Another week....

This is starting to become a ritual: spending my early Saturdays writing about Not Running rather than Actually Running. It is dark and rainy out there right now (4:41 in the morning). Dare I say I'm glad to be in the warm house with the computer on my lap rather than slogging around out there in the wet and gloom? Am I getting soft?

I used some of my free time to change the layout of this blog. Add some blue. Shake things up a bit. Change is good.

Aside from the whole Not Running thing, life is good, too. The kids and I started our homeschooling routine, such as it is, this month and it's going surprisingly well. Basically, we are unschoolers, which is a catchall term for homeschoolers who do not follow a prescribed curriculum.

We didn't start this way. Last year at this time, our first year homeschooling, I spent quite a bit of time forcing the kids to do workbook assignments: math, grammar, spelling, history, etc. The workbooks were mostly (I thought) for Nell's benefit. She had gone to public school for kindergarten and first grade and always seemed to enjoy her workbook assignments. Her teachers never gave any indication otherwise. So it came as a shock to me when she so vehemently opposed all of my assignments. We were both miserable. This power struggle lasted about a week. In order to preserve our good relationship I gave up.

I am forever grateful to Nell for holding her ground and showing me that she and her brothers are fully capable of learning everything they need to know without the assistance of workbooks, thank you very much.

Though I must admit that I insist on a page of math per day. This is a bit of a departure from the Radical Unschooling Terms of Contract, but I do need some structure in my life. And I think the kids need the math. We use an offbeat, highly visual book and we do it together. Sometimes it's even FUN.



I am amazed at how motivated these kids are to learn stuff, despite their relative freedom. Last week I pulled out a geography game about the Fifty States that my mother picked up at a garage sale a couple of years ago.



They must have played that game fifty times by now, first with me, then with each other. Simon likes it so much he plays by himself against his stuffed animals. They have made books about the United States and they jabber constantly about their Favorite States. (Simon: California, Nell: Connecticut, Ben: Mississippi).

We raided the library yesterday for books about the states. This "phase" will probably last a couple more weeks (last month it was musical instruments), and then they'll be on to something else. My job is to constantly supply them with the books and materials they need to keep the fires stoked. You just never know what will catch their fancy. That states game has been sitting around here for a year. Why now? Who knows.....

Homeschooling is actually kind of a misnomer. As anyone who homeschools knows, you don't spend all that much time at home. We take lots of weekly or monthly classes out in the community: piano, violin, horse, two different nature centers, art, yoga, farm, karate, gymnastics. Nell plays on a soccer team and swims on the swimteam, both of which I help coach.

We have been very lucky this year to meet up with a group of unschooling families on Mondays. This group has been together for years and we are thrilled to be a part of it. The kids get regular contact with other kids and the parents with other adults. All much needed (homeschooling downside: it can be isolating) and all good.

Anyway.......why all this talk about homeschooling on a running blog?

I tried running in the deep water on Wednesday, but it hurt my foot. It didn't hurt while I was doing it, but it did hurt later. That is the extent of my running news. Boring and unproductive.

Here's hoping I'll be out there again in a week!

Tipping the balance to unschool

It happened yesterday. The balance in our homeschool finally tipped from "eclectic schooling" to "unschooling." And, man, did it feel good.

After two days of trying to force the workbooks -- math, writing and Draw Write Now being the last vestiges of the crop from early September -- I finally gave in, gave up, gave over. At least for the moment, we are unschooling. Though I tend to shy away from labels, this on does seem to fit.

I think the addition of a 2-year-old dog to the mix is what finally did it. Between walking the dog, letting him in and out, keeping him away from the boys (who love him, but get him riled up), and stopping him from chewing every hat, mitten and sock in the house, all semblance of structure eroded.



When Brian came home from work Tuesday afternoon, I was fit to be tied. "This dog needs to be contained!" I yelled. (Actually, that's not what I yelled at all. It was more like, "We need to keep this fucking dog out of the playroom and living room or he's going back to the pound, so help me!").

Whatever it was I said - I only remember a day full of yelling -- it worked. I don't get easily worked up. Brian saw I was a mess. He said he could splice into the electric fence outside and run a wire through the middle of the house. But it would take a few days to figure out the path the wire would need to take underneath the floorboards and through the joists. (Brian has a lively working knowledge of the innards of the house, which I lack entirely.)

"Oh, no, no, NO!" I said. "You run the wire through the window and tape it to the freaking floor!"

Bless him, he did it. He brought the wire in through some duct work in the basement and taped it across the playroom and living room floors. It almost killed him aesthetically, but he did it.

So yesterday we had a dog-free day in half of the house, which made all the difference. We love the dog, lovely Eddie, but he simply cannot have run of the house.

The kids were so thrilled to be able to play with their toys in the living room and play room without fear of Eddie stealing them and chewing them that they more or less played all day. All three together. Not wanting to disturb that magic, I let them.

They built a city for the guinea pigs while I made whole wheat anadama bread. We all played a fractions game from Family Math (best book I've bought this year, which is really saying something). They created a town for their stuffed animals in the living room complete with houses, stores and a library. I went online to research unschooling on Sandra Dodd's wonderful site. I read to them from American Tall Tales while they painted and drew. We went apple picking in the afternoon (last time this season) and carved pumpkins when we got home. And Brian and Nell took Eddie to obedience school.



It was a great day. I did not feel like my head was going into orbit at sundown.

It seems to be a question of control and trust. Do I trust the kids have some (or all) control of their learning, or do I not. I am slowly giving over. I can plainly see that their instinct is to learn. Left to their own devices, they learn beautifully. And get along beautifully. Which is itself perhaps the best lesson of all.

Slouching toward Bethlehem

Today Nell did ten minutes of math, ten minutes of angry dictionary digging, and then spent the rest of the day in her room listening to By the Shores of Silver Lake (Laura Ingalls Wilder) on CD.

I emailed my unschooling friend Susan: Tell me its okay that Nell is in her room all day listening to a book on CD.

Sister, she said, it's more than okay. And then she hit me with a quote from John Holt.

Nell is turning me into an unschooler. Every day I get closer.