Aaaah, Mornings

Every time I see the morning school bus going by our kitchen window, passing up our house, I am reminded to be thankful for this way of living: thankful that no one from our house is rushing out the door to get on board and thankful for all of the experiences and the time we get to share together instead.

First Day of Spring

What a beautiful day!!! After a trip to Jump Zone with some friends, we spent the rest of the warm, sunny afternoon in our backyard reading, playing, swinging, feeding the birds, and jumping on the trampoline. Below are pictures of the kids playing in the dirt: Riley digging, Seth playing with trucks, and Maya on an earthworm rescue mission.

And from earlier in the week, here are Maya and her good friend Rebecca all dressed up to play and jump on the trampoline.

Celebrate, Learn, Love

Last Wednesday there was a lot to celebrate. The weather was warm, sunny, and beautiful. Seth was so, so happy to be digging in the backyard dirt with his construction trucks. The date was 3/14 -- "pi day," so in between playing outside we messed around with the compass, making circles and measuring radii, diameters, and circumferences, and, of course, eating pie. We looked up some stuff on the web about pi and ended up doing a frozen-hotdog-throwing experiment based on Buffon's needle problem. It got quite messy as the hotdogs thawed, making me even more grateful that it was warm enough to do this outside. We discovered that it was also Albert Einstein's birthday, so we read some about him and played a little relativity game that we came across online. We mostly liked reading his quippy quotes and ended up printing and cutting out a bunch of them to tape up on the wall along with a big poster of Einstein that Matt used to have in his office. Riley's favorite quote was an explanation of relativity:

"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's relativity."

My favorite:

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is."

Here are some other quotes of Einstein's we read that, as an unschooling Mom, I love:

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry."

"Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything learned in school."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning."

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...It takes a touch of genius -- an a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

That last one brings to mind many things that our society makes"bigger and more complex" when it comes to life with children. From the time they are born, we're told to regulate and schedule and control our children's eating, sleeping, and even their play. As they grow, we're encouraged to rush them to master new physical/academic/social skills, to push them through all kinds of exercises to get them reading early and a lot, to separate from their families, and to make damn sure they are not behind. Where I've followed that path, it has clouded the opportunity to witness the miracles of my children's lives unfolding right before my eyes; and parenting has felt like a stressful ordeal. Where I've stepped away from that path and moved toward unconditional love, toward trust, and toward connection, the miracles of learning, growing, discovering, loving are right there to enjoy as they are allowed to unfold simply, naturally, and beautifully.

What We've Been Up To

Matt and the kids have all started skateboarding recently. Well, for Matt it is *re-starting* after a 10-or-so-year hiatus. Below is Riley the day he learned to drop in on our garage mini ramp and Seth rolling around on some leftover masonite in our family/play room. We've made several trips to area skateparks lately and rented Ollie's, the local indoor skatepark, one afternoon with some friends from our homeschool groups.

This is how the back of our van was packed for us to spend a couple of hours at Ollie's. I have no idea how we are going to squeeze in suitcases and all for our upcoming trip to Florida in a few months!!

Besides skating, the kids have been spending a lot of time drawing, doing some of the experiments that Robert Krampf emails out, reading, playing on the Webkinz website, and watching scary movies. They recently discovered R. L. Stine's books and have been happy to have some spooky stories to read. Riley is most of the way through a book from the Ghosts of Fear Street series, and Maya and I read one from the Goosebumps series.

I finally finished making this hat for Maya!! It was a project I started after the 2005 Live and Learn Unschooling Conference, where I had learned about round loom knitting. (That's not a typo -- I started it in 2005) It had been in my closet for a long time til she remembered it and asked me when I was ever going to finish it!

by Riley

by Maya

by Seth

While Matt was lounging on the beach, er, I mean away on a business trip, in Clearwater, Florida, the kids and I shopped for Webkinz pets and then spent much of the week playing on the Webkinz website. They've been having a blast (admittedly so have I) playing the games and activities to earn points to buy virtual food, clothes, toys, furniture, etc. for their online pets. Today they decided to pool their resources, gathering and cleaning up some old toys and outgrown clothes to sell so that they could each adopt another pet.

We also spent an afternoon at the Cincinnati History Museum at the Cincinnati Museum Center. This was our first trip to that part of the Museum Center. The kids loved the room with all of the models of downtown Cincinnati, playing in the old street car, and seeing the model of the Zoo as it looked when it was first built.

They also enjoyed playing with the toy steamboats and flatboats, shipping cargo up and down the Ohio River. Riley and Maya liked touring the big model steamboat, but Seth thought the noise was too scary.

Happy Birthday, Maya!

Today was Maya's 6th birthday. We had a really full day with presents at home, then a homeschool day at Jump Zone, and ending in a birthday get-together with some very sweet friends for cake and ice cream and more playing. Exhausted now, we're all chillin' with a movie (monkey-themed, of course). I'm incredibly thankful for each and every day we spend together. It's a wild and amazing adventure, and I am so filled with love for this girl!

Poised to play

This must be my boys' preferred position for serious play. On the left is Riley playing the board game Huggermugger. On the right is Seth playing monster truck demolition.

Low-Key Learning

Monday was one of those really nice, low-key, unschooling days where there are no real plans and the day can just unfold and flow as we go. We are all in various stages of recovering from the flu, and it was the first day we had all felt like doing anything more than lying down! We were still too pale and red-nosed for any pictures, so I'll just describe our day here.

Riley and I woke up first. We had breakfast together, and then he wanted to play Uno, which we did. When Seth woke up, he joined us as my partner. After the game, Riley went to use the computer, and Seth wanted to play more Uno. We each played with our cards face up so I could help him see his choices for moves and he could see mine as I talked through what I was doing. After a few hands, he went on to watch Dora the Explorer.

Maya woke last and wanted to look at Riley's pop-up version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Riley and Seth joined us, and we read some of the story and enjoyed the pop-up art of Robert Sabuda. Inspired by the story, we decided to go make paper fans. After making several, Maya and Seth decided to draw and Riley went off to practice martial arts moves with his fans. He and I went again to the computer to research more about using fans in martial arts.

By lunch time Riley looked pretty wiped out and took a nap. Maya and Seth came to the kitchen to help make lunch. We cut and shredded cheese for mac and cheese, trying a grater, knives, and a pizza slicer. After lunch Maya and Seth went their separate ways to play in their rooms while I did some cleaning. Later Maya and I counted down the days til her birthday and talked about party plans, Seth worked some puzzles, and then the two of them had a jumping contest and set up an obstacle course with the couch cushions in the living room.

We did finally get out to go to tae kwon do since it was Riley's day to lead class. Maya and Seth were wiped out by then and fell asleep on the drive there and slept until we got back home.

After dinner, Maya wanted to work on Valentine's Day cards, so she, Seth, and I did this while Riley and Matt watched a movie.

Reflecting on January

Welcome to my blog, Unschooling Snapshots. The photo to the left is of our kids, Seth(3), Riley (8), and Maya (almost 6).

January started off with such mild weather, and the kids and I had the nicest trip to the Cincinnati Zoo that we've ever had. The animals were all so vocal and active -- so different than when we visit in the hot summer months! From the antics of the gorillas and polar bears to the vocalizations of the flamingos and tigers to the creeping of the snakes in the reptile house, we had such a blast watching and listening and laughing. You can watch these gorillas or the zoo's Sumatran Rhino or some views of downtown Cincinnati on the zoo's ICAM here.

The latter part of the month got much colder, so we hunkered down in the house a lot more: reading, drawing, watching movies, playing...

...and welcoming the two newest members of our family, our guinea pigs, Eureka and Matilda.