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!

misc. activity pictures

First, a couple pictures of some practical life work. The other day I said, "we've gotta mop this floor today, boys. Look at all the spots." And my ds5 responded, "oh, good! I love mopping floors!" Yes, he is still my innocent little boy! Did they get many spots off? No, but they did feel helpful, and got the spots soaking for me!

Ds1 loves the Bissel carpet sweeper!

And we finally got our bird feeder put together and stuck to the classroom window. (I meant to do this last fall!) It was free from a boy-scout momma I know. Also in the window sill are the 12 seeds we planted, in preparation for the presentation on the wheat. We are growing herbs for my kitchen. I looked for wheat grass seeds at a couple stores, but couldn't find any - that's what Marcia told me she uses. Last spring I wondered what to do about finding grown wheat, but I ended up finding some growing in our back yard...

Here's ds5 working with our new knobbed cylinders. There are 4 blocks total; ds3 still does them individually, but this child is up to combining 3 so far. This sensorial material is described here. [This is one activity which is supposed to be done on a table, not on the floor, so it's closer to eye level. It's a visual activity more than stereognostic. We don't have a table in our classroom, though, only 2 desks which aren't big enough for this.]

I have other, older photos of a variety of activities if anyone is interested. And btw, spell checker doesn't seem to be working, so excuse my mistakes! I hope teaching my son spelling will give me a good refresher!