Mudspark Life Learning

I had a dream last night, inspired by my reading of Deschooling Our Lives (ed Matt Hern) and my attending a Town Hall meeting last night at which education came up a lot, where I told someone (a school board member? middle school principle?) how I would redesign our schools. Schools would meet for four hours a day (a flexible four hours? just mornings? afternoons?). Then instead of putting more money into schools, we invest in libraries, rec centers, museums, and professional partnerships like local attorneys, food pantries, hospitals, and municipal centers. Kids - say grades 4 through 12 - would choose what service projects or other interests they would pursue for the rest of the day. This could be anything from a sport to serving at a food pantry to studying Russian literature at a local library. It would be totally up to the student. Guidance counselors, teachers, and parents would help provide resources and direction based on the student's interests and goals. This would re...

My eldest spends a whole lotta time on the computer. It's either Animal Jam, Netflix - the same few shows - or sometimes Poptropica (she's almost 8). I worry. I fear I'm letting her brain rot. I fear she doesn't know how to self motivate, that I let her watch shows too early (she loved her Caillou and Baby Einstein shows). And simultaneously, I'm a big believer in unschooling, or letting my kids choose their path of learning. She likes My Little Pony, Powerpuff Girls, and Horseland. She used to be really really into Rugrats and All Grown Up. Occasionally, she'll check out something else recommended by the Netflix algorithms, like Ruby Gloom. Sometimes she'll watch some other fluff, like Maco Mermaids. When she's into a show, she watches it over and over, and I know there are important wheels turning as she watches these shows. But still I worry. Not about the content, as some parents might, just about the seeming inability to do anything else. Yes, s...

"When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think. There is no evidence that this has been a state purpose since the start of compulsion schooling." - John Taylor Gatto, "The Public Schooling Nightmare" in Deschooling Our Lives ed. Matt Hern Just have to say I highly recommend this book, a collection of essays blasting schooling and educating others, and celebrating how we learn and grow as a function of being human.

We participated in the Denver Botanic Gardens homeschool day last week, themed "nature and art." The stations were fun, including playing with clay after comparing clay soil to sand, dying yarn and squishing plant matter to "paint" paper, looking for patterns in plants and fruits, building Andy Goldsworthy inspired sculptures, and planting seeds. But I think some of the biggest learning happened just by observing. There were so many bees, and the kids (ages 2-8) were fascinated with the different kinds we saw (we learned later that there are 946 documented bee species in Colorado). We noticed what flowers they were drawn to, and which ones didn't have any bees on them. We watched water skippers, saw huge cabbages that had been chomped by something, smelled roses, and wandered through the tropical green house. One of the volunteers commented on how he wished he'd had activities like this when he was a kid, and implied that he wished more kids could do stuf...

So today my kids have learned (or at least encountered, no one really knows what a person has "learned," though you can be sure we are all learning all the time): How to clean mud off the floor. That while you may not care about the broken sword, you care about the person. Take a moment to  imagine what that other person feels like before saying you're sorry so that your being sorry is genuine and expresses some compassion. Egg whites don't whip when you get a little yolk in them. That some email accounts block certain kinds of emails and you have to contact Help to get your account going. That cookbooks can be wrong, recipes can be adapted, and then you learn from the finished product. But it still tastes good. It generally makes more work for yourself when you do things quickly and hyperactively. That imbalanced washing machines make great percussion instruments. It's harder to roller skate while holding dolls.

My daughter's riding lesson wasn't until 2, and it was a gorgeous spring day. 62 and sunny. We decided to pack a picnic and go to the lake just north of where our riding instructor lives. This took some doing, as I am not eating any sugar, starch (like white rice), gluten, or dairy. I made brown rice balls rolled in sesame and a little salt, and a kale salad with apples, raisins, and grated carrots. I threw in the gluten free banana pancakes left over from breakfast (they have potato starch and white rice flour in them so I didn't eat any) and some fruit. We were ready to go. When we arrived at the lake, it was WINDY. The kind that takes your breath away. We hadn't dressed for the wind, which can make a warm day really chilly in dry Colorado. So we hiked down the hill, over horse prints pressed into the dry mud, and discovered a little hollow with a pond just off the main beach area. To the kids it was a secret haven to play in, but the first things I noticed after ...

For me, the heart of homeschooling is being out in nature with a group of friends, letting things happen. Today three of my friends and their kids joined us on an outdoor excursion to a wetland area I hadn't yet visited. It's in the middle of a trendy housing development, and is restored wetland taken over from an airport. I could tell from looking at the satellite pictures on google maps that it had two little ponds, a few creeks, and some trails. But I wasn't sure if it would just be a lot of yellow grass and garbage, or full of fun nooks to explore and things to discover. March in Colorado is spring trying its hardest to wake up, so most of the land is still brown. Not a lot of bugs to find. Patches of snow and mud surrounded by dry and brown. But we had such a fabulous time and made many discoveries. It was a perfect example of just letting learning happen. We had fun and got muddy trying to get down to the water. Ann Patchet writes, "Water will always seek out i...