Mudspark Life Learning

Even in winter - no matter the weather - you and the children can connect with and learn about nature. In parts of the country right now, it's pouring so hard it's flooding. Obviously keeping safe takes priority over study.  Weather preparedness and care teaches our kids a lot about how to be in the world. Making sure our homes and our neighbors and animals are all ready and safe, as best we can, teaches kids about community, self-care, and respect for Mother Nature. But given that you and the family are safe, you can study weather maps and learn where your weather comes from. What is "upstream" and how do meteorologists forecast the weather? Then make a weather station, putting out rain gauges, barometer, and digital or old-fashioned thermometers. For ideas and tips, see Franklin's Forecast. This can be as simple as a clear plastic container to collect rain and snow. Look at the collected rain under the microscope. Anything living in it? Each raindrop - an

My meditation of late is to remind myself that I am in charge. When my daughter starts to freak out (she has massive melt downs, usually from a low frustration tolerance), or the kids are fighting, or everyone is moving as fast as snails to get out of the house, my blood pressure rises, and I silently say to myself - "I am in charge." My blood pressure lowers. I relax a little. I am able to see how best to respond, rather than reacting in anger. This anger, which can flare so fast and big, usually stems from my feeling powerless. When I remind myself that I am in charge - not my daughter's anger or the clock or my toddler's need to wear that one filthy outfit - then I regain just enough sense of power within to settle down. And that's the key - it's not "in charge" in a "power over" another person kinds of way. While I do have a certain level of power over the children and the day and whatever, ultimately I don't - I can't control t

One of our more central homeschooling activities is reading aloud. Over the past year or so, my daughter and I have enjoyed my reading to her Grace Lin's novels , the Ramona Quimby books , and (currently) the Little House books .  While reading Lin's books, we ate Taiwanese food and discussed the differences and similarities between Taiwan and China, and (since my daughter is 7), Japan and China and other Asian countries. We wrote to Grace Lin and entered a giveaway of hers, and received a hand-written post card and bookmark from her. It sits proudly on the refrigerator. The Ramona books inspired us to make slow cooker beef stew of all random things. We examined how the books had been written over a period of thirty-five years, and discussed how certain things hadn't changed between my mother's childhood, mine, and my daughter's. Other things have changed, like phones. In Ramona, they have one phone in the hallway, attached to the wall. No cell phones, no computers.

My daughter earned her first homeschool badge, Healthy Eating, by writing the following essay, her first ever essay.

I caught myself thinking this morning - Why is this parenting stuff so hard? Why didn't I read everything I needed to know before my kids were born and get it all figured out long ago? (As if that were even possible.) Then I realized how I let myself learn about any other subject as I go - while writing a book, keeping chickens, gardening. I don't see it as a failure, but a journey deepening into something I value. Somehow learning to parent as I go feels like a failure. And into my mind popped the image of my daughter (age 7) melting into a pile of self revulsion because she can't draw or play piano or spell a word perfectly the first or second or third time. Hmm, I thought - while my response is less dramatic, it's the same pattern. Expecting myself to be beyond perfect from square one. Time to let myself grow as I go, even as a parent, and to show my daughter my process. I've tried to show her my mistakes and learning in other areas - sewing, cooking,

I'm reading articles in the Sept/Oct 2012 issue of Home Education Magazine about how other homeschooling and attachment-style parents are working towards not controlling their children. They are seeing how their fears have gotten in the way of letting their children grow into people who realize their own self control, aware of their own limits and their choices for honoring those limits. I feel myself resist a little against their words. This morning we had yet another explosion from my 7-year-old. It set off the whole house. I'm tired of her being the center of everything, the "spoiled brat princess." My response has been to ignore, stepping in only if she can't bring herself down. Usually she can't. So I offer empathy, which usually sends her distress higher. She's a bit of a drama queen. She started crying yesterday, for instance, because her imaginary sister isn't even real, so she is so very sorry and sad that she is all alone in the world. I wan

After a friend of mine went to Yellowstone this past fall and her daughter collected jr ranger badges, I got me a homeschooling idea. I discovered that on ebay one can purchase girl scout badges for about $1 a piece. Some of them say something, like "gardening" while some of the older ones are just images - a bird, a butterfly, a horse. So we're doing some nature study these days with that same friend, and I've purchased badges for our girls to earn. We're pretty unschoolish, so while my background in outdoor education peeps its head out of the backpack now and then, mostly we just explore and play. We might develop a website someday based on this idea - homeschool badges - where homeschool families can gather online, earn both literal and virtual badges, and get ideas to connect with nature (and other badge-earning projects). But for now we're just keeping it small. Thought I'd pass along the idea!

I asked myself recently why mainstream culture is so bent on handing responsibility over to others. We give our power to doctors, pharmaceutical companies, teachers and schools, banks and so many more entities and institutions. We have learned as a culture to not trust our intuition, healing ability, bodies, or ability to learn and be curious. Those who do trust themselves are accused of not trusting anyone else, as in the case of homeschooling, for instance. Why is there such a fear of taking responsibility? I think this is because in our current society, we see either/or: either the responsibility is ALL on my shoulders, or others will be my parents and take care of me. We want to be taken care of. The world is overwhelming and scary. I want someone to hold my hand. Who doesn't? The greater culture has become so attached to giving responsibility to others that we can't even see that a middle ground is possible: I can check with my doctor, then take herbs. I can homeschool a

I've always wanted to get a big roll of paper, unroll a big huge section, and let the kids go to town with paint. So I did. I got the paper and paints through Rainbow Resource . The drawing was so long I didn't have a wall to hang it on. We had to tear off one end to make room! Somehow I didn't get a picture of that. But you can imagine the color.

  My husband just finished a power-filled retreat with Bill Plotkin , and one of the insights he brought home with him is this chart of soulcentric development . It perfectly captures why and how I homeschool (or at least towards what ends I aspire). I see my toddler as an Innocent in the Nest, and my school age child as an Explorer in the Garden. Homeschool as a way for them to explore the garden in the context of family, community, and nature. It sets up ideal conditions for them to do necessary work as teens, when they need to create a secure and authentic social self, something that is very hard to do in most of today's high schools. With this ground work they will grow up to be authentic, strong adults able to do their work in the world in a meaningful way. And by work I don't mean being successful economic units, although that can be a part of it, too. I mean soul work. Inner work that translates into a calling that makes the world a better place. Plotkin

Yesterday we discovered earwig colonies under a bunch of rocks in our backyard. There seemed to be a large earwig, a whole bunch of teeny earwigs, and some little white eggs. I was curious about why all of these would be clustered together, so looked up earwigs online. Apparently they are one of the few insects that show some maternal behaviors, as the mother earwig stays with the nymphs at least to their first molt. They molt five times before becoming adults. The mothers also watch over their eggs. I've never really liked earwigs, but I knew they just eat decaying matter like dead leaves, and they in doing so are an important part of an ecosystem. But those pincers do look nasty, so I also looked up whether or not earwigs bite. They can pinch but can't really break the skin and aren't aggressive. As I was perusing the wikipedia page on earwigs, my son said, "I want that coloring page!" So I printed out the two images of prehistoric earwigs that lived at the