Late Summer Potpourri

A hollyhock in our front garden

So much for life slowing down! We have been incredibly busy since I last posted at the end of August. And yes, it's still technically summer until the equinox tomorrow!

Since I last posted, our family was interviewed and photographed for an article in our local paper. I was not entirely thrilled with it, although it was generally favourable towards unschooling. They left out all the most interesting and relevant stuff I told the reporter!

In the last couple of weeks we have also cheered Nathan on at his end-of-season soccer tournament in the pouring rain, celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary, and attended our local homeschool group's Not Back to School picnic.

The most exciting thing we've done lately is visit our unschooling friends at their farm in Upstate New York. We all had a blast - that includes the dog who seemed totally in his element as a "farm dog" despite his entirely urban existence. We made butter and mozzarella cheese with fresh-from-the-cow milk, and Nathan learned how to pick up a chicken and groom a donkey.

The boys engaged in lots of swimming, gaming, and trampolining!

Aric helps Nathan groom Jenny the Donkey

Kirsten milking her cow Becky

Joe getting to know Rumpus (Marley looks interested, too!)

During this flurry of activity, I have tried to stay on top of the fall garden, whipping up several batches of tomato sauce and wondering what the heck I am going to do with several dozen jalepeno and banana peppers (the only crops in my garden that seems to have really thrived during this cold, wet summer). Suggestions, anyone?

As if all that wasn't enough, yesterday I had the opportunity to attend an Abraham-Hicks workshop in Toronto - what a thrilling experience that was!

Life is so full and so good here and there seems to be a perpetually long list of upcoming events on our calendar!!

Olympic Learning and a Pizza Box Solar Oven

Now that the Olympics are over and the outdoor pool is closed for the year, I might actually have some time to blog...

We absolutely love watching the Olympics around here. I am not normally one to watch a lot of sports on TV, but there is something so irresistible about the Olympic spirit. We spent many hours in front of the TV together in the last couple weeks (and I spent a few nights up by myself until 1:30 a.m. to catch the gymnastics competitions!)

It's fun to reflect on all the learning that occurred as we enjoyed all those great Olympic moments. What a perfect, real-life illustration of time zones - the kids were quite fascinated by the fact that when we were watching something on Wednesday night, it was Thursday morning in Beijing! We had our atlas sitting on the coffee table during the entire duration of the Olympics as we were regularly looking up where countries were located. It really amused us to discover that there were a number of countries off the coast of Australia with populations far smaller than our city. Solomon Islands' population (441,000) is very close to that of our city. It's fun to think of our city being an entire country, LOL! The kids picked up quite a few different country's flags during the course of the Olympic coverage, too. We also had lots of great conversations about the rules of different sports, sportsmanship, why Michael Phelps is so much faster than all the other swimmers, and many other things I've already forgotten!

In between all our Olympics-watching, we also found time to build a pizza box solar oven and test it out.

This was a really fun project - I got the instructions from Family Fun magazine. Here's the oven construction in progress.

Testing out the finished product! We measured the internal temperature - it got up to 139 degrees Fahrenheit (59.6 degrees Celsius) in 20 minutes. The air temperature was 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius).

Yum! Melted cheese on crackers - very tasty! The cheese was thoroughly melted after 15 minutes but didn't bubble and spread the way it normally would in the oven. We want to try making s'mores in the solar oven next.

If you want to try this project yourself, the instructions are here.

The Days are Just Packed

To borrow a title from one of my favourite cartoonists (one of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes collections), the days have felt completely jammed full lately - thus a lack of recent updates here!

Aside from all the laundry, cooking and eating (all of which seem to have increased exponentially of late) here are a few of the things we've been up to:

Water: The boys spent the entire month of June playing with water - water gun and water balloon fights, swimming in the neighbour's pool, squirting the hose at each other, and generally remaining as wet as possible for the majority of their waking hours! The neighbourhood pool and splash pad opened last week, so I don't expect to see them fully dried off until September :)

Nursing languishing electronics: It seems that our house has turned into a graveyard for electronic thingamajigs in varying states of repair. We now have four (yes, four) printers of dubious vintage and degrees of functioning taking up space (I am still determined to get one of them to work - cross your fingers for me!) Anyone know what's the best way to dispose of dead printers?? Our digital camera also bit the dust recently (so expect a dearth of photos here for a while). Luckily, it seems we will at least be able to trade this in locally and get a portable CD player for the van (to replace the one that got stolen last summer). Joe has also been trying to revive a TV he dragged home for free - not sure how that one's going to end yet!

Learning piano: Our one successful revival thus far, we finally have our music keyboard functional again. We just got it up and running yesterday, and all four of us have been clamoring around, eagerly awaiting our turn tickling the (non) ivories. I haven't played in over a decade now (I can't BELIEVE it's been that long!) but so far I've managed to bang out a half-decent Ode to Joy and stumble along with Edelweiss. I'm looking forward to spending some regular time playing - I was never a natural by any means; I have to practice, practice, practice on even the basic stuff. Nathan is already gracing us with his own spontaneous compositions!

Writing (other places than here!): I've been devoting what little blogging time I've had lately to my cooking blog, The Speeding Kitchen, which I hope to expand on in a few directions. I've also got some other (offline) writing projects going - more news about that soon!

Playing with EFT: I've known about EFT for a while, but never really delved into it further, or learned how to do it. In the last couple of weeks, I've spent a lot of time reading about EFT, watching YouTube videos, and tapping like a fiend. So far, I am very excited about this process and think everyone should know how to do this!!

Now we are gearing up for some Canada Day celebrations, lots of fun things planned over the next couple of days, so I should have plenty to report by July 2nd!!

Toronto Unschooling Conference 2008

Whew! We've been so busy lately that I hadn't even realized it's been two entire weeks since I've posted here. Last week flew by as we were preparing to attend this year's Toronto Unschooling Conference this past weekend. I finally feel recovered enough today to get back to my normal activities like blogging and catching up with laundry!

While words can never convey the intensity of an experience like an unschooling conference, I will share with you some of the highlights for our family:

The fun actually began Thursday night with a pre-conference ball game at the Roger's Centre (which I still prefer to call the Skydome, thank you very much!) Anne O., Nicole P., and their families joined us to watch the Blue Jays take on the Tampa Bay Rays. Little did we know the game would go 13 innings! We ended up leaving in the middle of the 12th as the boys had had their fill of baseball (final score: 8 to 3 for Tampa Bay - 5 run inning in the 13th!!)

[Note: although the conference officially began on Friday evening, we drove down early Saturday morning, so I have no idea what transpired on Friday, but I'm sure it was fun!]

Our day started bright and early at 6:20 a.m. on Saturday as we sprang out of bed to race to Orangeville by 9 a.m. (that's a joke, BTW - NO ONE around here springs out of bed at 6:20 a.m., even for something as fun as an unschooling conference!)

We had a smooth and uneventful drive there, and, rather miraculously, strolled into the lobby of Hockley Valley Resort shortly before nine o'clock. Wonder of wonders, I managed to make it to my friend Anne Ohman's 9:15 talk with a few minutes to spare! While I was reuniting with a few of my friends from the Shine With Unschooling list, Joe and the boys were downstairs setting up our gaming equipment in the designated Gaming Room. The boys were in heaven - a room full of Unschooling Gamers to play with all day! That is where they spent most of the day Saturday, with a short break at lunch for a swim (I hung out in the hot tub, of course!)

I attended 3 of the 4 major talks at the conference (Anne's, Carlo's, and Francette's) and all of the speakers were great. They each brought their own special perspective on the world of unschooling. In between speakers, I had the opportunity to chat to a bunch of the other conference attendees. After Anne's talk, I went to speak to a man who had asked some questions about starting to unschool his seven-year-old son. I found out he was from Hamilton, and lives about 2 km from me! I suspect we may be seeing more of each other...

After sitting for so much of the day, I was ready to move around, so I headed to the Belly Dancing Funshop. I've never tried belly dancing before, so this was a bit of an adventure! The class was well-taught and I enjoyed myself (even if I was a bit slow to get the hang of it). I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out there is more belly dancing in my future...


Joe's not exactly the belly dancing type [grin] so he decided to head to the Guitar Funshop instead. He quite enjoyed himself, and got some helpful input from my lovely friend Marji, the Guitar Goddess.

I took the boys swimming again while Joe went in search of dinner in town. We ended up with just enough time to eat before the talent show started up. The talent show is always one of the best parts of an unschooling conference, and this one was no exception. I didn't get to see all of it, as I was bouncing between that and the movie room where the boys were hanging out. There was lots of singing and guitar playing, a magic act, dancing, and martial arts (including a performance by Joe, Mr. Black Belt!)

After the talent show, Joe spent the rest of the evening jamming with other guitarists. I alternated between listening to them, and keeping an eye on the boys, who were hanging out with their new buddies.

Sunday morning, I attended one-and-a-half roundtable talks (didn't quite make it to the beginning of the first one!) while Joe and the boys packed up our room. After lunch (picnic in the minivan!) we went on a 2 hour guided nature hike of the Bruce Trail. There was one section of the trail that was positively blanketed with trilliums (Ontario's flower) - we even got to see a few of the much rarer red trilliums. Unfortunately, I left my camera in the van, so no flower photos!

Once the hike was over, we were all exhausted and ready to head for home. It was a jam-packed weekend of unschooling fun, but we were ready for a bit of down time!

Teeth, Tegus and Tasty Treats

View from the upper level of the Hamilton Farmer's Market

Yesterday was a busy day! I was far too worn out to write a blog post until now :)

We started our day MUCH earlier than usual. I was up at 6:30 a.m. to ensure that the boys and I were ready to leave the house by 7:30. We were aiming to catch a 7:39 bus since we were due downtown at 8 a.m. for an appointment at the Canadian Institute of Dental Hygiene. The graduating students are required to do a certain number of teeth cleanings independently (I think it's 20) and they do the cleanings for free (with a *very* small annual fee). Since we don't have dental coverage right now, we decided to check it out. The appointment was very long (4 hrs!) but the students were excellent with the boys. The examinations were incredibly thorough, and we all learned a lot more about Noah and Nathan's mouths than we ever had before at a regular dental appointment. I was surprised that Noah still had several baby teeth left (they showed me where they all were). I thought he had maybe one or two left. Nathan had fun taking rides in the dental chair and answering math problems (one of the student hygienists was working overtime to keep him entertained!)

Despite the great care we received, we were all pretty relieved when it was time to go (4 hours is a really long time!!) After a quick snack, our next stop was the Reptile Store just a few blocks down the street. They have many different kinds of reptiles there, including some very large critters that are "show animals" (used for their reptile shows) and not for sale. We visit fairly often, since we need to buy food and supplies for Spark (our Bearded Dragon). Most of these animals (including a gigantic Tegu) feel like old friends to us now! They had some month-old Beardie babies this time and it was fascinating to see how small they were as we're used to the size of our full-grown lizard.

From the reptile store we hopped on a bus down to Jackson Square to hit the Farmer's Market for some lunch. We feasted on chicken-and-vegetable samosas and jalaybee (also spelled jalebi), as well as M&M chocolate chip cookies. It was the first time the boys tried jalaybee; Noah didn't like it but Nathan enjoyed his first taste enough to ask for more. I find it extremely sweet, although that's not necessarily a bad thing after a spicy samosa!

After all that activity, we were ready to head home and relax for the rest of the afternoon - I needed a nap after getting up that early and the boys chilled out with the Ratchet and Clank game a friend lent them.

A-Hikin' and A-Fishin' We Go!

Nathan in his natural habitat

Hunting for frogs

We found one! There were many other smaller frogs hopping into the water as we walked along the bank of the stream.

We have spent a lot of this week outdoors, enjoying the glorious, unseasonably warm weather! On Tuesday we spent the afternoon hiking in the woods (the dog enjoyed himself at least as much as anyone else!) We did one of our typical hikes in Cootes Paradise, along the Ravine Road and Caleb's Walk trails. Along with the frogs, we spotted two garter snakes.

Time for a dip in the creek? Maybe not...

Noah about to take a flying leap off a giant log!

Reclining at leisure in the log chairs! Marley's waiting for Noah to throw that stick :)

Noah does his tightrope act

Wednesday afternoon we went fishing off the Waterfront Trail with our unschooling friends. We didn't catch anything, but I did take a dramatic tumble off an unstable log into the shallow water! Since we were already nearby, we took the opportunity to watch them lift fish out of the Fishway. The staff there are pretty cool about letting us get a good look at the various species of fish they release back into the marsh (Cootes Paradise). I tried really hard to remember all the different fish; we saw channel catfish, white suckers, carp, largemouth bass, a brown bullhead, shad, and a brown trout. There were probably a couple of others that I forgot as well.

We are so blessed to have so many fun things to do outdoors, right in our own neighbourhood!

Our Indoor Rock Climbing Adventure

Yesterday we went to Gravity Climbing Gym with a group of local homeschoolers. This was the first time I had tried out a climbing wall - the boys had a little experience from trying it out at a local festival last year. I was excited before we left, but once I got there and saw how high the walls were I started to have second thoughts!

After watching the boys both climb up right to the top of one of the beginner walls, I decided to give it a shot. I was pretty nervous, but part way up I started to enjoy it and got all the way to the top. Once I got that first climb over with, I was feeling much more enthusiastic and ready for more! The boys both really took to it. Noah surprised me by climbing all the way to the top of one of the walls I had found pretty challenging. He said "I was really sweating up there mom, but I decided I could do it, and I did!" YAY Noah!

I lost count of how many walls the boys climbed through the course of the afternoon. I went up three fairly easy walls, and two that were tough enough that I wasn't sure I was going to make it all the way to the top once I was part way up (but I DID IT!) I also tried out two other more challenging walls that I knew I wasn't going to get to the top of, but I wanted to see how far I could go. The staff were really helpful and coached me on the way up. At one point I slipped right off the wall about 25 or 30 feet up - that was a bit scary the first time it happened but it's actually kind of fun hanging from the harness! I gave that wall a couple more tries but kept getting stuck at the same spot.

We will definitely be going back for another climbing adventure, which is a good thing since I forgot my camera (yes, again!) This time it was a case of group camnesia as every single one of us parents had forgotten our camera (and my cell phone, which has a camera, had dead batteries!)

The best I can do right now is a shot of what my left knee looks like the day after:

Note the bruises, scratches, scrapes and general beat up look :) While my knee shows the only visible effects of yesterday's adventure, I'm surprised at how much my entire body aches! I am pretty active (cycling, yoga, strength training, walking, hiking, and assorted other random physical pursuits) but climbing seems to use just about every muscle in your entire body. My hands, wrists, forearms, shoulders, triceps, hamstrings, quads, glutes, lats, and core muscles are all feeling abused today (I kind of feel like I went tumbling off the side of a cliff, lol!) The kids aren't feeling it at all, of course! Despite the discomfort, I definitely want to give those tricky walls another shot, and I know the kids are game for more.

Making a Thaumatrope

We finally got around to making a thaumatrope!! Since the weather has been so much nicer lately, we haven't been doing too many indoor activities. Yesterday was cold and rainy, so it was the perfect time to break out our animation books and try this out.

Thaumatrope-in-progress

It doesn't take long to make one of these simple animation devices. The most creative part of the process is deciding on the images you want to use.

This is the design Nathan came up with:


When you spin the thaumatrope, the two images appear to combine together into one. This happens because of the phenomenon of Persistence of Vision.



I think we'll likely be creating a few different thaumatrope designs! If you'd like to give it a try, too, there are instructions here.

Honouring Our Children's Learning Styles

One of the many benefits of unschooling is that we trust that our children know what they need to learn best. This is a real blessing when your child happens to have a learning style that is not well understood! Both of my boys are extremely visual spatial (which fascinates me because I am most definitely NOT!) Their brains work in an entirely different way than mine does, and I'm glad that I have taken the time to understand their learning style. Since the first thing *I* do when I want to learn something new is read a book (or 5...) about it, it's really helpful for me to know that usually that is not what my boys need or want to do!

A visual spatial learner in action!

I have made a new lens on Squidoo called Celebrating Visual Spatial Learners for those who would like to know more about how VSLs learn best.

Reading maps comes more naturally to VSLs than reading books.
Eight-year-old Nathan drew this one.

Visual spatial learners are known for their high degree of creativity (and the general level of messiness that goes along with it-they are also known for being disorganized, lol!) It is exciting to watch their vivid imagination come to life in all their creations. Being the mom of two VSLs has definitely been a world-expanding experience for me!

"Under Construction"

That seems to be the theme of the past week or so around here! Noah and Nathan have been busily building forts of many varieties: kid-sized forts out on the porch, and stuffed-animal-sized forts on the living room coffee table. There's been quite a lot of Lego construction going on as well. I have also been working on some "construction" of my own - I'm not ready to share yet, but I will be unveiling my project very soon.

Yes, I know...no pictures AGAIN! We got new camera batteries today (at long last - don't ask me what was up with that!) so I promise my next post will contain some photos!

What else have we been up to in the last week or so?

-Watching movies (Surf's Up, Next, Gremlins, School of Rock)
-Going swimming at one of the community pools
-A trip to the SPCA (it's so hard not to bring home a new dog every time, lol!)
-Random experiments with Dr. Dreadful's Drink Lab
-lots of playing outside!
-reading Commander Toad books
-playing with Spark, our beardie, who has now fully awakened from his winter brumation

...plus many other things I've already forgotten!

Ive also been furiously trying to catch up on the events of Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica by reading the plot summaries on Wikipedia. Season 4 starts tonight and we haven't managed to watch Season 3 yet! Joe and I have been eagerly anticipating the fourth (and final) season - only an hour and a half to go until it starts!

98 Seconds on YouTube Leads to Hours of Fun and Learning

We watched this video on YouTube last night. Actually, we ended up watching it several times because the boys found it so amusing. We had some interesting discussion about cat behaviour (our Jessie cat could have starred in that video!)

I happened to mention to Nathan that he could use his lightbox (a birthday gift from several months ago) to help make some basic line drawing animation like that used in the video. The boys ended up breaking out the lightbox and spending several hours last night and this morning working on creating crazy characters with the lightbox and the drawing templates that came with it.

Noah and Nathan also did a live performance of the video last night for me! Noah was Simon and Nathan was the cat. They really nailed the whole thing, and remembered almost all of the little details. Of course Nathan totally had the cat's attitude right down, too.

Nathan is now interested in learning more about how to do line-drawing style animation so I have been spending some time tracking down appropriate resources on the internet today. So far, these look like two promising sites to get us started:

http://www.youthlearn.org/learning/activities/multimedia/animation.asp

and

http://www.randommotion.com/index.html

We will probably try our hand at making a simple thaumatrope later today. I have found a couple of good books at the library to help us get started with some basic animation as well.

It still amazes me sometimes how one simple thing can spark the boys' imagination and interest and they're just off and running with a world of new things to explore. That is truly unschooling at its finest!

March Break Mayhem

You wouldn't think March Break would be all that relevant to our lives, since the kids don't go to school. But since all the other kids are off school for a week, it definitely has an impact! Places we can normally go to during the day and find it relatively calm and quiet are now packed to the gills with overexcited children. I usually plan to avoid most of the "hot spots" during this week, as it's just too overwhelming, and we can go anytime we want.

We did venture out to a couple of the library's March Break programs, both of which the boys really enjoyed (and the mayhem factor wasn't TOO bad). On Tuesday afternoon, it was a Wii Bowling tournament. Although Noah and Nathan have had the opportunity to play games on the Wii on a few occasions, this was the first time they had tried the bowling. Nathan devised an interesting strategy for getting strikes that was a bit counterintuitive, but it worked! Yesterday, it was the Mac Fireballs, a group of students from McMaster University, doing loud, explosive chemistry experiments. The boys came out of that one all excited and impressed with the "BOOMS" they got to experience!

There is still a lot of snow here, and the enthusiasm for it is definitely dwindling. The boys are still hitting the toboggan hill with their friends, but not as often or for as long as they would earlier in the season. I think there may be a neighbourhood snowball fight going on as I type, though. I am enjoying hot beverages and warm blankets as I start to think about plans for this year's garden and wait for the arrival of spring (I know it has to show up sometime soon!)

An Unschooling Moment inTime

When people find out we are unschoolers, they often wonder exactly what it is we do all day. That's a hard question to answer, as every day is different. Some days we have more structured experiences (like attending a class or field trip), but much of the time we are just living in the moment and flowing from one discussion or activity to the next. Here is a moment in our lives from yesterday afternoon:

When: 2:10 p.m. on a frigid (-10 degrees Celsius!) but sunny Thursday in February 2008

Where: Living Room of McLaughlin Manor

Who: Karen, Noah (10) and Nathan (8)

What: Iggy Arbuckle is playing on the TV, the Juno soundtrack is blaring, Nathan is on the couch playing his DS (still in his pajamas, as is Noah). I'm helping Noah play with the Geosafari Laptop our neighbour gave us this past weekend and reading snippets from half a dozen different books I hauled home from the library earlier today. We're all working intermittently but with great zeal on a poster size Pokemon puzzle.

How: Loud (very loud!) and silly

Now, maybe nothing about that moment seems especially noteworthy to the casual observer. But I can tell you, there was definitely a lot of learning going on at several different levels. It just so happens that what it looks like from the outside is a family having a joyful, carefree time together. Half an hour earlier or later, and the scene would have shifted to something else. But the undercurrent of living and learning in joy and freedom while enjoying each other's company is what runs through ALL of our days together.

Circus School!

Yesterday I took the boys to Zacada Circus School for the afternoon. This was a group outing with a bunch of other local homeschoolers. I had no idea this place existed before the trip was posted to our local homeschooling list. We were so excited to go check it out!

The boys had a blast! They got to walk a tightrope, swing on a trapeze, jump on a big trampoline, and do some cool stuff with these large fabric "ribbons" they had hanging from the ceiling. I really wanted to try it out myself (they do have adult and family classes, so we may be back!)

Unfortunately, my camera batteries died so no pics :( I think I would have had trouble getting good shots of my guys in that setting anyway, but it's a bit of a bummer that I wasn't able to at least give it a shot. If we go back I will definitely check the camera batteries well in advance!

Telling Stories with Lego

Both of my boys are very much visual-spatial learners. That means that they don't tend to gravitate towards reading or being read to all that often. They still enjoy a rich sense of storytelling through watching movies and TV, and creating their own fantasy worlds.



Building with Lego is something they have both been doing for many years. Their designs have become increasingly complex, and lately have expanded into very detailed sets for fantasy play and story telling.

This is one of Nathan's latest creations, inspired by his experiences playing Runescape. He also made a great Indiana Jones-inspired set the other day (unfortunately it got "loved to death" before I thought to snap a pic). I thought the set he created was actually much more detailed than the "official" Indiana Jones Lego that's just been released. He designed the whole boulder-chasing-Indie scene, along with the plane escape scene, and I thought it was extremely inspired( I should add that he's only seen Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom once apiece, so I'm also incredibly impressed with his memory!) Even though I've been watching my boys build and create with Lego for most of their lifes, I am continually in awe of their creativity and attention to detail as they execute their designs. They also demonstrate a great deal of patience and planning as their more complex designs can take several days to complete.

I enjoy sharing their excitement when they unveil their newest creation. Their vision is usually pretty sophisticated, and their Lego worlds give me a window into their rich imaginations.

Our Unschooling Tribe

When we first started our unschooling journey several years ago, we didn't know a single other unschooling family. Now, through the wonders of the internet, we have met many other unschooling families from all over North America. Some of these friendships started at unschooling conferences and other "official" type gatherings, but many of them began as "virtual conversations" on email discussion groups.

We now have a group of unschooling families we have become particularly close to, and have gathered together with this group the past two summers. Since we all have so much fun together, some of us who live fairly close together decided to have another gathering this past weekend just outside of Detroit. As usual, there was lots of lively conversation and good food. The kids all enjoyed seeing their friends and making some new ones. There was lots of jumping on the trampoline and playing on the Wii and Gamecube, along with a wide variety of other kid-friendly fun.

Our world has truly been expanded by the relationships we have formed with our "unschooling tribe". It's wonderful how our group supports and nurtures one another through any life challenges we may be dealing with. Now that we are back home and the excitement has died down, we look forward to some fresh new discoveries as we start to explore some of the many books, movies, TV shows, hobbies, and places to visit suggested by our unschooling friends.

Unschooling Math

The boys have really been getting into numbers lately!! It's so fun to watch them "doing math" without any of the frustrations that most of us remember from struggling with multiplication tables, fractions and long division.

Even though I have plenty of evidence of how easily my kids learn when given the freedom to do it in their own time and in their own way, there are still times when I'm amazed at how their minds just pick things up. One of my earliest "unschooling math" moments was when Nathan was only 3 or 4 (this was related to me by Joe as he happened to be the parent that was home at the time). Nathan was sitting at the table playing with a bunch of Cheerios. After messing around with them for a while, he announced, "Hey dad, four 3's makes twelve!!" He had divided them up into nice little piles and counted them, all on his own.

Fast forward a year or so, and we're all in the car on our way to a holiday gathering. I overhear the boys in the back seat in some intense discussion. All of a sudden I hear Nathan heatedly announce, "Noah, I told you, infinity is the biggest number!!" Okay. I asked Nathan, gently, just out of curiosity, if he understood what "infinity" meant. He looked at me with that "why wouldn't I" expression and patiently explained "that means it goes on and on forever". Glad he got that figured out before the tender age of six.

Lately, I've been noticing both boys have an increasing comfort level manipulating numbers. When I told Noah that an event he was looking forward to was two weeks away, he promptly announced, "That's 14 days!". He easily told me that 3 weeks was 21 days, and 4 weeks was 28 days. One night we were on the couch watching cartoons when we mentioned that another show would be on in five minutes. Noah quickly informed us that that was 300 seconds. Another evening a few weeks ago, Joe came home with a wad of cash and Nathan asked to count it. It was a stack of 20's, and I watched as he easily counted it out: 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 bucks!!

Clearly they are mastering multiplication, without a workbook in sight!! Most importantly, they are doing it because they want to, because it has meaning to them in their life, not because someone told them they should.

Learning All the Time...

As the great John Holt said, we really are learning all the time - I just haven't had the time to blog about it lately! Life has been all aswirl with busy-ness and most nights I have been falling into bed exhausted (but content) at the end of the day.

Earlier this evening, I was sitting in the living room knitting, the Just Like Heaven soundtrack was blaring, Nathan and the dog were wrestling together (loudly), and Joe and Noah were debating the relative merits (or lack thereof) of the Spongebob movie.

A short while later, we were all (including the dog!) packed into the kitchen making gingersnaps and goofing around. And I just finished snuggling in front of the fire and watching 50 First Dates with my honey while the kids drifted in and out intermittently to join in the snuggle.

I love my life...

And now I need to go to bed once more!!!

The Joys of Not Back to School

Well, school's been back in for a whole week now, and I'm more relieved than ever that my kids don't go to school. I could sense the anxiety building in many of the kids around here as the big day approached. It's almost spooky how empty the neighbourhood seems after having the streets filled with kids merrily playing all summer.

Ah well, at least our family is not a slave to the school system! Although we can't exactly ignore the fact that my kids' best friends are now in school all day, there is still plenty of fun to be had. The weather has been unseasonably cool and wet the last couple of weeks, but we had a couple of nice warm afternoons and headed out to the park one day and for a nature hike with the dog another day. The boys have been immersed in a Wallace and Grommet game (for Gamecube)they borrowed from their babysitter (an awesome young man named Dan - the kids love him so much they ask us to go out so he can come over!)

Let's see, what else have we been up to? Many of our days are so unstructured I have a hard time thinking about what we actually "do" all day.

Noah recently built and painted a model of an AT walker all by himself. Nathan build Jengo Fett's ship out of Lego (with a little help from his dad).






I've been busy "harvesting" our bounty in the garden, and starting to put the garden to bed for another year. I'm hoping to find some time to build a small cold frame and trying to extend our season by growing some greens in it.





Joe has been working hard at sprucing up the place. We have been redoing both the kitchen and bathroom (not a gut-everything-and-start-over, but painting, new mirrors/lights, that type of thing). Now we're looking at the rest of the house and realizing it needs a lot of help too. I got the itch to rearrange/spruce up the dining room (adding several furniture repainting projects, plus a sewing project and a lot of reorganizing/general cleaning out of stuff to the mix!)

We have a few outing planned for the upcoming weeks as well. The boys are headed to the Royal Botanical Gardens this afternoon for a homeschoolers' program on "Bugs". This program is running every other Tuesday afternoon until just before Christmas, and I think the boys are going to really enjoy it as they both love anything to do with "nature".

Other planned trips/outings for the near future: our homeschool group's "Not Back to School" picnic on Thursday, a visit to a donkey sanctuary, a visit to Dutchman's Gold (a local honey producer), and a trip or two to the Ontario Science Centre. We'll probably also hit some local farms for apple picking and other fall fun. This Saturday we are attending our CSA's end of season barbecue; this includes a tour of the farm so it should be really cool (although we've been members of this CSA for a few years, we've never managed to get to this event due to scheduling conflicts).

(Blogger is not being my friend right now - for some reason it is not uploading my photos. I somehow managed to get one in, but it doesn't like the rest! How annoying - I will give it a try later on.)

"Spontaneous" Learning

Sometimes (often, in fact) my kids astonish me by seemingly learning something "overnight". Such has been the case lately with Nathan (age 6 1/2). Up until about a month ago, he had on only one occasion (to my knowledge) picked up a pen or pencil and practiced printing letters. That was way back when he was four, and as a matter of fact, even that time he certainly wasn't "practicing". He wanted to write his name, so he asked me what it looked like. I carefully printed it out for him. He then proceeded to pick up a pencil and do a very admirable job of printing his name.

Back to the present. A few weeks ago, we were goofing around with the magnetic letters on the fridge. He then asked me how to spell "yes". We spelled it out together with the magnetic letters, then he wandered off (to do something entirely unrelated, I was sure - that's usually how our days go; flowing in and out of a wide variety of things and making connections here, there and everywhere). A few minutes later, he appeared with the word "yes" printed very carefully on a scrap piece of paper (and a big grin). WOW. Over the next few days, he copied a wide variety of words down, and continues to randomly ask for words to copy.

Around 11:30 last night, it was "treehouse". We were all up, having a late-night pow-wow about our plans for building a playstructure in the back yard. We had been surfing online, looking at a variety of pre-fab kits, but not only were they phenomenally expensive (some of them cost twice as much as we paid for our [used] minivan!) but they also weren't quite what the kids wanted, either. So Joe (dh) started drawing up some plans, trying to come up with something that contained a suspended treehouse, swings and a climbing wall, and that would also fit in the space available in our small back yard and not totally smash our budget. He came up with something that met all the requirements, and while Nathan sat watching the drawing take shape, he asked what the word "treehouse" looked like. So, as usual, I copied it out for him. He sat there happily printing it out, then observing that it was actually 2 words put together, "tree" and "house", and playing around with that.

Of course, all of these connections didn't really happen "overnight". Nathan's been watching, observing, and picking up all the skills needed to print proficiently in a million different subtle ways that I can't begin to imagine, since he was born. I have to think that all the furious Lego building he's been doing for years (with all those little bitty pieces) played a big part in building his dexterity and fine-motor skills. I've also noticed he developed an intense interest in colouring pictures a few months before this magical "burst" in printing ability. It's so wonderful to realize that it's not necessary to force a kid to slave over workbooks, struggling to print letters by rote for untold hours, until they finally get the hang of it. Like everything else that matters in life, they'll learn it in there own time, and in their own way. Naturally!