Schoolless

Blinded with science

So maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.
Or maybe I just like having a lot of kids around my house.

Blindfolded piano playing

One of the questions homeschoolers hear a lot, of course, is the one about socialization. Socialization isn't a big problem in our house. We find ourselves surrounded by families whose company we enjoy, and we are blessed with two kids who developed good social skills long before they parted ways with their diapers.

So our problem is a little diffrent. Whenever we do "learny" things at home, we do them alone. And sometimes we do feel the satisfaction of completing a task, or finishing a book, or moving to the "next level". But sometimes it just gets a little boring. Some learning is more fun in a group.

How'd they get their edges so straight?

I'm not quite sure how we stumbled into doing a segment on vision. It may have been simply that we were doing the chapters in Gee Wiz in order, and one on vision came up. Because Peter and Nadia were into it, I went on a hunt for more activities we could do, and it occurred to me that as long as I am setting it up for my own kids, I might as well invite some others to join us. So I sent and email to some friends announcing "Science Friday".

Awaiting the arrival of the scientists

As is usual with adults, I think, my plans were a little too ambitious. All these experiments looked so cool! Let's just try them all! I prepared everything meticulously, and an orderly table with neatly organized stations greeted the guests as they arrived. At the last moment, I realized that the perfect accompaniment to the occasion would be Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science!" And, thanks to the miracle of iTunes, the musical selection became available with a click.

Watch that pupil grow!

As kids gathered around the table, it became clear that they cared not a whit for my plans or preparation. Although at first, I tried to direct their activities, I abandoned that approach fairly quickly, and let them simply plunge into whatever interested them. The much-anticipated vision meter proved too complex to be truly engaging. However, optical spinners of all kind were an instant hit.

Suddenly everyone wanted a piece of string to thread through holes in a cardboard circle, and watch a fish appear in a bowl of water, a butterfly hover over a flower, or colored rods meld into a constantly changing rainbow. "Ooooh, this one is cool! Try this one!" With very little adult guidance (usually only to solve technical difficulties), the young participants found their way through most of the activities laid out on the table.

Mirror maze

But was it science? There was no method in their madness. Their observations were not tabulated and analyzed. No hypotheses were posed. There is a part of me that wants that level of organization. But I'm not sure I can have it all at once.

There is a natural curiosity and exuberance in kids that makes them just want to make that interesting thing happen over and over again. I know this from my own school experience, and also from working with my own kids alone. The interesting part of the experiment is the doing. Discussion is fun too, as long as it's fairly spontaneous. Writing? Eh... that's not so much fun. Then we are getting "schooly".

So, first, I want to get them hooked working on these fun projects, and on working together. I want to give them the time and the space to explore "what happens, if", and to draw one another from one fascinating discovery to the next. Only after they do it enough times they may want to change some of the variables and note the differences. Who knows? Perhaps then the desire to monitor their findings will emerge.

Loafing

I baked two loaves of bread today: one this morning, and another one for dinner.
No, I didn't spend a whole day in the kitchen. Each loaf took roughly five minutes. In fact, the second one went into the oven as kind of an afterthought, since it occurred to me, between handfuls of diced potatoes and sliced carrots going into the soup pot, that freshly baked bread might be a nice addition to the evening meal.
No, I do not have a bread machine.
And no, I've never baked bread before.
While I love the idea of losing yourself up to your elbows in a soft mound of dough, the trance-like condition that the rhythmic working of the dough with your hands is supposed to induce, and especially eating the heavenly results of these labors, I cannot see myself participating in this lengthy ritual on a regular basis.
Unless something revolutionary showed up, I was doomed forever to spending six bucks on a loaf of bakery bread at Whole Foods.
Something revolutionary did show up. It arrived in my mailbox inside one of the issues of Mother Earth Magazine. A ridiculously easy technique that, well, revolutionizes home baking: five minutes a day for fresh-baked bread. I know you don't believe it. I was a skeptic myself. In fact, I waited until the next issue of the magazine arrived to see what other readers thought of this technique, before I attempted it myself.
I donned a kitchen apron, something I've only done once before while canning peaches, and enlisted my daughter's help. Strictly following the recipe, I obtained a five-quart bowl, and proceeded to stir together water, yeast, salt and copious quantities of flour.



It looked bubbly, smelled yeasty and took about five minutes.
At the end of the stirring process, my five-quart bowl looked a little more than half-full. I eyed it dubiously, and, hoping for the best, covered it loosely with another inverted bowl. My daughter and I mosied over occasionally checking on the dough's progress. It continued its upward climb along the sides of the bowl. At last, the bowl could contain it no more:



The dough erupted from the cramped confines onto the kitchen counter. Clearly, larger quarters were called for. I plundered the forgotten corners of my kitchen cupboards searching for a suitable container, and came up with a stainless pot more than twice as large as my poor five-quart bowl.
As gingerly as I could, I dumped the monstrous heap of dough into its new home:



I worried that if I handled it too roughly, I would disturb the yeast and impair its growth. Unfortunately, moving the dough gently proved impossible.
I needn't have worried. The dough took readily to the new home, and continued to rise...

 
... and rise ...



... and rise ...



until at last it flattened a bit, and started to collapse in the middle. I put the whole thing in the fridge for a good night's rest.
Other than stirring the dough, moving it to a larger container and then spying on it from time to time (these last two steps uncalled for by the recipe, one added by necessity, the other by curiosity), I did nothing else to it. No intimate kneading, no punching it down, no folding in halves, no covering with a damp towel.
And this morning, I scooped up a stretchy hunk of dough, and, with floured hands, quickly folded it into a ball, set it aside to rest, and popped it in the oven. There it is: a thing of beauty; the taste of heaven.

Who? Me? Radical?

"A strong democratic sense of your being the world's equal lets you take what you will from the endless advice it offers, and then set blithely out."
(from Out of the Labyrinth by Ellen & Robert Kaplan)

A friend whom I otherwise admire enormously sometimes wears a t-shirt that makes me absolutely crazy. On the back it says: "I think, therefore I am vegetarian."
One of the reasons I admire my friend, is that although she clearly has her own convictions and principles, she has never made me feel that whatever convictions and principles I have are any less valid.
Her t-shirt has.
My friend allows for a diversity of views.
Her t-shirt does not.

Sometimes in life, we are called upon to defend our choices and beliefs. As homeschooling parents, we are accustomed to periodically coming up against criticisms, questions and doubts from the society at large, and we are fairly adept at countering its arguments and standing our ground. We've come to expect some criticism from those quarters, and we are not that surprised on those occasions when we are asked to justify ourselves. Do we resent being thus questioned? I suppose it depends on who is doing the questioning and how they go about it. An individual who has a preconceived notion of the type of person you might be, or starts from a misguided premise that you are a bad parent, is clearly a very different case than one who questions from a point of genuine curiosity or maybe mystification of disbelief.

As I said, I've gotten used to those questions coming from outside the homeschooling community, but I've never before had an experience of being taken to task for my choices from within it. I guess when I first started reading homeschooling blogs, I picked up on a bit of a dissonance between those of a Christian bent, and those of a more inclusive persuasion. But, although I've met many different homeschoolers,  I have never come into direct confrontation with anyone whose homeschooling principles were different than my own. For one thing, I assume that, as homeschooling families, we are always in pursuit, rather than in possession of answers. For another, I believe we have chosen the homeschooling lifestyle so that we could retain the flexibility to choose what is best for ourselves and our children, and that our choices might change over time, as needs change.

I am really happy that two years before, I joined a real community of unschoolers in Chicago. During these two years after I've taken my son from school and decided against sending my daughter there, I have gradually migrated in my approach and beliefs to the unschooling end of the homeschooling spectrum. It hasn't been a particularly harrowing journey, but it was one that I undertook with a lot of trepidation, commitment, self-questioning and eyes and ears wide open to the suggestions and experiences of others.

Throughout this process, I spent a lot of time reading in print and on the internet, and talking to more experienced homeschooling and unschooling parents. As I searched, the question foremost in my mind was "what is best for my children and for my family". After a couple of years into my search, I feel that I am by no means an expert, but that I certainly have valuable input to contribute to the discussion on the topic of educating children at home. These discussions are extremely useful to both new and seasoned homeschooling parents, because, as I have observed, we are perpetually in search of something that might solve an old problem better, help address a new problem, or validate something that we have undertaken with success. And, as generous and kind-hearted souls, we are eager to share our triumphs with other families.

In my experience, what we share are not prescriptions for doing things better. We understand that each family, each group of completely unique individuals comprising each family, is entirely unlike any other. Therefore, what we exchange with one another are merely suggestions: this has worked for us; try it, if you think it might help, and see how it goes. What was engaging and helpful about these discussions is that no one knew it all. New and experienced families were all on a journey of self-discovery, ready to to offer and hear new ideas. No one had found "the way". Everyone was still searching, still learning.

It was in this spirit that I joined an online discussion about video games on Radical Unschoolers Network, a virtual community. I felt I had something in common with the woman who began the discussion and was looking for help because she did not like what was happening to her 12 year old after he had played a lot of video games. After scanning the 80+ comments submitted, most of which more or less advised her to leave the kid alone a let him play as much as he desired, I thought I'd share the fact that we have had some positive results with simply having our son write down how much time he was spending on different activities, including video games. We, as parents, were also jotting down how we spent our time, because we were curious why it sometimes seemed that we had very little of it to spare. I also disclosed that I had purchased a book called "The Kids Are Alright" on the benefits of playing video games, and invited my son to read it.

You would have thought that I had locked him in a dank dungeon with a clay tablet around his neck, and a chisel in hand, and demanded he stay there until he not only produced a publishable book review, but also accounted for every second of the time he had spent there. My comment, offered in support to the parent who confessed to having a problem, generated an avalanche of questions from others about my  parenting skills, hidden agenda, putting undue stress on my son, and culminated in one reader saying her thirteen year old was "horrified" that I would make my son read such a book. I tried to clarify my position, but I wasn't making any headway. And I didn't like having to measure my choices against some abstract, ideal and perfect way to raise children.

How can a conversation had with people on the internet, whom I don't know, and who, truth be told, care as little about me as I about them, have such a profound effect on me, that it has awakened me at in the middle of the night on a couple of occasions?

It did. I was feeling so unsettled by this online exchange, that I asked my son how he really felt about jotting down how much time he spends doing stuff.

"Uh, it's no big deal. It's like, I just put a mark on a calendar"
"You don't feel stressed out?"
"Nuh-uh."
"And how about that book, about the computer games?"
"Oh, that was kinda interesting. How they made it all scientific."
"So you don't mind reading it?"
"Well, I don't get all of it. But there are a lot of interesting things in it. I'll keep on reading it when I feel like it."

Whew! Turns out I am still more in touch with my son than is the online community.

So, I'm a little bruised. But I still feel a world's equal. And, with my vegetarian friend, I will hold on to my principles. The most important of which is to let other people stand by theirs.

I quit.

Last week, I did something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I quit being a real estate agent.

I really haven't been practicing this occupation for some months now, but last week, I took two important steps to get me on a road toward recovery: I picked up my license from my broker and brought it home in the bottom of my bag, and I canceled my real estate e-mail account.
When I announced this news to some of my staff at the bike shop, one of them asked incredulously: "so, what are you gonna do now?"
"I guess I'm gonna work at the bike shop" I said brightly.
When Chris and I first opened Rapid Transit Cycleshop, we worked together day and night, and did everything that needed doing, from ordering inventory, pricing it, selling bikes, repairing them, to sweeping the floor, taking the trash out, and cleaning the toilet. Other people go to work, we joked; we go to fun!
And it was true. We loved the work, we loved the long hours, we loved the contact with our customers. In the past, when someone said "I love working with people", I thought they were nuts. Now, I really knew what that meant. I really got a kick out of that interaction with customers. They would come looking for a solution, a vision, a dream, and I would help them get to it.
Others often asked us how we can work together day in and day out. The truth is, we couldn't imagine it any other way. It mystified us how other couples can work separately for many hours each day, and then sit around the dinner table and find something to talk about. Chris and I rarely had the opportunity to sit around the dinner table. We worked well past that time of day. But when we were huddled around the teapot in the morning, or wolfed down pizza sitting on the shop floor, we were inextricably entwined in each other's lives.
As time went on, we hired some staff, and then some more, but for the first several years we still continued doing essentially the same work as everyone we hired to work for us. It was as if we simply needed more of us to handle the work. Eventually, we began to realize that in order to run the business more effectively, we would have to take on a more managerial role, and let our staff handle much of the daily operations and customer interactions. That wasn't easy, because we had always maintained a very collegial atmosphere at the shop. We had little use for hierarchy, and were uncomfortable with administering rules and regulations.
But it was becoming increasingly clear that our commitment to the enterprise was different from everyone else's, and therefore, our role needed to reflect that. For us, this was not a summer job. It wasn't something we would do for a couple of years until something more permanent came along. This was it. This was our livelihood. This was our nest egg. This was what caused us to lose sleep at night. This was our third, but by far the most demanding, child. This was our future. Moreover, this was where some people worked, and we began to feel a growing sense of responsibility for their future employment and welfare. We also felt a sense of responsibility toward the community that fostered us and allowed us to grow.
For a while, we concluded that the best way to serve the growing needs of this voracious business was for reduce our dependence on it and seek another source of income. This is why I ventured into the field of real estate sales. I really gave it an honest try. I even think that I was a pretty good real estate agent. The problem was, that it wasn't at all aligned with the path we were on as a family. I really felt that my husband, my family business, and my children were traveling one way, and I kept asking them to wait for me at rest areas while I attended to my clients.
One day, while on a bike ride through our neighborhood, my kids and I started chanting:
"What do we hate? Real estate!"
So I quit.
And now, I have to define my job anew. Interestingly, being away for a few years makes some things easier. I am no longer so close in age to my employees (sigh!...), nor am I so close to most of them personally. Most of them don't remember the days when I took out the trash and scrubbed the toilets, and so they don't expect me to do those things. In fact, many of them hardly know what to expect of me.
I hardly know what to expect myself.
But I sure am glad to be back.

Surface tension

As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away...*

It has been a gloriously beautiful summer. A perfect summer, as I said sitting one day on the edge of Lake Huron, a perfect summer in every way, except one...

The summer has lapsed away.

And so I find myself a short way into October surrounded by suitcases full of clothes in need of laundering, long lists of ignored phone messages and emails, tomatoes still ripening furiously among the encroaching crabgrass, cats who no longer remember who I am, and no plan whatsoever for my children's education.

Without a doubt the most important lesson for us this summer has been the one about loss, and love, and bonds of family. We have done and seen beautiful things this summer. We have experienced the very depth of kindness and the essence of friendship. We found strength within ourselves we didn't know we had. We eased into the lap of nature, and let it wash over us with gentle waves and warm rays of sunshine. We spied on shy and skittish creatures in their native habitats. We lay by a dying fire well into the night, and watched the sparks fade against the brightening stars.

And so I am letting my children rest. I am letting myself rest.

We're blowing bubbles. The shape that the soap film takes is a result of the forces acting on it from the inside and out.

Or is it just magic?...

I survived the Chicago Flood of 2008!

The other day, Peter and I were having a conversation about the actual feasibility of Noah's flood. Peter had his doubts. I conceded that the whole thing with the pairs animals on the boat did sound unrealistic. But Peter doubted the accumulation of water itself. Surely, it would run off somewhere? Wouldn't it?
Well, let me tell you, if the rain of the past three days lasted for another 37, I'd be building a boat, and making sure everyone on it has a friend (and a deck of cards).
Here's evidence from the vicinity of Pulaski and Foster in Chicago:

Bike polo (and other silliness)

We recently took our kids to a bike polo tournament, as our bike shop sponsors a local Chicago team. Peter naturally thought that he'd be terribly bored, but, as it turned out, the tournament provided ample fodder for his stop motion. The timing needs a little work, perhaps, but I think he's really honing his comedic skills...

For pictures of real bike polo, click here.

Will work for food

Nadia and I were dragging our feet returning home from a walk along the stony beach of Boblo Island. The boys ran ahead with my friend Mary, and I fell even further behind than my daughter, as I scanned the ground for the perfect letter-shaped stones to spell a message to our island neighbors.

I heard Nadia yell for her brother, but he was too far ahead to hear her over the hum of the waves. I ran up to her, but before I could say anything, she put her finger on her mouth: "ssshh.... snake!..."

No, it wasn't the one pictured above. That's a rattlesnake. Yes, they have them on Boblo. But for this experience, I was again caught without my camera. Nadia and I gave up trying to call the boys back, and gave our full attention to the snake. He was probably a common garter snake, with a beautiful, velvety black on its back, and two yellow stripes along the sides. His head and neck were about the size of my thumb, and bright orangey-yellow. He was less than two feet long.

We watched as he deliberately made his way up the stony beach. He swayed his head side to side, and every so often flickered his tongue, using his unique snake organs to sense some prey that we knew from his behavior had to be there. We looked around, but couldn't see anything obvious. We saw a few small hollows in the ground that we thought might have harbored some insects, but the snake slithered right over them, and continued doggedly on his way. In twenty minutes, he traversed about seven feet of beach, sensing his way with patience, and assurance. He did not seem bothered by our presence.

When he crested the ridge of rocks, there was a small mossy area, and Nadia observed that some of the moss was slightly disturbed in a couple of spots. The snake made his way to this opening, and plunged his head under the moss. We held our breaths. The snake emerged.

"Froggy!" yelled Nadia, hid her head in my shirt, and burst into tears.
"Sweetie, you knew he was hunting!"
"But I thought it was going to be an insect"
"Oh, honey, you don't have to watch this if you don't want to, but the snake has to eat"

In the end, she elected to run and join the boys. I determined to see the spectacle through to the end. I squatted in an awkward position on the stony bank, and watched, transfixed, a scene that I had only read about in books. The snake's head, as I said, was roughly the size of my thumb. The frog, or toad, most likely, was the size of a small chicken egg. The snake clasped its head in his jaws, as it pulled it out of the burrow. Though the frog twitched somewhat, it put up surprisingly little struggle. I don't know if this particular type of snake used any kind of venom, or if the prey simply asphyxiated.

I expected I don't know what. That the snake's jaws would open like the gates of hell, and swallow the toad in one giant gulp? In fact, the bulk of the toad passed through the snake's gullet extremely slowly, and the effort the predator had to make to earn his meal was palpable. He paused frequently, uncoiled and contracted his body drawing the meal in very gradually. It did not pass through the snake's body as a big, round lump, but rather was formed into an elongated thickening as the snake worked to engulf it. There was also surprisingly little gore. However, there was an element of the macabre, as the snake finished drawing in the body of the toad, and rested a spell with the grotesque handlebar mustache of frog legs sticking out of its mouth.

Although the snake was the predator, it occurred to me how extremely vulnerable he was at a moment like this. Whatever ability he had to move with a large prey slipping slowly though his throat was further impeded by the prey's large limbs getting in the way of escape from a potential larger predator.

I further wondered whether, if such a predator came along, would it be getting two meals for the price of one. The toad, after all, was still very much in evidence as a separate entity. When would the prey cease to have an identity of its own, and become fully a part of the snake?

These are the insects in our neighborhood (and beyond)

This summer, we've been spending a lot of time at my mom's. Big house, big yard, big woods. Sort of empty without my dad. And without him, not much for the kids to do, while mom and I attend to boring adult business that inevitably follows a loved one's departure.

My mother's neighbor across the road owns a beautiful piece of property with a lovely river running through her some 120 acres. Initially, the kids thought it would be boring there, but once they started searching for frogs on the riverbank, they could not be pulled away despite a fierce mosquito attack.

We spent a large portion of this summer looking around just seeing what we would find. One of the most numerous and interesting things we've found were bugs. Here are some of them:

Bumblebees seem to be the most active pollinators in our yard.

Here's one coming in for a landing.

Just a wasp, but isn't this a great flower?

Ah, my favorite, a hawk moth that hovers like a hummingbird.

Never enough of these guys.

They have competition for the milkweed.

And don't you think they are all so pretty. Here's something to give you goosebumps:

A ladybug with her herd (or is it horde?) of aphids.

Hey! They're not pollinating! They're ...um ...fornicating!!!

Bird poop on my car? No, it's a wood nymph moth, aka "bird poop moth". Good thing Peter stopped me before I scraped it off.

And finally, a stickbug on the patio door screen.

"Lesson Planning" with my son

Sorry. No picture in this post.

Where is the camera when I need it?
Last month, I missed a doe tandem nursing her twins across the street from my house.
Today, Peter and I watched, appalled and fascinated at the same time, as a hawk swooped down and went after a sparrow within yards of us. The sparrow hid in the grass, the hawk perched above. Who won this waiting game?

Later, in the car, Peter and I were having the following conversation:

So, how do you most like to learn?
I dunno.
I mean, I know you don't like worksheets, but do you like books? Movies? What?
Well, if I was gonna do worksheets, I might as well be in school.
Right. But what way do you think you'd most like to learn.
Just go out there and see stuff. Like the hawk today. That was cool.
Yeah, wasn't it? But what other kind of stuff would you like to go and see?
I dunno. You just go out there and see. Some days nothing might happen. But other times you might see something cool. But if you don't go out, you won't see it.

The reason I don't have a camera handy for all these "learning opportunities", is that it's impossible to tell when one will come up. As I learned from searching for owl pellets last year, the more you look for owl pellets, the more they will not be there. But if your eyes and mind our open to new discoveries, sooner or later you're bound to find something that will astound you.
Like revelations from your own kid.