How Can We Not?

"Monday morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found him so - because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday, it made going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious."

- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer (1876)

If there was ever a book about playing hooky, it was Tom Sawyer. The young hero of this classic American book - a staple of every junior high reading list - is skipping school from the first chapter. That Tom is a smart kid. He knows that all the magic of childhood lies elsewhere, not in a classroom. Escaping school, carefree and barefoot by the Mississippi River, he is at his imaginative, creative, adventurous best.

Is this book an anthem for homeschooling, or what?

I still get a funny feeling once in a while when I'm wandering around town during the daytime. Here I am in my late 30s and I still sometimes feel like I'm supposed to be in school. You know how when school was in session, and you had a doctor's appointment or something, some kind of excuse for not being in school, and it felt deliciously subversive to be out on the street, among the living? I still get that slightly giddy feeling of freedom from time to time.

I want my daughter to feel that freedom is her natural state. Not something that she has to steal a taste of, like forbidden fruit.

Yep, we've pretty much decided that we're going to homeschool Amelie now. When I started this blog the jury was still out. But the more I learn about it the more I think, how can we not?

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Tom Sawyer

Preschool at Home: 101 Ideas (Part 1)

1. Fingerpaint.
2. Catch butterflies with a net, observe, and release.
3. Make edible bracelets by stringing Fruit Loops cereal onto plastic cord.
4. Do simple yoga poses with your kid, like Dog, Tree, or Boat Pose. Here’s Amelie doing Boat and Dog. (Pictures courtesy of Grandma & Grandpa.)


5. Make your own playdough: Mix 2 cups flour, 1 cup salt, and 4 tsp cream of tartar into a cooking pot. In a bowl, add 4 tsp of cooking oil and 4 drops of food coloring to 2 cups of water. Pour the liquid into the pot. Cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, until it looks like mashed potatoes. Cool the dough and knead until smooth.
6. Bake your favorite low-sugar muffins.
7. Sing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” with hand movements.
8. Spread some glue on paper and drizzle with sand to make sand art.
9. Plant seedlings.
10. Fill plastic eggs with rice (halfway full) and tape shut to make shakers.
11. Make mini pizzas with premade dough, sauce, and cheese.
12. Make sun tea.
13. Make handprints in paint.
14. Create a scavenger hunt for things in nature like pinecones, feathers, and leaves.
15. Make a fort out of sofa cushions and sheets.
16. Paint rocks with washable paint.
17. Give washable toys a “bath” outside with a small bucket, water, sponge, and lots of bubbles.
18. Make masks (and decorate them) with paper plates and string.
19. Make sunprints! Place a fern, flower, or other object on sunprint paper and set in the sun briefly. Rinse with water and viola - a beautiful image appears. You'll need a sunprint kit; find one here.
20. Have a letter of the day and find things/words that begin with that letter.
21. Put up a birdfeeder.
22. Read books about the alphabet.
23. Trace your child’s body on a huge sheet of paper, and have your kid color it in with clothes, a face, or anything.
24. Go to the library and browse for picture books.
25. Make fun-shaped mini sandwiches with cookie cutters.
26. Sing “Ring Around the Rosy,” circling and falling together.
27. Read books about numbers.
28. Put on a 70’s dance song and rock out together.
29. Go into a dark place like a fort or closet and read books with a flashlight. (Amelie loves a good, dark closet these days.)
30. Play in the sand.
31. Make up a song about the sun.
32. Pick wildflowers.
33. Press and dry your flowers in a heavy book. Use them for art projects later.

Unschooling, Unraveled

Potty pride! Amelie is having a bit of a love affair with her potty these days. How did she learn to use it? I can't really say. She was motivated.

The process of learning, whether it's the potty or long division, is an elusive one. And it differs from child to child. That's why I'm interested in the idea of "unschooling" - the most radical form of homeschooling. Unschoolers toss out all formal methods of teaching in favor of a child-led approach to learning. For example, you're in the supermarket with your kid and he notices a starfruit, so you might take that starfruit home and do some research together and find out that it's native to Sri Lanka. And then your child might want to learn about Sri Lanka or botany or fruit cultivation. Etcetera and so on. A lesson unfolds. Sort of like life.

I have a lot of respect for people who unschool. It's like cooking without recipes or performing improv theater. It has a creative and free-spirited feeling to it. It's about surrender and trust. But I wonder about the lack of structure. Would it work for Amelie, for me, for her daddy? Without structure, I feel unmoored. I'm not sure that we will become card-carrying Unschoolers. Instead, I'd rather see unschooling as just one tool in a big grab bag of homeschooling tools. A fun one, at that.

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unschooling

MIA No Longer

Having a blog is a lot like having a pet or a houseplant. Neglecting it brings a guilty feeling. I'm back to water my poor little withering plant, this time from California. We're here visiting the inlaws (see Grandpa with Amelie, above), and since the inlaws are crazy in love with their granddaughter and willing to spend countless hours entertaining her, I should have lots of time for things like blogging. But instead I have been buried alive under a landslide of freelance work. This is both good (having money is nice!) and bad (I have all kinds of strange body aches from hunching over this computer).

I don't want to whine about not having enough time. Isn't it funny how time is a kind of currency in our culture? We're all flat broke; nobody has enough of it. And we're always talking about it. I even heard a retired man recently remark on being "pressed for time." There's a good article in this month's Yoga Journal called "Strapped for Time? Try Radically Changing Your Relationship to the Clock." I read it eagerly, wanting to feel time-rich. The author suggests that we start thinking about time in a new way, focusing on not just chronological time (clocks and deadlines) but also extraordinary time ("a state of intense focus, of being in the moment...what musicians and athletes describe as being in the zone"). In other words, make time when you can for activities that let you do this (creativity, gardening, sports).

What if you simply can't make space for these things? Then you can cultivate "timefulness practices" (like mindfulness practices), such as becoming more aware of the time between activities and taking a break instead of just rushing onward to the next task. And here's one piece of advice I really liked: Spend time with someone who follows their own rhythm, like a child. Kids live in the moment and teach us to try to do the same.

Is it possible that homeschooling our kids can help us heal our relationship with time? I like this idea. I will try being on Amelie time for a little while.

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I've Been Memed

When I started blogging several weeks ago, I had only the vaguest understanding of blogging culture. I just chose a topic and sent a few posts out into the ether. So I'm surprised and delighted to find that I'm making a few blogging buddies out there. Virtual friends! It's a cozy feeling. The blogosphere isn't such a scary place, after all.

Anyway, I might be new to blogging, but I do realize that "meme" is not really a verb. It's more like a game of "tag, you're it." I responded to RegularMom's meme post, so now she has presented me with five questions to answer. And then if someone comments on this post, I get to meme them back with five questions for them to answer on their blog. Fun.

So here goes.

1. What’s the funniest or strangest thing that happened on your wedding day? Michael and I wanted to low-key it with a small, secular wedding at home. He is allergic to weddings, and I had already done a biggish bonanza the first time around. So we enlisted a local Justice of the Peace to do the honors. We met her once and she seemed nice enough. She had a sweet little script that she let us read beforehand. So we knew the ceremony would be brief. But we didn't know that it would be a drive-by wedding. It really was. Just when the ceremony was set to start, a car pulls up at our place and out of the passenger seat comes the Justice of the Peace. Her friend, the driver, stays in the car. Was the engine still running? That's how I remember it. So out comes the Justice of the Peace, adjusting her robe, and joins our little gathering on the lawn. She performs this tiny service, three minutes, maybe five, tops. And then she jumps back in the car and POOF - she's gone. But this woman is an artist. By the time she leaves, just about everybody is crying. And Michael and I are husband and wife.

2. Are there any artistic talents out there that you WISH you could do, but just aren’t gifted with? Oh, I tried so hard when I was a kid to draw and paint as beautifully as my father does. With some practice I did passably well. I'm rusty now and can hardly draw a simple horse on demand for my two-year-old. It comes out looking like a demented dog. But what I really wish I could do was sing, really belt it out like Aretha Franklin.

3. What is your favorite time of day? It depends on where I am. When I am in Greece (I have been five times) my favorite time is sunrise. You can see the day break open over the sea in the most spectacular way. But here in mid-state New York, with all these trees and hills, you can't see squat at dawn. I suppose right now my favorite time of day is when I realize that my toddler is finally asleep. Tonight it was 9:35 p.m.

4. Describe what you did yesterday. Yesterday was a good day. Since the hubby was traveling, I took my little girl over to this place called the Sunshine Club Playhouse so that I could work for a couple of hours in the morning. They have great toys over there so she was in heaven. I did some editing work and also managed to squeeze in a yoga practice before I picked up Amelie. I am a much nicer person after I do some yoga. Amelie and I had lunch and I took her to music class with Uncle Rock, our local treasure. Rock-and-roll toddler music. It was a blast. Amelie is not one of those kids who sits still and listens. She rocks out! Then we had some quiet time at home, and later two girlfriends came here with their kids for dinner. We had a lovely little feast with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Amelie really wanted to taste the wine. She is going to be a party girl.

5. Coke or Pepsi? Coke. Although I have to say, it's been a while. I practically marinated myself in Diet Coke when I was in high school/college. I'm afraid to think of what it's done to me. (Not the Coke part so much as the Diet part. Yeesh. What was I thinking?) These days I grab an Izzy natural soda. Every once in a while I get a little hankering for a Coke. But never that Diet crap. I'm so over it.

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