Free Range Mama

easter!

Had a nice relaxing Easter day. The kids got up at the usual time to discover their Easter baskets stuffed with goodies.

We reuse the same baskets every year, so the kids actually left them out, empty, the night before. Alex was delighted to find a copy of the last Harry Potter book - we finished the previous one Friday night, and I had been unable to find it at the used bookstore or the library on Saturday, so he thought he'd have to wait for the Library Book Sale next weekend, or for me to get the book on hold. I have already read him the first 5 chapters. The baskets were mostly toys, and the candy was hidden in eggs that were spread all over the yard. The kids had to hunt for it...

Yes, the rain was a bit unfortunate, but it was fun anyway.

Later on, Dh took Z shopping to pick up some stuff for Easter dinner. Apparently Z was wished a happy Easter to EVERY person they encountered, and she also managed to talk her way into an ice cream cone, and some balloons, so all in all it worked out pretty well for her.

When Z got back, we dyed eggs. I know the kids look pretty bored in this picture - they actually had a lot of fun dyeing, but at this moment they were getting a bit annoyed that it was taking so long for the food coloring tablets to dissolve.

Here are the finished eggs, drying...

And back in the carton...

The top ones were white, and the bottom ones brown... I love the way brown eggs take dye - such rich colors :)

In the evening we had a lovely dinner, and the kids played restaurant - making a menu, taking our order and so on, though not without some argument about what the restaurant should be called and what all the various jobs should be. I was designated "Sous Chef" I think.

worth a read...

I just finished The Book of Learning and Forgetting  by Frank Smith, and wow is it ever a powerful endorsement of unschooling. No, Smith doesn't mention unschooling, or even homeschooling in the book, but I could almost hear John Holt tap dancing in the background as Smith made the case that children are learning all the time, even when they don't appear to be. According to Smith, the question we should be asking is not whether they are learning, but what they are learning. A child who appears to be failing at something is still learning - possibly about what it feels like to fail - but learning nonetheless. The problem with the modern educational establishment (among other things) is that kids are learning entirely the wrong things (many of which are unhelpful patterns of thinking), and they are learning from the wrong people. Smith differentiates between to models of learning, the "classic view" and "the official theory" and demonstrates how the classic view, which is social, effortless and results in long-term retention, has been undermined in recent years by the official theory which is based on painfully deliberate memorization and testing and results in very little actual retention. Facts are forgotten, but the unpleasant associations are still learned and remembered. Common sense is definitely on his side here - I was considered to be a very good student in school, but I can recall shockingly little of what I supposedly learned in the classroom, and I often have to look up information that I undoubtedly covered in one class or another. The things I remember are definitely those things that I connected with in a broader way - things that had meaning for me beyond the need to pass a test. I have to admit it makes me a little bitter about all of the time I wasted trying to learn that way.

As nice as it was to have this phenomenon spelled out so eloquently by the author, it's not exactly news to an unschooler is it?   No, not exactly a great revelation to someone who is well aquainted with natural learning, but there were a few interesting points that I haven't seen covered anywhere else in the homeschooling literature, except possibly peripherally in the writings of David Albert. Smith makes the point that that a great deal of our learning is a social activity that grows out of our own sense of personal identity. This is to say that people learn from other people whom they identify with. Smith calls these groups of people "clubs" even though they are typically not official organizations, but essentially categories of other people that we percieve to be like ourselves. When we identify ourselves with a particular group, we allow ourselves a kind of mentorship among its members that faciliates learning. On the flip side, if we feel that we aren't welcome in a particular club (such as "people who are good at math") it can close us off to those mentoring opportunties and make learning in those areas harder. Of course there are many associations that we may never join, or we may not even care about, but the ones we do connect with will have a powerful impact on what we learn. The implications are sobering when you think about what happens to a kid when you put him in the "club" of people who are learning disabled. Having "difficulty with learning" being part of your self image can't possibly make learning any easier. Smith says as much, also pointing out that kids carrying those labels are often learning as much as anyone else - they just aren't learning what's on the curriculum.

black sheep gathering

Wednesday I drove the kids down to the Oregon Coast to my Mom and Stepdad's beach house so that they could spend the weekend swimming, fishing, beachcombing, playing, roasting marshmallows, and generally having a grand old time with their grandparents and cousins. I stayed with them overnight, and then left the following morning to continue my journey on to Eugene, Oregon for the Black Sheep Gathering. The BSG, for the unititiated, is basically a convention dedicated to natural animal fibers... featuring livestock, fiber arts classes and demonstrations, a trade show, and so on. I was invited by my sweet MIL (a spinner and all -around fiber artist)  who has attended for many years. MIL and a few collegues co-sponsored a booth in the trade show featuring a marvelous array of their beautiful fibers:

She and a few of her friends are are often collectively known as the "Twisted Sisters" because of their Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook and their upcoming book The Twisted Sisters Knit Sweaters: A Knit-to-Fit Workshop . The book is authored by the very talented Lynne Vogel, but MIL has the distinction of having her knitting featured on the cover - a gorgeous sweater that she knit for Zylie. We were promoting the new book at the BSG, and everyone raved about the sweater (you can see it hanging in the photo above) and how cute Zylie is, the only problem being that the girl wearing the sweater in the book is actually a model, not Zylie. I did some shopping and looking around, but most of the weekend I worked the booth and tried my darndest to clear out our inventory. We did pretty well, I think, and had a great time in the process. Working the booth was fun, and I met a LOT of great people. I also brushed up on my spinning a bit, which will give me some encouragement to move forward with it. The gorgeous new fibers I picked up will help with that too.   

On Sunday afternoon, we loaded up the booth, bid a fond farewell to the BSG, and I headed back to the coast to pick up the children. They had a good weekend, despite a few bumps along the way. Z apparently called 911 uneccessarily, and there were a few squabbles among the cousins, but everything worked out. Z told me about fishing.. "Mom! I caught a Salmon! Salmon are also called bait." I stayed over at the beach, and then drove the kids back on Monday morning, including a stopover at 'Dome Central' to pick up FIL who came home with us to visit and help us put up some fencing. So far the fencing project isn't going well - the new auger broke before even one hole was finished, but FIL and Dh are having a good time at the Mariners/ Red Sox game tonight so all is well. The kids and I did the soccer camp thing, followed by about 4 hours of sandcastle building with friends down on the riverfront today, so I am mighty tired (and a little sunburned).