Changes

I'm sitting at the kitchen table watching a pair of cardinals feed their three babies at our bird feeder. This is perhaps the third clutch we've had the joy of watching this year. My mom fed birds here, and sat in this same spot (different table and chairs) for years watching and enjoying birds. I'd like to think these cardinals are descended from the ones she observed years ago. Could one of these parents even have been a fledgling my mom watched? As Kelly and I prepare our house to sell so that we can leave this small town, my childhood home, for Lexington, I can't help but regret that I won't be watching more baby cardinals here through the years.

It's always hard when plans change, even when you know it is for the best, as we do now. This was our "forever" house. The peace I felt when we decided to buy it from my siblings after my parents passed away, the idealism of raising my kids on this beautiful spot of earth that helped form my childhood, is hard to let go.

We won't be giving up this idyllic setting for nothing. In exchange for the woods and the serenity, we will have access to a growing humanist community, as well the ability to join a large established secular homeschooling cooperative. And we will be able to put our money where our mouths are in regards to our carbon footprint. Kelly will work in the same city where we live, losing nearly two hours of commute time a day, and we plan to live in close proximity to a bus line, as well as within walking distance to stores and parks, reducing the time the kids and I spend in our vehicle as well.

Allowing my kids to have access to nature is imperative to me, and I recognize that this move will require a concentrated effort on my part for that to continue. There will be no more walking into the woods 30 feet from the house. This change is probably the aspect of the move that's most difficult for me, but our isolation up here is also a big part of why we need to move.

I'm so very excited for my family's future, one which includes my kids having much more time with their dad, as well as developing and sustaining relationships with other freethinking families. We've built an awesome little nest up here, but it's time to soar.

Jack Out of the Box

Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything. -John Holt, Teach Your Own

Jack and I spent the evening meandering through fields and scouring our driveway for trilobites. (No luck this time, but we found some fossilized clams and coral!) I love our quiet walks together, because sometimes he gets a little overshadowed by his very vocal older sister and younger brother.

Of all my kids, I think homeschooling suits Jack the best. He is very much an introvert, and needs his connection to nature the way most of us need oxygen. Some days he's outside before I'm out of bed, and it's unusual for him not to be covered in dirt. I honestly cannot imagine him in traditional school right now, as I think an integral part of him would be lost being forced to sit inside all day, five days a week. Short recesses on some manufactured plastic playground could never replace trees for that boy.

Jack is one smart six year old, and the questions he comes up with show the beginnings of great critical thinking skills. He will discuss subjects at great length and listen to books all day long, as long as the subject interests him. Interest is really key though, because as soon as I try to work with him on something he doesn't like, such as reading, he tenses up and it becomes a battle.

John Holt says that there are no teachers, only learners, which I am seeing more and more with our little homeschooling endeavors. I know there are hundreds of books about teaching your kid how to read (and I've tried several of them) but I really think it boils down to the kid wanting to learn for it to happen. I have NO doubt that by instilling a love of reading in our family and by the kids seeing Kelly and me read all the time, that Jack will also be a reader. But it's going to be in his own time. (Potty training analogies do not seem out of place here.)

Given all of that, as well as believing that it's not necessary for a child to read young to be a good reader later, doesn't totally take away from fact that, especially as a homeschooling mom, I feel pressure to have my six year old reading. It's kind of this benchmark that we all use to judge elementary kids, isn't it? And it doesn't help that Kelly (who incidentally was a very late reader who became a very good reader) isn't quite on board with all of this unschooling stuff, or that Bonnie is an amazing reader who picked it up very easily at a young age.

So, while pocketing fossils, picking wildflowers, and rescuing a box turtle from the dogs, I said to Jack, "I'd really like it if you'd let me teach you how to read."

He thought about it for a moment and replied, "I'd really like to learn how to swim."

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

As I scour blogs looking for spring time and Easter activities to do with the kids, I am reminded what this season is about for me personally, and no, it's not some fantastical story of a man rising from the dead two thousand years ago. But it is very much about rebirth.

We spend a lot of time in the woods, especially this time of year when the temperature is pleasant and the thorns and brush are not so grown up that they make walking through difficult. There we spot toads freshly emerged from the cool ground, ready to find other toads and get their hop on, their skin dark and wet and their movement still slow. We step over fallen trees, whose fall made room for the abundance of saplings striving to be the one to crowd out its neighbors (siblings?) first. Evolution is on display everywhere. Undeniable.

Closer to the house, we've watched daily for the appearance of the first fence post lizards on our concrete steps. (They crawled out of the ground about a week ago.)  In a few more weeks, the first tiny babies will have hatched, and we'll watch them grow all summer. Between now and late fall, on almost any sunny day, they'll be hanging out catching ants and other little bugs just outside our south-facing windows.

A car ride anywhere right now includes us passing fields with brand-spanking new baby calves, their legs wobbly, some of them with fur still wet from birth. I hope I never stop being as excited as my kids to see them each spring.

With all of this, I have no need for some make believe heaven in the sky. Heaven is here, with my family, in this little spot on earth. It's in the red bud trees, soon indistinguishable from every other tree on the treeline, but now a gorgeous deep purple that I can never get used to, no matter how many springtimes in Kentucky I've had. I'm so incredibly lucky to be part of this beautiful, abundant natural world and the rebirth it offers over and over again. It is everything to me. And it is enough.

Chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps are just a bonus.

Most Likely My Last Post of Frost Flowers For the Year

More Frost Flowers

Kelly and I found more frost flowers this morning. I can't really consider it homeschooling, at least not for the kids, because Jack said it was too cold to go out, Fred only stayed out a few minutes, and Bonnie requested that I "please take pictures" so she could stay in her warm bed. Nonetheless, Kelly and I enjoyed our early morning walk and the beauty of these magical little creations of nature.

Frost Flowers

Bonnie made an exciting discover in our yard this morning: frost flowers. I've seen them from afar my entire life and never knew how beautiful these are up close until we watched a documentary about them a few months ago. (Fellow Kentuckians, you should catch one of these replays and try to spot your own in the next couple of days!) There's a very small window of opportunity to see them early mornings in late fall when they "bloom," and Bonnie was elated when she ran to the house to tell us this morning. The boys were more excited to stomp some of them after I took pictures. I think they are spectacular.

Play Day Week Challenge: Day 5

It's fifty-three degrees out and sunny, and Jack's already been outside off and on for about two hours. I sent Bonnie and Fred out a few minutes ago so I can make lunch and write this, obviously.

In addition to being the last day of the Play Day Week Challenge, today is also the fifth and final day of Kelly's week out of state for work, and will be the third afternoon in the first week of me working my new part-time, bring-kids-along, out-of-the-house job. This is my first paying job, other than in-house babysitting when Bonnie was little, that I've had in ten years, and it has both the upside of being able to bring my kids along, and the downside of being able to bring my kids along.

Bonnie is sick today with the kind of sickness that requires sleeping late and not doing school work, all while planning a sleepover for this evening, and both boys seem to be fighting off whatever little bug struck earlier in the week. They are fever-free, but basically don't feel great. That combined with being out of sorts with Daddy gone for the week (he does not usually travel for work) has left their little dispositions rather unpleasant. What I'm getting at is that it's been a really long week and I am thankful it's finally Friday.

While we do plenty of outside activities with the kids, it's more important to me personally that they have unsupervised free play out there as much as possible. It's a win-win scenario really, because not only do they get the chance to explore the world and their relationships with their siblings without my constant input and direction, but I get some critically necessary time to myself while they are outside. (Not to say this time is not punctuated by kids running in and out of the house with questions, complaints, and needs.) Soccer and treks into the woods are awesome and wonderful ways we spend time together as a family, but they don't replace my kids' need for free access to the outdoors.

This week has been a good reminder for me that that need doesn't disappear in "bad" weather. Almost without fail, when I send cranky kids outside, they come in refreshed, calmer, and happy. I hope to make an effort to continue the "outside, everyday" mentality this fall and winter.

Play Day Week Challenge: Day 4

The only challenge today has been redirecting Fred's mud balls from the window to a tree stump.

Play Day Week Challenge: Day 2

It's fifty-seven degrees out and raining, and the kids are happily playing outside. Fred just came inside fessing up to having jumped in a rather large mud puddle, assuming I would want him to take a bath immediately. This pretty much cleared up any lingering doubt about whether their hindrance to playing outside in questionable weather came from me or from them. Though I am not looking forward to dealing with all the wetness when they come inside, I sent a very excited and relieved four year old back out into the rain.

Every Day is a Play Day Week Challenge

Today I was very happy to stumble across the Active Kids Club website and learn that this week is their "Every Day is a Play Day" challenge. The concept is super simple: get your kids outside every single day. We're in!

Bonnie and Fred are both sick today with fevers and general "feelbadiness," but this has not kept them inside the house on this dark, incredibly windy, but relatively mild fall day. In fact, they were outside playing during a break from school work this morning when I sat down and read the above link. If they are well enough to be out of bed, they are well enough to be outside. On a typical day in our house, it's a challenge for me to keep the kids inside.

Tomorrow will be a little more challenging to get them outside because it's supposed to be both cold and rainy all day. Cold I can handle. Rainy I can handle. Cold and rainy? That's usually a play-puzzles-and-read-books kind of day in our house. But I am loving the philosophy of Active Kids: There is no bad weather, only bad clothing, and I will make an effort to get them out there.

Who else is in?