Another homeschooling meeting…

Last night I debated on going to the pool or going to the homeschool meeting… I finally decided to do both and just be late at the meeting…

I am really glad I did that because for one, I really wanted to go swimming… and it felt great… and two… I missed the part of the meeting that was them talking about the conference they went to last weekend… when I came in they were just near the end and talking about concentration and how to get kids to concentrate on their work by using a physical stop sign and then having punishments if they need to use the stop sign 3 times…

omg… I was Crawling out of my skin!! and the worse part was that not only was the girl talking about it but she actually made the stop sign and bought the chart that charts the punishment and rewards… She gave the example of giving an assignment and that after doing half or more they ask to do something else so she has been using the stop sign to make them stop and concentrate on doing the rest…

so… I asked… but what if they want to move on after doing half or more because they got the concept and want to go on to the next thing…

she didn’t seem to think that it was a valid reason…

It really annoys me going to these meetings… I like the interaction with a few of the moms, especially 2 of them.. but the other 3 I just have so much trouble getting… they are always in search of the perfect curriculum, working so hard and struggling to get their kids to cooperate and concentrate… while 3 of us are often talking about whatever comes to mind, they are talking about curriculum…

Another thing that came up about the conference was about a writing club and the way they described it it was really cool and is really in line with an unschooling philosophy… letting kids write because they want to, letting them write what they want, not hovering and correcting etc… I said that it sounded really cool and that is what I plan on doing… but then of course the guns went up… it had to be said that it was only a writing club it is just for fun… but in real life learning kids can’t do that all of the time…

umm…. WHY NOT ??!!!

I just don’t get it… I don’t get them…

Why must the love of learning need to squashed by stop signs, punishments, rewards and overbearing parents?

we didn’t schedule another meeting for now… I am glad about it… I am not sure I want to go back….

and here we go again…

no I am not pregnant

but today… just a few days shy of Khéna being 17 months I got my first PPAF… (Post-partum “Aunt-Flo” for those that are not familiar with the lingo)

With the firt two boys I got my PPAF at about 9 months… when they started to walk and nurse less in the day and started eating solids… With Khéna though, he did not slow in nursing at all when he started milestones… he didn’t have those normal periods where he was more wakeful at night either…

But slowly, he has been nursing less and when I got really crampy and irritable at the begining of the week, I knew that it would not be long…

the bloating could also be a reason that the scale showed so much of a difference as today I am now 5 lbs less then I was when I weighed myself on Wednesday…

Though I do and did enjoy the time that I don’t have to go through the monthly rituals… I do have to say that being able to start charting again and knowing what my body is doing makes things a bit easier for me…

Maybe one day I would like to have another child but I don’t think it is the right time at the moment… I want the boys to grow a bit before…

California clamps down on homeschooling…

whoa…

Feminism and unschooling and more…

Here is an article that was shared with me recently…

Learning Curve

Feminism is a funny thing…

For some it may mean that women need to be completely independent, need to work, not have kids and not go into any other role than the independent womyn figure that would never trust a man if her life depended on it…

For some it means juggling both worlds of kids and family and then working out of the home to be “equal” to men.
And for some… being at home, raising kids in the way that is the best ways… not the mainstream ways…. is an act of feminism… However, I think that a lot of self proclaimed feminists see this as being impossible, but it isn’t…

The way I see it is that for a while, feminism was about equality in status as human beings. The right to vote, the right to speak, the right to work with equal pay, not one more important than the other…

Equal… but… not the same…

However… sometime, somewhere, it seemed to change…

I remember when I was in university and hanging out in some feminist circles and feminism was no longer about equality, it was about men-bashing… it was about surpassing men, it was about taking over… Instead of being equal, it has become about leaving the role of woman and motherhood behind and looking at it as something to be ashamed of…
However, my choice of staying at home, raising my children, making my own choices about the way I birth is part of the way that I express who I am as a woman…

So, taking back my womanhood, taking back my body in birth by UCing, taking back my role as mother and nurturing and raising my children in the ways that feel right naturally and not because of a stigma, breastfeeding, co-sleeping and now unschooling, all in the while of being an equal partner within my relationship with my husband and partner in life is the way I express my feminism…

Men have in most part shaped the society that we live in, they in many ways formed the ways that society in general raises children…

Men were the physicians that wanted women to birth in unnatural positions so that they could “see better”, not caring at all that the birth on the back position makes it harder on women to birth and can put babies at risk…
Men were the ones that have made breasts sexual and that have put stigmas on breastfeeding and were the physicians that perpetuated the myths that formula was not dangerous and that often was better than breastfeeding even though they could not be further from the truth…

And it goes on and on… Men have made many mistakes, and it is up to us to change things, however, correcting those mistakes by taking on the same family roles as the men in the past is not the way to go and in my opinion is doing a disservice to the children…

So going back to that article and unschooling, well… I don’t agree with all of it but I think that some good points were brought up in the article and in the comments… unschooling and feminism don’t only come together in the ways that the author is describing, it is about more.

It is about teaching our own children, it is about letting them make their own choices for what is right for them and recognizing that they too are equals in our society, it is about recognizing that the school systems that have been set up clearly do not work for all children and there are serious flaws and that it is part of the role I choose of motherhood to give my children the best chances they have to be happy in life…

simon, the cat, and the rat…

So Xavier is starting to read more words… the “at” words are easy for him now so I have been writing down a few things using those words and a few others that he knows and he has been reading them… what I really like about it is that this is really boosting his confidence and he is feeling really proud of himself and when that happens he want to do more…

So while Xavier was eating lunch I wrote something for him…

and omg… he laughed….

he laughed so much after he read it, and he couldn’t stop laughing for the longest time and wanted to read it again and again…

“Simon sat on the cat. The cat had a rat. The cat hit Simon with the rat.” 

then I realized that it was the first time that I made my child laugh by writing something…

this is fun…

pulp and paper…

Yesterday we left early in the morning to go to a pulp and paper museum in Trois-Rivieres, a city about half way between Montreal and Quebec city…

Having to wake Xavier and coax him out of bed reminded me how much I am happy to not have to do that on a regular basis…

We got there at just before 10am and not long after we started the day… We were the only people there so the kids were able to run around and talk and we didn’t feel like the group was bothering anyone… so the first thing was a small “play” with a guy that talked about being a lumberjack and how life was for them a couple hundred years ago…

Then we learned how they make Paper, why there was pulp and paper mills in that location and how the machines used to work and still work in paper production…

After that was the really fun part… learning how to make paper and then actually making it!

First soak and rip up pieces of paper (recyled)

then blend with water….

Then strain on a frame with screen… then press… take screen off… decorate and then iron to start drying and let it dry afterwards… here are Colin’s and Xavier’s… and we are sure to make more here at home….

Lunch and another activity or two later and we were on the way back home and all three boys fell asleep in the car… It was really interesting and I think that when the kids are older I would love to go back and see it again so that they understand more of what they were hearing…

Here is the link for the place 

eclipse…

What an amazing view that was last night…

We spent quite a while during the day talking about the eclipse so by the time night started to fall Xavier was getting excited… Before going downstairs to play King’s Quest he saw the beginning and went in and out of the house until he fell asleep… We told him that if he fell asleep we would wake him up when it was the full eclipse and we did just that not long after he had fallen asleep…

I spent quite a while outside trying to take pics.. I don’t have any special lenses nor an amazing camera but I am pretty happy with what I got anyways….

I was amazing though… and I hope that Xavier remembers it for a long time…

(with Saturn on the left)

begining stages of reading…

Yesterday, Xavier saw some of the pages that Simon had printed out a while back on space from learningpage.com and wanted to take them out to do… for a few pages he asked me to read the instructions and was interested in doing what was asked but then got bored and then started asking his own questions and was circling things on the page in response… so I decided to ask him to circle a few words… Saturn, Jupiter, Planet, red etc… I would ask him the word and he would sound it out a bit to figure out the first letter… he has been doing this for a while so it didn’t surprise me but then he started to sound out the next letter… or the next consonant, or the last sound and was able to find the words he was looking for even if there where other words that started with the same letter…

The was one sentence that had many of the words that he had found and I asked him to read it… and he did!! he even read the words that linked the words that he had circled (has, a, on, it)… He doesn’t know that he is starting to learn how to read, he has a great memory which I know is a big part of it and I think that he thinks is ALL of it… but I can see that it is the beginning, and knowing him, when he gets enough confidence to allow himself to believe that he knows how to read he will do so quickly and with ease…

misc…

I went to two homeschooling meetings in the last two weeks and both turned out pretty well… I still feel uneasy about the local group but it is getting better… the last meeting was a bit more relaxed so that helped… but there are still things that bother me… and most of it I think is about a lack of self confidence and continual excuses when it comes to looking out of the box of doing “school at home”…

but the other group is different… What I like about it I think is that homeschooling is not as new to all of them, there is not the constant “what are you going to use for this” and most of the group are confident in what they are doing, there are no lame excuses when different ideas are brought up so even though we do not all have the same style,  we can still talk and share and accept the differences…

Anyway… I do look forward to going back soon… especially to the farther group because there are a few that I really get along well with…

Aside from that I have been working on getting into a routine more here…

I have continued to declutter and I have been trying to get into a better everyday cleaning routine…  Last weekend I attacked my closet and my room in general and everyday I have been maintaining it as much as I can (though at the moment I have some clothes to put away)… the kitchen is the same… everyday I get it clean, dishes done and counters wiped down, sweep and clean up they toys etc… this of course may be second nature to many but it is not to me, but it is starting…

I have also been spending less time on the computer in the daytime… I have been reading more, looking at books with the kids more and I slowly but surely I have been finding the time to sew more also… The boys have been a lot better at keeping the playroom a lot cleaner and since Khéna has been putting things in his mouth less I have been letting all three play in the playroom while I sew…

I find it great because I got a great response on the two message boards that I post on when I shared the last dress that I made and now I want to make more… I really enjoy being at the sewing machine and making something that I find beautiful out of a few pieces of cloth and getting paid for doing so makes it even more inspiring… Xavier has also been gaining a lot of interest in my sewing and will often come and watch me and ask questions… I found a small sewing machine for a few dollars and I am going to sere if it works and if it does I am going to give that to him to start learning…

where’s your nose?

I was talking with a friend yesterday about unschooling and an analogy popped up in my head when she asked me…
“but how to kids learn if you are not actively teaching them”

First I explained that you are always teaching whether you want to or not, you teach by example all of the time and kids pick up things and learn a lot more than we sometimes want to teach them… They learn our good habits, our bad habits, they learn how we interact with others etc… and unschooling is just an extension of that in many ways…

An example that came into my head was the way that some parents seem to believe that you need to actively teach body parts…

Have you seen those parents that for 15 minutes say…

“where’s your nose?… oh look! I’m touching your nose!…. can you say nose?…. nose…. Nose…. NOSE….. say nose…. can you touch my nose? where’s my nose? can you find your nose? I got your nose!…. say nose…”

and on and on and on….

well…. guess what…

I don’t do that…

and guess what?

my kids know where their noses are…

Now… don’t get me wrong… I am not saying that it is wrong to do it of you enjoy it… or you are doing your kids a disservice by doing it… that’s not my point at all…

my point is that kids do learn and will learn without things being drilled in their heads.

They learn by listening to every day conversations… they learn by asking questions and by getting answers…

So as I explained this to this friend I think she understood what I mean by unschooling being learning without always actively teaching… and that kids will learn the thing that they need and want to learn.