he worked on numbers. he seems to like to see them in front of him, and will initiate this type of counting (with strawberries, or tortilla chip “volcanoes”) on his own frequently. legos are a big hit right now, and i can see the way they help with number concepts, just simply through play. he does some simple grouping/multiplying at times.

how is it that i have only one single dinosaur picture from this entire summer? this one is from the laughing planet cafe, the day he got a filling (hence the expression as he tries to suck through the straw with half of his face numb), and the cafe has dinosaurs on every table. what a find! oh, and the food is good, too! i happen to know that dinosaurs remain firmly on his very most favorite things list, so don’t be fooled by the lack of dino footage. he will talk your ear off about them and you will learn a lot. watch out.

there’s always so much i forget about as the days rush by. my haphazard phone camera method of keeping track of it all misses many subtle skills learned and projects undertaken. also missed are the things that are so fleeting and can’t be photographed- like when he learned on his own that when he stuck a toy propeller out his car window, it was super awesome and spun really, really fast. i know this somehow translates into his eventual love of physics as a high school junior, i just can’t articulate it at the moment. sometimes it’s just that i forgot to charge my phone and can’t take a photo due to low battery syndrome. but looking back, it seems to me we did have quite a full summer of learning and living and loving!

 

(and i’d be lying if i said i didn’t feel like this last day before kindergarten was a big deal. a big deal it is, i admit it! a happy one! a rite of passage, yadda yadda. oh, the mixed emotions of motherhood!)

simple poems

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“over the sight

over the dreams

down in the wonderful

honey full

streams!”

-2-26-12

“from the redwood oceans… to the new york houses…. to the new york forests…”

~a saturday in april

“i can see the still-wets of the ants as they march across my tent.” (still-wets = silhouettes)

5-20-12

in salvation army, with a pair of brown leather baby flip flops in his hand, “i want to buy these, just in case someday i have a partner in my tummy…”

6-3-12

when asked if he enjoyed the dance performance of alice in wonderland: “yes, i liked it so much! it was like hundreds of toys, being painted out of a box!”

6-2-12

“i wish there was a spirit everywhere that made all of our wishes come true”

~7-30-12

~a month (or two) of unschool~ expedition to the east pole

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i took last month off from posting, since quinn and i lost 3 whole weeks together. but i looked back and there were still a few gems from last month, so today i’m posting our last two months of unschooling.

~we’ve been learning a lot about how families come in all different shapes and sizes. and that families grow in all kinds of new ways and we count ourselves lucky for all that entails. all that matters is love, and being together.~

~we are still big on dinosaurs, drawing, and uno. we did some gardening in between winter storms~

~quinn turned five! and used the opportunity to work on his letters and drawing and coloring skills. he learned about the concept of plays/theater by hearing a sparkle story about martin and sylvia putting on a play, and by attending a play that rich starred in, called woman who fell from the sky (it’s an iroquois creation story, and was beautifully done! and young children were spellbound and only had brief blips of trying to interact with the actors on stage;)). the martin and sylvia story had them traveling to the south pole with roald amundson’s expedition (he was my great great aunt’s boyfriend, if family legend is to be believed.) quinn’s version was also a polar expedition, but his was to the east pole. i participated as the sled dog, and i am withholding the embarrassing image of myself wearing a kitty headband since i am in charge around this here blog. we built a shelter in the kitchen, transformed a yoga mat and booster seat into a dog sled, donned stylish explorer costumes, and stuck our pirate flag into the snow at the east pole when we arrived.~

~buttoning his own shirt and choosing his own outfit (awesomely rad, too bad about the photo quality) for attending the play as my “date”. checking out the paper-scultped masks from the play after the show, including his favorite, the dragon. reading, being, taking care of kitty, drawing in chalk, and getting to do “guy” stuff with rich.~

~learned all about track meets. exclaimed “make a loud sound like a cannonball!” and ran himself around imaginary tracks in the grass. cheered on his new buddy e while she ran.~

~finished reading the princess bride, read a huge book about dinosaurs several times, began reading the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. animal sticker book from my friend liz absorbed him for hours on end. found all the hidden dragons in a new dragon book. became a t.rex in the snow. found a newt that survived our crazy oregon coast “blizzard.” made and played with playdough.~

~made blueberry pancakes a few times, and in general helped mama cook whenever he felt the desire. helped mama garden whenever he felt the urge. planned out his own little garden plot, which will contain sunflowers, peas, and not surprisingly, dinosaur kale. read his baby scrapbook after asking me to tell him the story of “myself from when i was a baby to when i turned one year old.” drew, lived, breathed dinosaurs.~

~other fun stuff: he is learning about giving hints, and becoming more subtle with the hints he gives when he is leading a guessing game.

~sarcasm: in the store, i showed him a fabulous dinosaur raincoat on sale, and he told me with perfect deadpan, “i guess i could get used to that.” later he giggled as he told rich, “i was just joking with her!”

~surprises: and how not to give them away. sort of.

~plays: while he was putting on the east pole expedition performance, he kept declaring that he was “playing a game” and that we could use such and such for “the game” and i finally realized he was confusing “game” with “play”. makes total sense, given how much fun he was having doing it!

~practice/discipline: a topic that ebbs and flows for quinn, he has been cycling through another round of wanting to already know how to draw things, and has been asking me to draw things for him a lot, rather than attempt it, if he is afraid it won’t turn out well. so we are working on practice, and repetition, and being ok with not getting it right the first time, while i’ve also been doing a lot of drawings according to his direction that he has been coloring in with the most thorough attention to detail. he seems to feel incredibly secure in his ability to color (vs. draw) right now, although he is less confident in rich’s coloring abilities, which he likened to those of his two year old friend hope. (is learning how to insult people considered a life skill? ;)) to be fair, i don’t think he meant it as an insult, i think he just sees everyone he knows on a sort of coloring continuum, and maybe rich just needs to practice more…

a month of unschool

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~the pictures are always so dimly lit this time of year… but i noticed i could see my hands this morning as i was getting in my car, and i can tell there will be sufficient daylight for photography soon! ~ holidays are great unschool time: what’s not educational about sending a slinky down a block staircase?~ quinn’s new guitar was a big highlight of his christmas ~ as was the trip to the yurt, where he really started practicing sleeping on his own (top bunk) in earnest ~ ebay bulk legos are a fun new way to play creatively ~ knot tying is always a fun occupation when you’ve got imaginary crab traps to set ~

~books this month: the princess bride (s. morganstern) and amy’s eyes (richard kennedy) as well as lots of dinosaur reading, a book of native american stories called echoes of the elders, and some old favorites like amos and boris, and buoy. ~ getting outside is a rare treat this time of year but so needed: drawing on the beach again, and creating raccoon tracks to surprise the next people who might come along ~ helping make homemade pasta~

~he used all of the insect stickers grammy put in his stocking to make a beautiful forest drawing and told an elaborate story to us while he placed each sticker, going into great detail about the interactions between the bugs and how they were treating each other~ used his markers to work on addition of some bigger numbers than he had been tackling, and grouping/multiplying a bit as well ~ touched up the paint job on one of his homemade boats ~ was a rockstar (in batman sunglasses) for his trip to the dentist for cleaning (can i be proud that he chooses raspberry toothpaste over bubblegum and cookie dough? and what is up with dentists using those flavors anyway?!)~

~drawing and drawing and drawing and drawing… also lots more coloring (in coloring books) than he had been doing previously. he is very focused on art these days. (do i sound like a broken record?) ~ and of course, we learned all about snow! more than we have had a chance to learn in all the time we’ve lived in newport. speaking with 18 solid years of lake-effect upstate new york blizzard experience, this was a the good packing snowball-rolling kind of snow. alas, it was all gone the next morning! 😉

a month of unschool

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~unschooling, the great big un- we know and love… i’ve never particularly liked the name unschooling, i’d prefer to identify by what we are doing instead of what we are not doing… because really when it comes down to it, unschooling is whatever you decide it is~ it can mean trying out things that mama might find completely repellent (plastic light-sabre!? oy vay. at least it’s second hand…) ~ it might mean checking in with your tribal roots (that second picture is hard to see: he’s stuck bird feathers into the head of his hand-knit wool penguin, and has made something resembling a sun-god out of tinker toys ~  unschooling definitely means sleeping when and where you want and need to, being open to the things your body needs and wearing clothes you find comfy ~ it might mean an entire month of doing nothing else but drawing and drawing and drawing and drawing….

 

~it definitely means you don’t have to put pants on if there is nowhere in particular you have to be ~ it might mean that your halloween celebration is heavy on candlelit pumpkin dinners and light on high fructose corn syrup (or it might not!) and you definitely have a say in how much cinnamon goes into your blackberry applesauce ~

~ unschooling might mean that an enormous amount of scotch tape might be consumed in one 24-hour period, while you are discovering the fun of taping pages together to make larger canvasses for your work ~ it might mean target practice indoors, if that is what you are practicing and it happens to be rainy, and we all decide to ask “how can we?” instead of saying “we can’t” ~ it means mama might ask you what kind of muffins you want to make, and when you say carrot raisin banana nut, she might just go along with it and let you put the bananas in as spears representing “yew nork” state buildings ~ it means mama might believe in silly healing remedies like taking you to the beach on a windy day when you’re not really over your cold yet ~ it means you get to have halloween again if you want to, and carve a second round of winter squashes into jack-o-lanterns ~

~ if your dad is bob the builder, you might get to drill your own holes and sand your own wooden parts to build your own plane ~ if your mama is suzy sews-a-lot you might get to help stitch your new marker-organizer for your new collection of skinny markers ~ you might be holding conversations about our local foodshed and discussing the produce that happens to be in season before your turn 5 ~ but mainly you have lots and lots of time to work on your passion… and you might draw and draw and draw….

~and draw and draw and draw… (if you click on thumbnails you can see the dinosaur/creatures’ heads and feet in the larger image)~ oh, we did do some reading this month also: charlie and the chocolate factory and blueberries for sal came home from the library and were devoured promptly. we also chose a book about whales (quinn likes the harpoons…) and quinn has been pulling board books off the shelf here and there, and looking at them by himself.~

 

~you might have fun attempting to make little beeswax candles with mama, even though mama’s homemade candle wick experiment turned out to be an epic fail ~ you might learn your letters in your very own unique way, asking mama to spell out words for you to write, and asking every time she says a, ” is that a tee-pee with a cross bar?” and every time she says e, “is that a straight up-and-down with three lines and two canoe-cracks?” and every time she says j, “is that a fish hook?” ~ you might have a thing for umbrellas ~ you might eat your early thanksgiving meal at your play table, since it is where all the meals we eat at home are consumed (if we feel like sitting at a table, that is)~

 

you might grow one tiny melon that doesn’t make it through the chilly nights of early fall ~ but it still might be worth the effort

these are some of the things unschooling has turned out to be for us… because living it day-to-day, unschooling is defined by what it is, instead of what it’s not.

and what is unschooling to you?

 

a month of unschool is going to try being a blog hop- this will be experimental, and as with all things unschoolish, may prove to be either an epic success or an epic fail, or more likely, something in between. a way for us to share our many varied life learning experiences as unschoolers. if you want to participate, write your own a month of unschool post (i am not at all going to dictate any formatting! the sky’s the limit, and by the way, if you public school or waldorf school or school at home, i personally don’t think it disqualifies you from embracing unschooling and i guess i’m the boss around this blog hop- all welcome!) sometime in the next 10 days, click the link below that helpfully suggests “click here to enter” and paste in the link to the post you just wrote. you also have the option of hosting the linky on your post, so visitors to your blog can hop to the rest of the blogs joining in. by clicking the “get the code” link and copy/pasting the short piece of html into the bottom of your post. at least, i think that’s how it works. let’s find out! i will aim for the last day of the month to post, so it will be easy to remember for folks joining in. (it will also give me time to write my post, since i actually post about months spanning from the 23rd of one month to the 23rd of the next- quinn’s birthday. not that you needed all those details but maybe you wondered why halloween was going on for so long!) can’t wait to see what is going on in your unschool!

 

a month of unschool

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~praying mantis found and studied, released in our garden on the squash plant as it was glowing in the afternoon sunshine~

~finished up our farmer’s market season… reflecting back on how much of a helper quinn was this year, compared to the last two. he took on a few jobs that he really enjoyed, such as attaching the bungee cords to secure our weights to our canopy legs (lest our tent blow away in the maritime breeze), and setting up the driftwood blocks into fairy houses, crab docks, and bridges, to show how they “work.” ~ learning to put on a belt was motivated by needing a place to sheath his sword, which recently acquired a name, sting.~

~which, of course, derives from reading the hobbit this month, very exciting! ~ drawing is back in style- quinn ebbs and flows with his artwork, and right now he is flowing.

~new shoes were needed, and since the purple ones with sparkles weren’t available in his size (his first choice!) we decided to sparkle up some plain black chucks~

~speaking of shoes… shoelaces! you are pretty close to tying those bunny ears, and did it once on your new marker case that we sewed  out of fabric (first skinny markers!)~ and mushroom hunting, and outing we did this month with dada. you brought your spear on the mushroom hunt, just in case.~

~hiking in beaver creek a few times: tracks, leaf boats, woolly bear caterpillars everywhere… and almost always a stick in his hand~

~crabbing again! twice this month, though the first time we caught one keeper, and the second time, none: end of the season for now~

~a special auntie sent a hand knit crab which is dearly loved already (crab being one of his spirit helpers, and all…)~ tuna canning helper labeled each and every jar i put up (somewhere around 20!)~

~music was played~marble tracks were built and ad libbed~tinker toys became sun gods~

~helped me dip all of our (first ever for both of us) fried green tomatoes… yum!~ and having lots of input on food these days, both helping in the kitchen and becoming very specific in requests for certain foods (“i’d like a hot dog, some ketchup, some ranch, a plate and a fork” or “can i have twelve cheese sticks and a bowl of applesauce?”)~ we paid a visit to the new pirate ship playground in town~

 

~as always, time was spent in the garden~ digging potatoes~ harvesting popcorn, shelling dry beans, hanging up sunflower heads to dry~  first artichoke, first brussels sprouts, for quinn i believe they were his first tastes of both, as well as being the first time of growing them for both of us~

i’m so happy to see stacy at sweet sky joining in with her own month of unschool! i am sporadic about the exact date of when i post mine, so it may never be the “this moment” of unschooling or anything ;), but i do love to see others’ unschool ideas and happenings, and would love for anyone interested to leave a link for others to enjoy.

simple poems

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in your imagination…

a tree-trimming truck effortlessly becomes “a truck with a gi-hugic space mast!” ~10-2-11

“my first life was in alaska and i left my lights there…” ~10-5-11

(telling a story about quinn, bilbo, and the dwarves fighting smaug…)

“and as for quinn, his arms were gone, legs were gone, head was gone…. alll that was left of him was his belly button!”

~10-9-11

 

passing a big yellow bus…

“while i am four, i think that this (gesture indicating our car) can be my school bus.” ~10-17-11

  (can i confess that i secretly link this with his desire to stay four forever?)

simple poems

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“the rain comes out of the moon’s tummy.” 1-8-11

“i’m the tooth giver” (tooth fairy) 1-28-11

“we should make our own muffin cases soon. (they are just paper)” 1-28-11

his people, in their garden, had an empty muffin wrapper (post-muffin) that he wouldn’t let me compost yet because it was their round garden bed and they were “waiting for muffin season.” 1-28-11

“i decided you could be my milk spinner” 1-30-11

“my dream will be about big sunflowers, trees, rocks, holes in the snow, tracks in the snow.” 1-29-11

“i’m going to dream about sunflowers, trees and snow.” later, adding to his list: “totem poles, bus schedules, maps, buoys, rope, crab traps, fish traps, net…..”

the lovers, the streamers, and me

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mostly quinn listens to the same music i listen to, and really, really likes it. i’m sure most kids are like that, i know i absolutely adored the statler brothers and johnny cash growing up, and still have a big old soft spot for gospel. quinn is the biggest bob marley fan you will ever meet.  (it always sounds like “bop marley” when he says his name.) he enjoys the other bob as well (dylan).  he loves michael franti and spearhead, his favorite song being east to the west “one to the lorax who speaks for the trees”, and second favorite “yell fire”. he has requested the indigo girls more than any other artist, i do believe, with number one fave being “clampdown” and i am hoping when he is ten he will explain to me what the song is about, because frankly i don’t know. but it sure has a catchy tune. the heart swells with love to the extreme when kiddo begs me to “sing along with the indigo girls, mama!”  most people i’ve spent lots of time in cars with have been more likely to be opposed to the amount of singing along i do, but not this guy. another recent favorite is “the fishing song” (a.k.a. fishing blues, taj mahal, who sometimes plays guitar in the afternoons in the guitar shop my apartment was perched on top of when i used to live in berkeley.)

topping the charts on the mp3 player at the orange house these days: the rainbow connection. “i want to hear kermit the frog singing.” i have no idea where i had that song stashed, i don’t own any muppets soundtracks, but it snuck onto the player and randomed itself into the mix, and he was spellbound when he heard it. he asks me to sing it when the battery dies, and it can’t be on repeat anymore until i charge up the player, and is upset that i do not know every single word yet and i skip to the lalalalala part at the end. (thus chastised, i’m well on my way to memorizing it, now.) he busts out singing it randomly while he is playing:

“someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the streamers, and me!”

simple poems ~ story ice cream in a bowl

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i knew that as soon as i posted about quinn’s little one-line poems, i would find a dozen more in some pile of pocket lint lodged for “safekeeping” in a very safe, undisclosed location in my house…. undisclosed to me, that is.

11-18-10

“the trees are making it wind

and the wind is waving goodbye…”

later the same blustery day, to the sound of rain on the roof:

“like marbles rolling down a hill…”

and after i asked if he had seen a crow i was looking at:

“i didn’t see the crow and neither did he see me!”

and some new ones:

12-23-10

“i wish i could fly like a bird. like a seagull. i would eat fish. see, i’m catching a fish and i’m going to pinch a piece of meat and eat it.” (ok maybe not so poetic for those of you who don’t eat meat but….)

“i’m gonna pretend i’m a duck

then an eagle

then a raven

then a sun and a moon and an earth

then a SEAGULL!!!”

12-24-10

story of eagle boy and the baby bear; i promise, he really really did make up this story! i transcribed it from the audio recorder on my phone:

“one day there was a boy who flapped his hands with his arms out wide as he was pretending he was an eagle, and FLEW off! one day when the eagle boy was playing in the forest he heared a voice saying HELP HELP HELP! and flew out of the forest- he stopped playing and flew out of the forest and ALL the way and landed on a beach and walked to the edge and saw a little bear on an isl- washing up on an island. and then he saw that the baby bear was safe and washed up on the island. he had to find the mama and dada for th bear. i was walking and i saw him in the water as he floated to the island. ‘that won’t do,’ said the boy. alright. and if that happened, i would have to build a boat for y- a canoe for you. and you can sail. so the eagle boy made uh a kind of sort of canoe raft and threw it right in  SPLASH in the water. the baby bear pulled the island aboard… the baby bear jumped off the island onto the raft canoe and pulled the island on board. and the um eagle boy THREW a paddle down. the baby bear caught it, and paddled his way back to his mama and dada bear. and the eagle boy flew back to his mama and dada gir-l- his mama was a girl, his dada was a boy. ’cause it was time for lunch- ’cause it was time for eating- ’cause it was lunchtime. how’s THAT story?”

me: that’s WONDERFUL!!!

“yeah! for dessert. THAT story was good for eating for dessert. yeah. i could put lots of the story ice cream in a bowl, and put lots of dessert in there.”

(eagle boy picture blast from the past… 23 months old at yaquina head)

1-5-11

looking into the woodstove:

“the orange is like the sea. there is dark orange below and light orange on top. the log is the boat, floating on the sea. the sparkles are the cleats on the boat. the steam is the lines on the boat.”

have i mentioned we are boat-obsessed? 😉