unschooling: harmonious homestead

Posted in it's cool to school, kiddie-do by ElaineMarie

darla and i spent a little bit of time at the harmonious homestead open house on saturday. i bet you can tell what darla’s favorite part of the outing was. she wants chickens and her momma does too. she held just about every one of them. it worked out that even though i tried to interest her in the gardens and grounds she was confined to the chicken coop, by choice, so mama was free to roam around the gardens as she pleased. mama likes to do as she pleases.

i learned about hugelkultur and darla learned how to successfully chase down a chicken. i’d say that’s a good day of learning.

15Jul2013

is this day camp?

Posted in advantageous adventures, it's cool to school, Kiddie Hangouts by ElaineMarie

no. no it’s not. well, it was for someone else’s kids. we just swooped in after the camp kids went to lunch and played all up in that shizz.

i promise this looks more peaceful and idyllic than it was. there were various gradients of dirt play with darla leading the pack in no shoes and worm wrangling. there were various gradients of child breakdowns with darla being the leader in that category, also.

but i got to hang out with two babies i saw borned of this world and i already mentioned that it turned out pretty in pictures. as long as my life looks good then i’m not really to hung up on the rest…

i just want to pause and mention how happy i am with the free-wheeling, unschool summer we’ve been having. even though the day was somewhat of an emotional failure i still walked away feeling accomplished, secure in the thought that my girl had learned and enjoyed and i really had a good time in the midst of the choas of 6 children. i just want to extend summer for all the days and explore our world. this city has an amazing parks system and i’ve got my sights set on experiencing some new places with my girl.

can it be summer camp forever???

13Jul2013

unschooling: mythological creatures park

Posted in advantageous adventures, it's cool to school by ElaineMarie

if you follow this blog religiously, like you all do, then you know that we { read that as I } have a soft spot for the mythological creatures fountain near the santa maria. it has some official name but i don’t know it. we packed a picnic lunch and spent some time reading, relaxing and building houses for ants.

first, i must tell you: i made the most bomb ass peanut butter sandwiches. they were fresh honey roasted peanut butter with some of our fresh strawberry preserves. i took that picture to commemorate it here forever.

darla ran around the park for a while, then ate and ignored me while I was all crazy and trying to read books to her. she was too busy making “creations” of paper dolls and building houses for ants. i eventually scrapped the books and helped her build her ant homes. it was a smart move to flow where her natural interests were at the moment. i showed her how to make a cube and we had a nice discussion about that. we spent some time looking at the santa maria, talking about boats and portugal and chistopher columbus.

i’ll always remember this unschooling outing as it was the last we’ll have on RuJu. we also learned a valuable lesson about bike thievery while downtown. this is one of those moments that i wish this blog was famous and some bike company would swoop in with a sponsorship opportunity and give me a new one…but no. we’ll get it worked out somehow on our own.

but really that bike sponsorship thing would be handy. can someone work on that?

anyway, thanks for checking in on our unschooling adventures.

11Jul2013

unschooling: the north market

Posted in it's cool to school by ElaineMarie

this is one of those times that i turn my craving for a bredzel pretzel into an unschooling opportunity but you all have been humoring me for this long so why stop now? let’s just keep going with this fancy charade, shall we?

we went to north market this weekend for said bakery item and turned the experience into a mini-unschooling outing. darla and i learned about the principles of a market when we picked strawberries so i felt we did some good work building on those principles as we looked at the different stalls of items brought in from surrounding farms. or maybe she was just doing whatever it took to get me to buy an icing cup to go along with the pretzel but as long as she pretends to be learning from me i’m ok with it.

we’ve also been working on the concept of money and math and the market is the perfect place to do some practical application. having her help me figure out how much money we should give and how much we should receive in change has been fun for her. she likes to be the money handler.

thanks for checking in on our unschooling. i hope this is providing some inspiration for some unschooling in your life. you can just refer to it as it’s more common term of “parenting” but me thinks myself more free-wheeling when i apply an unconventional term to it.

rib jab. wink wink.

3Jul2013

unschooling: cherry picking

Posted in daily moment, it's cool to school, kiddie-do by ElaineMarie

we had cherry trees growing up. i used to sit in them for hours and eat sun-ripened tart cherries by the handful. i jumped on the chance to take darla cherry picking this week. if the trees hadn’t belonged to someone else I would have let her climb on up so i could look back on myself as a kid because i’ve somehow figured out a way to reincarnate myself before i’m even dead.

we compared the difference between picking cherries and strawberries and just had nice conversations about the orchards. darla was more interested in meeting new people so i let her do her thing, reminding myself that it’s important she learn from others. it’s always fun to sit back and listen to her discussions with other kids and grown-ups. it’s a built-in assessment opportunity.

and who can pass up the opportunity to have fresh cherries for 4th of july? hello cherry cobbler. darla requested we make some cherry jam b/c our strawberry jam is flying out of the fridge and into our mouths at an amazing pace. i’m also thinking of trying to dry some using the car window method.

one thing is for sure, we’re hooked on these food field trips. i can’t wait for black raspberries!

thanks for checking in on our latest unschooling efforts.

1Jul2013

Unschooling: photography project

Posted in it's cool to school by ElaineMarie

we did a pretty simple unschooling photography project last week. it involved hopping on the bike, handing the girl my very old digital camera that has kinda become hers, and asking her to take pictures of anything she sees that she finds interesting on our ride.

anyone want to take a guess at how many pictures she took of my butt? almost as many as she took of her fingers.

we ended up down at the gardens and she took some pics of vegetables as we wandered around identifying plants.

it was simple and fun and we were learning all along. she snapped pics of some arborists working on trees in the neighborhood so we talked about their job. she summed up their job like this to me “arborists are humans that take care of trees and cut off their branches when they get sick.” so i think some concrete ideas were planted. {pun! tree pun!}

we discussed photography and of course the gardens. i rewarded her with some ol’ fashioned playground time for being such a good pupil.

simple, fun and on her level.

26Jun2013

unschooling: strawberry picking

Posted in advantageous adventures, it's cool to school by ElaineMarie

last week darla and i went strawberry picking as one of our unschooling field trips. it was the first day of summer and let me tell you strawberry pickin’ is just about the best thing to do for the first day of summer. she and i spent a little less than an hour hauling in some sweetness and in that time we discussed attributes of the strawberry plant such as they seeds on the outside of the berry, the berries growing on the underneath side of the plant and the runners the plants send out. after that we discussed the principles of a market and how the price of things at a market or grocery store reflect the work of others to pick and transport. darla said “i prefer to pick them myself and do my own work because they taste so much better that way.” this means she gets it. this also means i let her eat berries in the field. oops.

the unschooling continued at home as we took on projects in the kitchen such as strawberry preserves, strawberry syrup from the discarded tops, strawberry cornbread muffins and fresh whipped cream for some snacking once we immediately brought them home.

you can check back in with us throughout the summer for more pickin’ field trips. I do believe July is when the black raspberries come in season and thems my favorite.

24Jun2013

unschooling: butter making

Posted in it's cool to school, Run Da House by ElaineMarie

if you read this blog regularly {which you should} you know that i talk about butter a lot. go ahead and type butter into that search box and just see what pops up. anyway, when i saw this simple butter making activity on five little homesteaders the other day i was like “e’rybody got time for that” and giddily went about buying heavy cream and it’s the first thing darla and i did together when she got back to our home. i really enjoyed making this with her and we used basically the same method again a few days later to make fresh whipped cream for our strawberry pickins. i don’t need to give you any instructions because you can just click on that link. actually, here are my instructions on how to make butter: CLICK ON THAT LINK.

the kitchen is one of our main unschooling areas. i’ve been moving towards making food stuffs from scratch and it’s been an important learning arena for all of us. i think it important to understand where are food comes from and how it is made.

i’d also like to note that we were also able to use the buttermilk to make biscuits and added a bit to our soup. it’s like a turn of the century kitchen up in there. i mean the century before this one. if i meant 2000 there would be a dusty bread machine in some corner. there’s not. just dusty corners.

20Jun2013

Impromptu Unschooling: Buck Creek State Park

Posted in advantageous adventures, it's cool to school by ElaineMarie

yesterday was a simple, fantastic day. it was a beautiful day for a drive. i love to be on the road. when i read Lolita i actually loved the thought of traveling the US and pulling off at all the brown signs, every roadside attraction. it seemed like such a great way to see the beauty of this country. the rest of the book…not so much.

so this summer i’ve made a promise to myself to see more of ohio in just that way. while driving home from Dayton we decided on the spur of the moment to investigate Buck Creek State Park and we found a beach! sure it’s a little man-made beach that we get here in the middle west but it served as a great unschooling opportunity.

we talked about rocks we found, counted boats, talked with other folks and even examined a dead fish washed up on the shore. i had to squash my conventional instincts of telling darla to get far away from it and not look but i reminded myself it was a teachable moment. we talked about what kind of fish it was and talked about having respect for deceased life.

darla befriended some older kids who were digging a castle and moat. some kids were digging and some were hauling water. i sat down with them and darla and pointed out the similarities between the sand structure and the man-made lake and then explained to them that the lake was made in almost the exact same way that they were constructing their castle moat. it was great to see how proud that made them of their work.

all in all it was a really great way to spend a perfect sunny day. we weren’t prepared for swimming so we’re headed to a closer lake today per darla’s request.

if you’re skeptically sitting there saying “it sounds like this unschooling stuff is just elaine taking her daughter places and then talking to her about it” then you got me. you’re exactly right. since this is the way my daughter has learned everything in her life thus far i don’t see any reason to change things up and make her memorize or take place in structured activities. maybe someday. but not today. and ummm not yesterday either.

11Jun2013

Unschooling: The Grocery Store

Posted in it's cool to school by ElaineMarie

i‘m not going to lie to you, 10 minutes before these photos i was trying to negotiate my daughter into going to the playroom at the grocery store because, yeah obvious, but when you’re child answers “mom, i hate to say it but i don’t like kids’ activities” it’s hard to keep pushing. {or is it?}

so i tried one old tactic – bribing her to stay in the cart with a sucker – and then a new one: turning the trip into an unschooling exercise. so this is not anything new. groceries and markets have long been places of learning and exploration for little ones. i’m not tooting my horn about that, i’m simply here to tell you it worked. she stayed by me, she helped and she only asked for about 50 additional items which is a sharp decrease from her normal 200.

background info: darla will tell me to go eff myself if i try to encourage her to do something because it will make her a “good girl” but she’ll be right there if i am framing it as a need for a helper. {i’m thankful she’s given me these insights into how she would like to be raised along the way.} as my helper today she read all the PLU numbers to me while i wrote them on our reusable containers in the bulk section. she helped me locate items, dish them out into containers and we discussed how much each thing would cost per pound. in general we took a more in-depth look at our food items, discussing how they smelled and looked and felt. this directly resulted in us purchasing some peaches that darla rubbed against her face. can you blame her? cause, gawd, peaches feel so good!

i think her favorite learning point was the ginger root bin. she had picked out some crystalized ginger in the bulk section earlier, so it was a nice dot-connector to find and examine it in the raw.

i’m thankful for these new unschooling outlooks to outings. this plan might just keep me more calm + collected.

praying that i keep up the practice.

momjeanz

Tag Archives: unschooling

unschooling: harmonious homestead

is this day camp?

unschooling: mythological creatures park

unschooling: the north market

unschooling: cherry picking

Unschooling: photography project

unschooling: strawberry picking

unschooling: butter making

Impromptu Unschooling: Buck Creek State Park

Unschooling: The Grocery Store