Beginning to explore education options more deeply

Lily is turning four in a couple of weeks.

Last month she started teaching herself to write words. She has been writing her name for a while now - and occasionally a couple of other words like Mama, Papa, Nana, Grandpa and Grandma.

But last month she made the connection that all "things" have "words" and all words have "letters".

And that if she wants to write about something she can find the word (in a book, on a sign, on a toy) or ask someone what the letters are and then she can write the letters that make the word, that represent the "thing" that she wants to write about.

And she is THRILLED with this discovery.

She has a new mode of expression and she is having SO much fun with it -- labeling her pictures, making cards, writing letters and addressing envelopes, drawing on our chalkboard...

And when I witnessed the amazing process by which this learning took place -- in our car, at our dining room table (which is actually in our living room because the former "dinette" next to the kitchen is now a play area), at her nursery school, at my parents' house, at the grocery store and just about anywhere else we went in the last several weeks -- it made me realize that learning can and does happen EVERYWHERE!

Which made me feel really excited about the idea of unschooling our kids.

And so I spent the next several weeks moving/dreaming in an unschooling direction...gathering items off Craig's List and Freecycle, like old (but working) digital cameras for my budding photographers and aquarium tanks for our growing critter collection, and checking books out of the library on insects and gardening...and feeling really in the flow of life while I was doing.

And then I crashed.

I had a couple of events that I was hosting -- a blessingway for a friend's new homebirth midwifery practice (the first in our state in 100+ years) and a potluck picnic for our friends and family -- and a writing assignment that made my heart sing and suddenly my needs and the kids needs seemed really at odds.

And we all started fighting a lot. And I tried to push through with my stuff (because I was really, really excited about the events and the writing project and not having time/space to do them felt really frustrating).

And things got more and more tense.

And then I thought, "There is NO WAY I can homeschool (or unschool or roadschool or any of the other cool things I've been reading about) because I will go totally INSANE!!!"

I need some regular blocks of time away from my kids (or anyone else who wants anything from me) to create and dream and write and do whatever it is I most want to do. I do not enjoy ALWAYS having them with me and ALWAYS having to take their needs into consideration.

And then I started moving/dreaming in the direction of them going to school -- a charter school or a Montessori school or a Waldorf school (yes! I realize the philosophies are VERY different and some would even say opposite) or an Enki school or some other awesome school that I don't even know about yet!

And then Thursday (Lily has preschool, Quinn has daycare and I get to write, or garden, or both!) and the energy in our house was SO peaceful. And we parted ways joyfully in the morning and reconnected joyfully at noon and life felt REALLY groovy and fun! And I thought, Yes! School really is GOOD for our family.

And I talked to my friends whose kids go to school and they told me all the things that they love about it. And all the things they love about what they do while their kids are in school.

And I continued to think, Yes! School is REALLY good for our family.

And then my friend who is finishing up a year of homeschooling her kindergarten-aged daughter and exploring options for going to school for first grade said that her big concern is how much time kids are away from home.

When would we do all of the fun things that we love to do with our kids?

(In our house it's reading books and having our morning sharing circle where we speak our intentions for the day and do yoga and sing songs, writing in our journals, working in the garden, going on nature walks, and collecting eggs and visiting with our chickens, and having a weekly "adventure day" where we do something different/fun, and cooking, and baking, and listening to my daughter act out plays with her wooden animals while I cook dinner.)

When would we do those things if they got on a bus at 7:30 or 8 o'clock and got home at 3:30 or 4 o'clock, five days a week??

So now I'm starting to feel myself dream/move in the direction of a cottage school that meets two-three days per week...where we get some of the many benefits of a school community, and I get a regular chunk of time for my work, but we are not committed to a five-full-day school week schedule.

To be continued....

More contrast...more growth.

It's tempting to skip over the last couple of days like they never happened but I know that doing so would be dishonest to myself, and to anyone who might be reading along with my happy-fun-mothering-adventures.

There have been many wonderful moments in recent days, most especially our potluck picnic at the park on Sunday, and the creation of my new dating column on kidoinfo.com, but there have also been many long, dark, angry, scary, trudging-uphill-in-a-snowstorm moments.

And I am once again examining who I am as a person and mother and who I want to be.

In the last week, and especially in the last two days, I have been ugly and angry and disrespectful and violent (physically, emotionally, verbally, energetically) with my children.

And the whole time I have been feeling angry and trapped because if they would just start behaving themselves, I wouldn't be so frustrated all the time.

My two-year-old has been biting my four-year-old and my four-year-old has been throwing food and books and toys at my two-year-old and at me.

Yesterday I read Scott Noelle's Daily Groove and it spoke to me so deeply.

THE DAILY GROOVE ~ by Scott Noelle
www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove

:: Blessing the Mirror ::

Today, stand before a mirror and bless it for the gift
of reflection...

Thank you, blessed mirror, for helping me
see myself, so I can use that awareness to
express myself more authentically.

Thank you for letting me see when my face
shows signs of stress, so I can shift my
thinking until my reflection indicates that
I've found my way back to Well-Being.

You know where this is going, don't you? . . .
Your *child* is the mirror!

When you don't like what you see in your child,
there's a good chance s/he's reflecting some aspect of
yourself that's out of alignment with Who You Really Are.

Be open to seeing that. And remember that it's rarely
a *literal* reflection. Children often reflect their
parents' shadows in exaggerated or quirky ways.
Follow your intuition.

Bless your beloved "mirror" and focus on being true to
your Self. Eventually, your child will reflect that
Truth back to you.

http://dailygroove.net/mirror

Feel free to forward this message to your friends!
(Please include this paragraph and everything above.)
Copyright (c) 2008 by Scott Noelle

I have been repeatedly telling my kids over the last several days...

"It's okay to feel angry but it's not okay to bite"
"It's okay to feel angry but it's not okay to throw food at your Mama."

...and threatening them with consequences and putting them in Time Out (yet another of the many things I vowed I would never do).

Meanwhile, I have continued to do exactly what I am trying to teach them not to do.

I am taking MY anger and frustration out on THEM.

And when I step back and look at the words I have been using and the energy behind them, as I am now, I feel sick to my stomach.

I know that the way that I have been acting this week is NOT who I am and most definitely not who I want to be.

Thankfully, I have a loving and supportive partner who patiently and gently put kids to bed the last two nights when I just couldn't do it.

And I was able to get out and take a walk alone and work in the garden and return just a short time later with a fresh perspective.

I am simply out of balance.

Really that's all there is to it. And as a yoga teacher I *should* know this, right?

But it's so hard to see it in your own life. And when there is so much chaos and anger around you, it's so easy to point at everyone else and say it is their fault.

I love my children dearly and I love being their mother. But I also love being a writer and a teacher, and working in my garden, and learning new things and dialoging with other adults.

And I am a much happier, calm, centered, joyful, present mother when I acknowledge and honor these needs.

And yet I still keep pushing forward (with a clenched jaw and knotted stomach) with this idea that it wrong for me to want to be away from them. To need to be away from them. And that if I just keep trying hard enough I will somehow figure out how to balance it all at the same time.

And it's not working.

So today, once again, I am deeply grateful for wonderful and nurturing childcare so that I may have this time and space to explore these feelings, to rest and to recharge and to, once again, find my balance.

life is good...

Spring Peepers: Week five (maybe six??)

The chicks are now out in the barn in the extra stall next to Roosty and the "big girls". Cleaning out the stall was quite a project (one I opted to do without any "help" from kiddos :-).

The chicks seem to have adjusted pretty well and are enjoying the extra room to move and practice flying. They were a little freaked out at first by the rooster's crowing and the squawking of the hens as they lay their eggs, but they seem to be settling in to the new sounds.

I hope, at some point soon (if the weather ever gets warm), to start putting them out in the yard in a wire dog crate so they can start scratching for bugs and eating grass.

The stall before I cleaned it out:


The displacement factor outside the barn (which I'm still working on cleaning up):


The chicks check out their new digs:


Lily and Sarah:

Spring Peepers - Week 3

It's been quite an adventurous week with our basement-dwelling chicks!

One day last week (Wednesday, I think) I went downstairs to get, ironically enough, chicken out of the freezer for dinner and discovered one of our little chicks hanging upside down with its leg stuck between two metal bars (firewood rack holding the heat lamp).

Lily was upstairs putting our her boots, which I've made mandatory for visiting with the chicks as the wood chips are not quite as fresh and clean as they were last week.

I scanned the plastic wading pool and realized that it was her beloved friend, Cocoa, who was injured, and I thought possibly dead.

I yelled up to Lily to please wait at the top of the stairs and as I did that Cocoa moved a bit. And that is when my first official chick rescue began.

Well, almost.

I kind of hopped around in a circle for a minute or so trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do, wanting to call someone (I have no idea who) to help, but realizing, once again (though it still never ceases to amaze me), that I am the Mama. I'm the one in charge who is supposed to remain calm and know what to do in emergencies.

I stopped hopping in place and flailing my arms and took a deep breath.

I was able to slip her leg out (without really looking at it because I was afraid it was going to be broken and horrible to see) and she snuggled right in to my chest. I brought her upstairs and explained what happened to Lily who suggested that we needed to give her Rescue Remedy and lots of love energy, which we did.

Lily examined Cocoa's leg and reported that it was not broken, just badly sprained and that she needed to be snuggled by her best friend Lily.

After about a half an hour, we brought her back down with her friends, where she hopped around on one foot for the rest of the day.

By the next morning she was walking, gingerly, on the leg and within a couple of days, there was no sign of the injury.

All was quiet with the chicks for a couple of days. I started noticing that taking care of them (fresh water and food twice a day) was becoming a bit of a chore for Lil.

But then they started to change. Virtually overnight, they went from cute fluffy little chicks to awkward teenager chicks, which apparently Lily finds even more beautiful than the fluffy babes.


They have lost most of their soft fuzzy feathers and their new feathers are showing their distinctive markings.

They are starting to attempt flying more regularly and are beginning to take interest in what is beyond the blue plastic walls containing them.

This weekend we will move them out to an empty stall in the barn where they will have even more room to roam and partake in their teenage chicken antics!

Fun Finger Foods

Tonight we had a dinner that was so well received by the under-four crowd in our house, that I want to jot for future inspiration!

We've had a lot of favorites in the last couple days - chicken-broccoli and yummy tacos - so I really didn't feel like doing much cooking tonight.

So, while John took the kids to the playground to play, I whipped up some mini-bagel pizzas (mini bagels, jarred sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese - easy peasy).

I wanted to serve a veggie with it and decided some edamame (in the shells of course - so much more fun to eat when you have to pop the beans out of their shells!) would be great.

I know the kids love edamame but the bagel pizzas were new (you'd think pizza would be an easy sell but Lily is quite particular about the sauce the cheese ratio and the amount of "spicy-ness" that works for her) so I thought I'd put out a couple of sure things like a bowl of olives (fun to slip onto all of your fingers) and peanut butter with pretzel sticks for dipping!

The theme on the table this week has been Matchbox Cars so it just all came together really nicely to be a super fun and easy meal.

Half-way through the meal, Lily started using a little dump truck to dump edamame shells in the shell bowl, and Quinn was bulldozing some olives around the table.

I think there was a time that I would have thought toys at the table and finger foods were not good for dinner, especially not Sunday Dinner, but tonight was one of the most relaxing and fun meals we've had in a long time!

And no one was jumping up from the table after five minutes to run off and play. I think this was one of the longest meals that both kids contently ate and played at the table!

And there was very little kitchen clean up after we ate since there wasn't a whole lot of mixing and cooking involved -- which is always a hit with the over-30 crowd in our house! ;-)