Fall Update, 2010

Clara is preparing to take the SAT exam in January. She is such a hard worker and so motivated! She has made a list of all the colleges she's interested in and they include places like Earlham, Vanderbilt, Rhodes, Centre, Berea, etc. I'm excited to see where she is accepted! She's also thinking about taking a job in food service at the nunnery where I work (as a nurse), in order to save a bit of college money. She's reading the classics (still). Smart girl...

Ezra is loving, loving, loving Civil Air Patrol. They meet every Monday night, and he looks forward to it all week. He is also working on SAT preparation--especially in math, since his math scores will have to be fairly high for him to be accepted to a good aviation/ aerospace engineering college. He is studying the effects of the Civil War on contemporary society through various periodicals and Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic. He's also reading Tolkien's Ring Trilogy.

Stella is a sewing fiend! She has a sewing table set up in her room, and hardly a day passes where she doesn't sit for hours working on a new project. She is reading Conan comics, the May Bird series, and Anacaona, from The Royal Diaries series. She has been practicing her writing, because writing is especially challenging for her. She loves playing the piano (especially God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen), and doing the animals with Daddy.

Madeline is my writer and fellow yogi. She writes poetry and stories daily. She says, "I'm writing a story called A Scary Halloween and a poem called Love, and I think I'm going to start something new today." She is reading the Clarice Bean series and the Emily Windsnap mermaid series. She and Gus use their imaginations to create incredibly involved games all day long, every day.

Gus has become a regular reading machine! He practices reading every day in early readers, on soup can labels, billboards, junk mail, etc. He still wants to spend half the day drawing and half the day in play, and we generally oblige. We have been doing a family unit study on Dickens, and he has been traumatized by the life of poor Oliver Twist--no loving parents, no comfort food, every day in a workhouse... Gus has said quite frequently that he is so grateful he is not an orphan, and that he finds the idea "terrifying." Poor baby!

The order of our days generally follows a pattern, though not necessarily a schedule. The babies wake when they're ready, have breakfast, and play. (Clara and Ezra I wake if they're not up by nine, generally.) Clara and Ezra check their emails, and either hang laundry on the line or load the dishwasher. Ezra usually walks the dogs. Afterward, we do collective school time where we read or watch a related movie together, or if it's a math day, we work for several hours reviewing harder problems together (if it's Monday, we plan out our week together), and then we split up and work individually on whatever is lighting our fire at the moment. All the children spend a good chunk of time outside every day, and I cook all our meals from scratch with locally-grown (ours or the CSA's) vegetables, so that takes some time. Clara and my girls are a big help in the kitchen. The boys, not so much--though Gus does love kneading bread :) We generally have several outings each week to birthday parties, Grandma's house, and the occasional field trip, but mostly we just like being home on our little farm. It's a wonderful life!

Summertime Catch-Up...

It is 100 degrees outside, and tomorrow it is going to be 100 degrees outside. This is the only real challenge I've faced living in southern Indiana in the basin of the Ohio River. I really don't like heat. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy if we just skipped summer altogether, but...

I've been organizing and preparing for the fall. We don't really follow a traditional school year, but we do wax and wane in the intensity of our learning. Autumn, of course, is a time for waxing. It's one of my favorite seasons, and I love the burst of creative energy that comes to every member of our household each fall.

Our little farm is bursting with goodness. We belong to two CSA's this year--one run by my employers, The Daughters of Charity (I work part-time as a nurse caring for retired nuns), and one in western Kentucky which is Amish-run. In addition to these two invaluable sources of fresh, local, organic produce, we also have our little vegetable patch, which has been producing potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, and even figs! I've been busy every day with canning, freezing, cheese-making, and sauerkraut. Our chickens (everything from Araucanas to Buff Orpingtons) are laying a half-dozen eggs each day, our Alpine/Boer goats are producing around a gallon of fresh milk each day, and our Great Pyr doggies are requiring being hosed down each day to manage the heat.

Our plans for school are simple this year. Clara (16) is going to focus on SAT and early college applications. Ezra (14) will continue with his math and science focus and the Civil Air Patrol (which he loves!), Stella and Madeline (10 and 9) have made lists of all the topics they'd like to cover and field trips they'd like to take, including everything from volcanoes to ancient Greece, and Gustav (7) will be working on reading (he's really doing well in his early readers--quite an achievement considering that he's male, left-handed, and so dyslexic that he turns his paper completely upside-down and writes perfectly from the right side of the page to the left!)

I continue with my monthly packets to Bennington College, where I am obtaining an MFA in English/Creative Writing and Literature, and David is preparing for his five classes which begin toward the end of August. Our summers are really wonderful, because he teaches online, so he's home more to help with the farm when it's at its busiest.

So, that's where we are, and what we're up to! I'll begin posting pictures soon :)

Field Trip Take Two!

So, my teenage girl and I also made a trek to Carl Sandburg's home in North Carolina (and to Asheville and the Biltmore Estate as well) and we had such a great time.

Field Trip!

Oh, rapture! To be in the presence of William Faulkner's ghost with my darling sixteen-year-old daughter and friends, and to think, she chose this trip as her birthday gift--one of our many glorious unschooling testimonials! This is real learning: http://www.rowanoak.com/

Worth Reading:

Here is a link to a fabulous article about feminism and unschooling. Enjoy, darlings!

David H. Albert

You can read some of the writings of a fabulous unschooling author here--a very dynamic, compassionate persona.