making all the specials happen!

This past month we accomplished the seemingly impossible: every member of our family was in a different state for several days. GULP. This mama's heartstrings were pulled tight and long. It was mind over matter, my friends, mind over matter.  The great thing was that we were all doing what we really wanted to do: Eliza was flying off to Seattle with friends from her baby days there, Ani was embraced in her Mormor's care in Madison, Dan was busy doing his theater thang here in Ohio, and I was driving with my dear Jen, through the crazy rain, to North Carolina for our annual fill-er-up at the Southeast Wise Women's Herbal Conference.

Bon Paul & Sharkey's Hostel in Asheville

 We landed in Asheville, with our friend Sarah, and had an evening to be adults in a city together.  We walked around, ate Ethiopian food, and were in bed by nine. What can I say?

who is photo-bombing whom?

This is the fifth year Jen and I have attended the conference, and we've worked more hours every year, becoming more and more a part of the inner workings.  This year was intense with the hurricane weather we were getting from the east coast; lots of rain and lots of wind.  There was a lot of pulling up by the bootstraps and making a go of it, much improvisation and a good amount of chocolate. 

We were exhausted by the time the conference started, but so was everyone else, and I saw so many smiles peering out from under umbrellas, hats, and garbage bags. 

I must say that we made a name for ourselves with our MC Hammer-style rain gear: garbage bags with leg holes, tied around our waists. We wore them the entire weekend. High fashion.

soggy, soggy Red Tent

The ducks joined us up on the green, floating on the deep puddles and catching grubs.  A crayfish made its way into one of the classroom tents; the teacher was kind enough to step around it during her lecture.

Umbrella and tutu. That's the spirit!

The classes, though soggy and occasionally hard to hear from the downpour on the canvas roofs, did not disappoint.  I attended classes on type II diabetes and understanding bloodsugar; dreamwork and stone medicine; brain waves and the pineal gland, and 21st century gut health.  I ate delicious food and clutched my warm coffee to me during morning talks. We fell into bed early, so tired that we were actualy able to sleep on the plastic matresses, through the snores of our congested room-mate. We were nourished and felt like we worked hard and accomplished something by helping the conference go on in spite of the dramatic weather.  

Our last morning we helped move chairs from a tent that was collapsing from the rain and the wind, and crammed 75 or so women under a shelter to hear this firey elfin woman - her name is Whapio - talk about brain waves and altered states, and hormones that we share with all living things, even plants.  It was incredibly interesting and inspiring and we were all ridiculously happy to be there, together, huddling when the huge gusts threatened to blow everything over, listening to this woman speak her passion.

I always find that there are a few key messages woven through the talks I attend that get repeated over and over.  This year - some of you might be happy to hear - they emphatically reiterated what I heard last year: eat good fats!! EAT GOOD FATS!!! (Animal fats, butter, coconut oil) 

The other message was about awakening the heart: finding the places in life that make your heart blossom and nurturing them. Court altered states through art, music, yoga, meditation, nature, dancing - places where you are in your zone and can access a wider understanding.  Does this sound woowoo to you? Mmmhmmm, well here is my other message: change happens beyond your comfort zone. Ain't that the truth. 

So, we arrived home in record time, because as we climbed out of the green valley that is Asheville, we climbed out of the storm and the path home was dry!! Hallelujah!! There waiting for me was Dan, and my mom, who had driven down with Ani.  I am so grateful for all of the little pieces and big-hearted people who came together to make all of the specials happen at once.  We did it!!

the hardest part of homeschooling

I was inspired by the recent posts on Simple Homeschool about the challenging parts of homeschooling, and took a crack at writing about what I'm finding challenging right now in our journey. Head over to Simple Homeschool today to read what others have written about. It always helps to know you aren't the only one pushing up hill somedays!

When I look at my journal to recall how we spent our time last year, I get tingly.  It was juicy, there was flow - all that you would expect from curious, engaged people doing what they love to do.  Yes, of course we had our hard days - usually on the heels of any particularly wonderful day, as Murphy's Law would have it - but they were not in the majority. We read Trumpet of the Swan and Ella Enchanted, and Terry Pratchett's Hatful of Sky. Some days we didn't do anything but read, together, apart, together, apart.  We played games, on the computer, at the kitchen table, on the floor. We listened to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Number the Stars. We read Shakespeare and stories about ancient Rome. We looked at moss under a microscope until we found a tardigrade! We traveled to Virginia, to Maine, to Wisconsin.  We hiked and swam - on school days! - and drew plants. There was dancing and costume sewing and we wrote poetry, watched movies in our 100-year-old movie house, and we talked and talked and talked about everything. Puberty. Religion. Evolution. Family. Friendship. Important stuff.

I feel really good about this last year.  We spent most of our time doing what we were drawn to do, learning as we went along - you know, like humans do - and we worked on building some traditional academic skills like math and clear writing, moving in and out of structure as felt helpful.  

As I write this I can hear Ani upstairs in her room, using her desk as a playhouse for small creatures, the books piled carefully to create rooms and corridors.  The story is elaborate and animated and it's been going on for over half an hour.  She is in her bliss.  The storytelling happens almost daily, and it is not an "extra curricular" part of her day, she is fulfilling a need to speak a story aloud, to use her amazing imagination and vocabulary to tell a story to herself.

So, here is my hardest part of homeschooling: where does this activity, so central to who she is and what she is good at, fall in the checklist of Ohio Learning Standards?  It is one of many ways that we spend our days that fall outside of the box that someone else has deemed important.  Why do I care? Well, for most of the year I don't. But we live in a state where we are required as homeschoolers to provide proof of progress, either through standardized testing or by presenting a portfolio of work to a certified teacher to approve.  We send in the results of either option and have met our legal obligation to the state.  It sounds really simple, and it is so much easier than what is required in many other states, but I can't tell you what a mind-wreck it is having that constantly in the back of my head. Instead of making a decision to skip something that is traditionally deemed a priority, let's say grade-appropriate math, in favor of approaching the learning in a different way, through play and narrative instead of drilling, I feel pressure to stay in line with where my kids would be in school.  

To even write that feels ridiculous, because as soon as I've got my head back on straight, I remember how we want to do this - follow the joy and curiosity, take it at our own speed, engage, stay connected - and the juice starts flowing again.  Grade levels are a dim concept in the background, not the driving principle.

But I'm human, and several times throughout the year I find myself doing the mental checklist, wondering how we will measure up during our hour-long evaluation, forgetting that we have opted out of that particular pipeline.  That didn't matter when we sat down with the woman who does our evaluations. Suddenly I was seeing everything through a different lens and I forgot the joy.  I started to sweat when she asked about Ani's math, and though I have written at length about math here, I think I mumbled about living math and window crayons.  When she left I had about two weeks of detox, where I had to fight to get my brain and my mojo back.  Not to be too dramatic, but it was a scary place, overwhelming and dark, and that experience of feeling vulnerable to that world view takes me out of my role as facilitator and turns me into somewhat of a tyrant, operating out of fear and judgement.  

I had a moment of this the other day. Ani has discovered Khan Academy and was totally delighted with it for about a week and a half, and I got so attached.  YES! She is happy AND look at me checking off those boxes!! This is fantastic!!! Let's do it every day! All the time! Yes!!!  At first it was because she was so tickled, but then it was because I loved being able to write that down every day: Khan Academy MATH - check!  So, there comes the day when she decides it's not how she wants to spend her morning and she disappears while I'm doing something else and I find myself hounding her off and on until lunchtime when she appears in the kitchen to tell me her favorite lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream, which she holds in her hand.  It's a graphic novel version but it uses the original text of the entire play, so I kind of look at her a little squinty and say, "Did you kind of skim it? Follow the story but mostly just look at the pictures?" and she gives me this look that says, "What kind of dummy do you think I am, of course I read it. I love this play. In fact, it's my second time through!" 

While I was having my math fit, she was reading an entire Shakespeare play. Shut. My. Mouth.

The hardest part of homeschooling for me is when I forget to listen to what is actually happening around me and decide that I have the better plan. Sometimes I do, but it's usually because I'm paying attention to the questions and observations around me, not because I'm checking on what fifth graders around the state are memorizing this week.  We are learning when we are engaged and interested, not when we are bored or hounded.  I can check their boxes and not make them mine. They're just boxes. We've got the juice.

stewing about change

I've been stewing. We've had a rough spell these last two weeks, with unanswered health questions, doctor's appointments, and a little overwhelm.  It's brought me down, and reminded me how little control I have over so much of our lives.  This is also the time of year when we schedule a homeschool evaluation, required by the state we live in, and my mind has been caught up in all we are not doing right now.  Yes, I know, it's summer. Summer! But we take so many breaks throughout the year, for travel, for visitors, to accomodate large projects like Honey for the Heart or performing in a play, that I am reluctant to let go of it all during the summer.  So, I've been wrapped up in anxiety about what we aren't doing right now, fighting with Ani about writing, and feeling myself wind up tighter and tighter.  

Just leave the cheese ball on the counter. it will be delt with thoraly.

I lay in bed last night, during a rain storm, and thought about how great our spring was. The girls were motivated to learn together: we finished up the history we were doing, we made 13 really awesome map drawings, started a series of botany classes that are tying in nicely with our fall tree studies and our general love of identifying plants, and we learned several passages from Midsummer Night's Dream that we enjoy pulling out for each other every now and then.  Life felt juicy, in a more structured way. I could check off some lists, and/but everyone was engaged and thriving.

Call me crazy, but when it's good, I'm not satisfied, I just want more. I feel like I've found the key and I don't want to stop because we might lose it again. So, I've been spiraling downward with the resistance I've been getting to moving ahead with, well, pretty much anything on my list.

new handmade bag love

I am still mooning over my new....well, I don't know what to call him, this beautiful chubby baby, but he's the son of my cousin and I'm still a little obsessed, though it's been two and a half weeks since I came home from welcoming him to earth.  I felt like my visit was mostly a huge gift to me, but I tried to sprinkle around a little wisdom while I was there - you know, the pinkie trick when mama isn't quite ready to nurse (like, maybe she has to pee or something?) and the rooting is fierce, or how most babies, when the diaper is off, will sneak in another pee just for the hell of it once they sense a fresh diaper under their bum, so let them hang out a while or you'll just be starting over from square one with the trifold - but the one piece of experience I felt coming back to me from early days with Eliza was that Things Change. It's all about change.  Especially when you think you've got it down. "It's happened twice - that's a pattern, right?" my cousin would ask me, her huge brown eyes lighting up through the sleepy fog. It's almost like a curse to announce "He's sleeping three hours at a time during the night! It's amazing!" Blam. It's gonna change. Bedtime for us was like that for years.  We had two weeks at most with any successful strategy, and then it would all change.

Maybe even when things are working really well, it does not mean they will always work that way, because things change.  My attempts to define and articulate our homeschool learning life can only describe a moment, because for better or worse, it will change.  

I was so grateful to read Lori Pickert's post this morning (reposted on Simple Homeschool). It reminded me that summer is about freedom.  I'll take that loosely - I think she would agree that kids need freedom a lot of the time.  Freedom to make decisions without checking in.  Freedom to trust their own judgement and solve their own problems.  

It made me look at what is going on with a wider lens:  fort digging behind the school for hours at a time with a neighbor friend...(Dan has seen it - he was called in as a poison ivy consultant - but I've been forbidden, my only involvement being the lending of loppers and a spade)...getting lost in a book, surfacing only to ask "what's a-l-l-e-g-o-r-i-c-a-l?" or "ecclisiastical impedimenta"? The Birmingham sit-down strike?...drawing...dreaming...telling a spy story to yourself for an hour, while pacing, with spy bag, up and down the block...writing a play...sewing a bag...It's an adjustment, but this open time is just as important as the rest of the learning we do.  Maybe I have a problem with transitions (who, me?), and definitely I am a cyclical and slow learner - I grok it a little deeper each time it comes around.  We need both to meet all of our needs - the structured weeks and the open weeks, and just because it's hard to get back into the structure doesn't mean you shouldn't let it go for a while.

There are things I want to do differently this next year. We very rarely have a clear beginning and ending to anything we are doing at home.  Our looking at trees morphed into learning about plant families, which turned into looking at mosses and other non-vascular plants and we're back at trees with the vascular plants and maybe we'll pick that back up in a few weeks when life has settled down a bit. I wonder if it would be nice to know that for all of November we are going to attempt to go full blast at something and then be done? We never have an end-of-the-year tada! We're done! Because, well, we're never done, and I've never wanted to emphasize the start and end of learning time, that's just not how we do it here, but maybe we need clearer breaks from routine, to cleanse the palate as it were. 

We are about to leave on a trip to see friends and celebrate our baby's thirteenth birthday in Maine.  I wouldn't trade our travels for the normal routine right now.  I could feel myself shifting into a different mode yesterday, letting go of my plans for now.  There was a peaceful hour or two where I was experimenting with a sewing project in the kitchen, where I could see Ani outside, pacing up and down the street, telling her story, and Dan and Eliza were on the couch reading To Kill a Mockingbird together, we were listening to Miles Davis and the day felt open and juicy in a way it hadn't for weeks.  I know nothing but my perspective had actually changed, but there it was. A shift.

is there a typical day?

I enjoy checking in at the Simple Homeschool blog because, in addition to exposing me to new resources,  it reminds me that there are hundreds of different ways to live this life. They are currently featuring a series of "day in the life" posts from their frequent contributors, and have invited readers to link to their own posts in February. So here goes...

I had to take myself by surprise for this one.  Too much pressure to produce an exciting, full day otherwise, and we know how that goes (see meandering post here).  Today is Wednesday, and depending on how our Tuesday goes, this can be a slow, easy day, or a more normal get on a roll early and ride it till it's done kind of day.  I was exhausted by the end of yesterday, but our Monday was a bit of a derailment after a busy weekend, so I determined that I wanted today to be a bit more on track, if at all possible.  (What "on track" means varies, but this week I'd settle for some togetherness and a little juice, some new discoveries, creations, connections.)  

We started off well - no one slept in too late, though Eliza's been coughing still at night, poor bug. We breakfasted more or less together (Ani made her own eggs and toast), chatting with Dan while he made hummous before leaving for school. Tried to put in "kid laundry" (they do their own, together), but the neighbor who shares the laundry with us still had several loads in process, so we'll have to save that for tomorrow.

Ani's morning plan was to include piano and a bit of writing - maybe a note to her great grampa for his birthday? Or writing out the lines of verse we're all working on memorizing? Off she went to piano, and I joined her quickly with my cup of coffee. Eliza, meanwhile was...hm...I think she was reading. Or blogging. A bit of both.

Ani decided she wanted to paint at her desk while listening to Harry Potter V, so she did that for about an hour, while I went through old baby and kid clothes to see what I can pass on to my cousin whose baby is due in May (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!). 

I had lots of help from the girls with this one - they'd pop in and oooh and ahhh and "I remember this! I wore it while I was riding that turtle statue with Dad!" (Central Park Zoo, second birthday) It is bittersweet, sorting through these clothes.  It just doesn't seem that long ago that they were in rotation on my sweet babes.  I don't wish they were still little (well, not often), because life is pretty rich and full right now and don't say anything, but they are really getting along famously well these months and I am so grateful! But I wish I could visit their little selves once in a while. They were fantastic little beings in gorgeous clothing!

Mormor, she wants a new one of these, please!

I took a break to go downstairs and work through math with Eliza while getting lunch ready, and Ani came down with her verse written out and Eliza and I quizzed each other on our own memorization (first few lines of Oberon's speech, Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, sc i - we've got it down.)  I offered to read during lunch, and the girls chose Story of the World - about The First Emperor of China and the Great Wall - while we ate salad and hummous that Dan left for us.  Found an engaging video about The Great Wall that included footage of farmers creating a wall in the same way much of the wall was originally created, by framing a few feet of dirt and then tamping it down. They sang as they tamped, walking slowly in an oval, and it kept them all in rhythm together. That was pretty cool to see.

Ani got out the giant jenga blocks and the regular jenga blocks and started building a dam and a fortress and telling herself a story.  Eliza got on the computer to write some poetry and I went to put away the pile of baby clothes on my bed.  Our friend Savannah, who is moving to NYC this weekend (sob!) stopped by to bring a few books for the library and for us, and to sit and relax for a few minutes.  We all think so highly of her - she is an amazing, capable woman and a sweet friend.  I'm so happy to see her leaving our little town to explore the world, but we are going to miss her.

The girls and I had made a plan to get out in the sunshine before making dinner, so out we went to the bike path.  

It didn't take long before I was between the girls - one striding out ahead, and one lingering behind. When I finally caught up to Eliza, she asked why Ani was going so slowly, and I told her she was deep into telling a story, and Eliza grinned and said, "me too!" and went on to tell me her fantasy of living in Seattle when she is nineteen. Or maybe twenty.

We came home and drank steamers and they drew while I read Trumpet of the Swan and we warmed up. Oh my gosh we love this book. 

This turned out to be quite a relaxing day.  We made grilled cheese and tomato soup for supper, and with Dan at a potluck meeting the girls asked if we could watch an episode of Once Upon a Time, so we did and that brings us to now.  Dan is relaxing with his computer, I'm on mine, the cat is between us, and the girls are reading in their rooms (Ani is reading Wildwood and Eliza just finished reading the play The Revenge of the Space Pandas or Binky Rudich and the Two-Speed Clock by David Mamet.)

Somewhere in this day Ani also made a shadow puppet of a very large chipmunk, spent time looking at a huge book on dinosaurs and swept the kitchen floor because it was dirty.  I cleaned the bathroom, and actually mopped the floor, which unfortunately was dirtied by a cat within the hour. Ergh.  I had a chat on the phone with a dear friend, Eliza video-chatted her dear friend, and we added a few things to our timeline (Buddha. Gandhi.).  

Was this a typical day for us? It was not an unusual day, but tomorrow could look quite different, with more together (I've got mapping and drawing parabolas on my hopeful list tomorrow) or more apart (that reading thing, you know, it takes up a lot of time!).  What is typical is that we are generally here in the mornings and out in the afternoon, and we try to anchor some together exploration over lunch, which sometimes looks like reading aloud and sometimes Bill Nye or a documentary or trying out Visual Latin on youtube, or there is always Vi Hart luring us...you get the idea. It is in my nature to have many lists to guide me, and remind me of where I'd like to take us in the day, and it is also in my nature to throw lists to the wind if something else is working and engaging us...and I am deeply grateful for the freedom to do so.

I try to write this kind of post once in a while, as a reminder to myself of the how of our days at different ages.  If you want to read through any of those from the past, click on the "the daily do" tag at the verrrrrrrrrrrrrry bottom of the page.

calling all nerds!

Please tell me you're watching - or are way ahead of me and have already watched - the new Cosmos with Neil DeGrasse Tyson!  We started it as a family this weekend and watched two mind-bending episodes in a row and WOW. I took notes. I drew pictures. I wanted to watch it all over again when it was done, and I can't wait for Sunday when we will sit together and watch MORE.  Thank goodness Dan is our resident "starboy"; he can further explain most of what I just don't get, but the exciting thing is that most of it I do get. It is awesome. 

I won't be ruining anything for you to tell you that he mentions an incredible and extremely common creature called the tardigrade.  I'm guessing you haven't seen one and the reason is that they are microscopic and live in lichen and moss. However, in spite of being so small, they are the creature that has survived the major extinctions on Earth. There are fossils that date back to the Cambrian period.  They can survive being frozen, they can survive temperatures of 350 degrees (F). They can even be dehydrated and reconstituted many years later.  We are talking about a creature that is more resilient and far cuter than the cockroach - its cuddly names are "waterbear" and "moss piglet" - and I'm a bit obsessed.

So we set out to find one, Ani and I.  She pilfered her local supply of moss (replanted from our roof; she convinced the folks from the rental company who were cleaning our gutters that it was worth saving, so they gave her large pieces to relocate and tend to) and soaked it in water overnight. Following these instructions we then squeezed out the moss, set up the microscope and started looking at the water left in the bowl, drop by drop.  There are so many cool things to look at in the water - long worms and zippy little single-cell organisms, busy paramecium - and finally, we found what we were looking for.  A tardigrade, nuzzling its way along a tiny piece of moss. 

We were seriously excited.  We alternated between taking turns at the microscope, to watching a youtube video of tardigrade moving about, to jumping up and down.  I was a little worried that it would be hard to keep track of it, but tardigrade apparently means "slow walker" and especially compared with the crazy traffic of everything else whipping through there, it was definitely moving slowly.  

So excited that I tried taking photos through the microscopes, and you know what? They're awful, but I'm going to include them here anyway, 'cause it was that cool and if you know what I'm talking about, chances are you are just as excited about it as I am.

tardigrade, upside-down - one of its eight legs is visible

I think this is its sucking mouth

each of the eight feet has four toes with claws.  yowza!

A friend stopped by this morning and saw my drawing of a tardigrade on the chalkboard (obsessed) and exclaimed "Waterbear!!!" and I was so excited that she recognized what it was (she had met a woman in Alaska who spent four years studying these creatures, how cool is that?) that I got the microscope and the mossy water back out so we could find another. Which we did. 

Turtle Hill Farm Camp

The girls spent four days last week at farm camp at our favorite farm, Turtle Hill*.  This is the land and the people who grow our chickens and our eggs and many of our vegetables, and they happen to be close friends as well!  I was there for drop-off and again on Friday to have lunch with Eliza on her (gulp) twelfth birthday, so I got to take a few pictures of the amazing things these kids got up to...

campground kitchen

the campground and firepit

Farm chores - gathering eggs, watering and feeding the goats and chickens, milking, harvesting and planting.  They also helped the new baby goats nurse with their surrogate mama (their auntie, Ruth June).

Newborn baby goats, Raspberry and Blackberry!

Eliza and Blackberry

Making salve: identifying and wildcrafting the plants (plantain, comfrey, chamomile, yarrow) and making a salve using oil and beeswax.  Ours is already in heavy use with summer's bug bites.

choosing essential oils for the salve

Building raised garden beds: the kids helped measure the boards, learned how to use a hatchet to make corner stakes and a hammer to pound them in and an electric drill to put it all together. It was hot work, but they did it with enthusiasm!

building raised garden beds

Building rocket stoves: I needed Ani's help with this explanation...they took one large tin can and two smaller tin cans, cut a hole in the large can and fit a smaller can (minus its top and bottom) into the hole.  The second small can was set inside the large can, and fitted to a cut in the first can.  Underneath and around the inside cans are sand and rocks  (see photo below).  Using straw, small twigs and sticks with tree sap on them, the kids built fires and some managed to boil water in a pan set on top! Ani was "so pleased with the whole package!" 

Ani and Riley problem-solving

yes! it's working!!

Building a bridge on the trail: this required a lot of teamwork and communication to get the materials down the trail to the creek.  Ani says, "There were at least three people to a long board. The little boards were carried in a wheelie cart.  Once the materials were there, we lay out the long boards and put the little boards on top, drilling holes, and screwing the boards in place. The hardest part was carrying everything down.  Once it was finished it was SO bouncy but also sturdy. (It could probably hold up to ten people!)"

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

And yes, I said that our daughter, Eliza, turned 12 at camp. Holy wah.

last chore of camp: eating a bowl of homemade ice cream!

We arrived on Saturday for a tour of their projects and a potluck dinner to celebrate the Solstice, and guess who met us there?  Dan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (exclamation points courtesy of Anika) He's finally back from his month away...

Checking out a drawer-full...of baby birds!

the traditional Solstice haircut!

Throw in some slip-and-slide, evening hikes to the cave, and ghost stories around the campfire, and you have a full-fledged summer camp to remember! Happy Summer!

*Our friends at Turtle Hill, Jen and Michelle, just launched a Kickstarter campaign (click link to get there!) to raise funds for a workshop that would house not only tools but classes on sustainability, car maintenance and of course, farm camp projects! Please check them out if you have a passion for this kind of education and community-building. Thank you!