low tide & handwork

I read a post recently by a homeschooling mom who chooses the phrase "tidal homeschooling" to describe her family lifestyle. Depending on all the different variables that affect a family from day to day and week to week, some seasons school is in high gear, some seasons it's in low gear. Instead of following a schedule ruled by the clock or the calendar, she just lets things happen according to whatever rhythms are set in place and out of her control, without stressing about it.

So far, this is how my own experience with raising our children has been. There have been months that I've felt great and we tried a lot of new things and learned in a very "Montessori" way. Other months, like the current one, we are completely low-key and in a very "unschooling" way of life. We're spending long hours outside, learning games like chess and checkers, finding new games to play on the computer, and listening to books on tape. Our latest favorites are CD recordings by Jim Weiss. We have 3: King Arthur and His Knights, Greek Myths, and She & He: Adventures in Mythology. I didn't know if they'd be worth the $, but my 5-year-old is completely captivated by these stories. He rested on his "new" bunk bed this morning and listened for an hour. When we get in the van to go somewhere, he asks, "can we listen to the stories about King Arthur?" And I am really enjoying listening, too. It takes my mind off everything else!

Speaking of distracting my mind, I decided out-of-the-blue to learn how to knit. Both Montessori and Waldorf schools encourage a lot of hand-work by the young children. They even teach their boys to knit and crochet, which I'm not sure my dh would think is a good use of our time here... but the point is to keep the hands moving, having interesting work to focus the attention on, having a functional product or gift when finished, and interacting with natural materials, like bamboo knitting needles and yarn of wool. Examples of sewing and weaving activities for children are here. My 5yo wove a hot-pad for me with his Aunt, and to this day when he sees me using it, he always says, "thanks for using the hot-pad I made, mom!" That's another example of a good self-esteem builder!