LFLF Editor's Blog

Typical Unschooling-at-Home Day

Kenzie spent quite a lot of time in the backyard today and came in with a large stick he's decided to use as a staff.  We peeled off the remaining bark and filed down a few of the more painful-looking spots.  Now, he's drawing symbols (of his own design), looking for just the right one to carve on the stick. 

Also today, he sketched each and every Pokemon in his Official Pokemon Handbook - all 152 of them - while sitting in the kitchen, singing.  He categorized all his Beanie Babies, he watched a bit of Little House on the Prairie, and he spelled out messages with Legos.  He helped make lunch, played with the dogs and cats, picked up in the living room,  watched KiKi's Delivery Service, read several books, practiced his whistling and his dragon calls, and played tickle wars with me, running around the house screaming and laughing.  We even had a long discussion about unschooling and how parents and kids feel about making that choice.  We talked about foods and nutrition.  We talked about symbols and their meanings.  We talked about a thousand other things - just like usual. 

A typical unschooling-at-home day.  Nothing spectacular, but always extraordinary. 

Now, he's eating dinner - natural peanut butter on organic brown rice cake, a banana, funky veggie pasta with tomato sauce, and water.  He's humming his own tunes while he eats and is reading at the table. 

There is no rushing in his life.  No hurry up and wait, no eating on the run, no tight schedules.  Sure, some days there are things we have to do at a certain time, places we have to be, but for the most part, this is normal.  We go out when we're good and ready.  Some days, we just stay home.  There's always time for playing in the backyard, for singing songs, for carving sticks, for practicing dragon calls.  There's time to read while eating, build with Legos, and draw and draw and draw.  And, there's time to talk.  Lots of time to talk. 

No wonder we love unschooling here....

A Little of Everything....

Kenzie received a hand-me-down Cargo bunkbed with a trundle and dresser from my parents and brother, recently.  So, we've been busy rearranging the bedroom, purging toys and knick knacks, and setting it up just right with comfy bedding, a reading light and castle decorations.  It's so sturdy and beautiful!  He doesn't sleep in it yet, but it's nice to have around knowing he will one day.  He has been reading and playing in it, though, every day.  Once I get the digital camera working again, I'll post pictures. 

Thanksgiving was wonderful - filled with family and lots of great food.  Kenzie made several books with colored pencil illustrations for his great-grandmother and spent quite a lot of time in his great-aunt and -uncle's game room playing ping pong, checkers and basketball. 

Right now, we're back home, and he's running around the backyard screaming and playing with the dogs, Oscar and Alaska.  Good thing most everyone around here works outside the home during the day.... 

I spent much of yesterday deep-cleaning the kitchen.  I still have to clean the fridge, the inside of the microwave and the stove burners, as well as scrub the floor, but it's getting there.  Slowly.  Usually, the last thing I want to do is clean, but yesterday, I had this wild urge and figured I'd better heed it before it disappeared.  So, among other things, I spent over an hour scrubbing the cracks and crevices of the bread machine armed with cleaner, paper towels, dishrag and Q-tips.  What would possess me to do this, you ask?  I'm not sure....  But the bread machine looks absolutely amazing. 

Powwows and Fossils

Saturday, Kenzie, Sean, my mother and I drove down to the powwow in Austin.  It's the largest one-day powwow in North America, and Kenzie and I had been looking forward to it for a while.  We watched the dancers for a long time, and Kenzie and I actually went down to the arena floor and danced for several minutes.

Then, we ventured out into the vendor area where there was fry bread, roasted corn on the cob, and hundreds of craft booths.  Here's a photo of a mask:

And the man who sold my mother the calendar he'd made:

Beaded jewelry:

And Kenzie with the basket he fell in love with:

The basket found its way home with us, of course, and now it's filled with acorns. 

Sunday, Kenzie and Terry and I went to the Fossil Fest in Round Rock.  We found ourselves surrounded by prehistoric trilobites, fossilized dinosaur eggs, and petrified wood.  The vendors were more than happy to talk about each fossil with Kenzie and me (Terry felt bad and spent most of the trip in the car).  Kenzie even got to touch an African tyrannosaurus (not Rex) tooth and a hydrosaurus egg.  We ended up with polished fossilized dinosaur droppings from some sort of herbivore (with beautiful coloring), a piece of oviraptor eggshell, a piece of amber, a 35 million-year-old shark tooth, a trilobite, a plate from a glyptodon (giant prehistoric armadillio) shell, a small sea urchin, and a large, beautiful piece of a megalodon tooth.  The megalodon tooth is our favorite, by far.  Very cool.  We've spent hours looking at them and discussing them.  Kenzie's decided this is just the beginning of his fossil collection....

Goodbye, Halloween

Well, Halloween has come and gone.  We carved a Pikachu into a pumpkin, roasted the seeds, and waited for it to get dark so we could watch the Pokemon jack-o-lantern flicker in the night.  We drew pictures of scary-looking Pokemon, dragons, monsters, ghosts and goblins, watched Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, listened to Halloween-y music, and read lots of Halloween-y books (like Charles Addams' Homebodies, books about bats, ghosts, monsters and trolls, etc.). 

Then, we went trick-or-treating.  We were quite the group, roaming around the neighborhood: Kenzie (dressed as a wizard) and Terry and me, my brother, Sean, Kenzie's friend from across the street and her father.  If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that we weren't thrilled to have him with us.  Luckily, he was respectful to the kids, both Kenzie and his own child, so it wasn't too bad.  Kenzie loved running from house to house with his friend, taking turns ringing doorbells.  By the end of our short walk, his bag was brimming with candies - really good candies, in fact.  It seems our neighbors like to give out Snickers, Butterfingers, M&Ms, Kit Kats....  No Smarties and Tootsie Rolls here! 

Then, we sat down to yet another game of Scrabble.  It's Sean's new favorite pastime, and since turning 18 a few days ago, he's been able to stay at our house as late as he likes (no state-imposed driving curfew).  Kenzie's gotten into the Scrabble craze, too.  He and I have played many a game, both collaboratively and competitively.  He's getting quite good.  It's amazing to me that I'd never played until about a month ago.

Oh, I almost forgot - on the doorstep yesterday was an unexpected box from Candlewick Press (my favorite children's book publisher).  I was confused, certain I hadn't ordered anything from them.  I was right; I had WON something from them.  A few months ago, I entered a contest to win the new pop-up book Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart.  It's the most beautiful pop-up book I've ever encountered - more than 35 pop-ups of all sorts of dinosaurs!  Kenzie's entranced.  This is a beautiful book!

Click to enlarge.