adventures indoors and out

Actually, our adventures were mostly indoors this week. It was just too darned cold to do too much outdoor adventuring. But the nice thing about our favorite park, where we met up with some homeschooling buddies on Thursday afternoon, is that it's a nice long walk from the parking lot to the barn and nature center and back again, so even on an "indoor adventure" day, there's still a bit of "outdoor adventure" involved.

And it gave me a chance to snap a couple of picture, because I was too busy enjoying myself to think about taking pictures inside the nature center that day! Silly me! So as we were walking back to the parking lot, I gasped "Oh my! I didn't take any pictures!" and snapped a few of the boys making their way back to our car.

The next afternoon found us over at the children's museum for more indoor adventuring. Zoo Boy's adventure was primarily on the high seas with a bunch of other museum-visiting kids around his age. See the blurry gray kid torturing the adorable little girl in red with a sea gull? Yup, that's Zoo Boy! (Actually, that little girl thought The Boy was the best thing since sliced bread and they played for quite awhile together, with and without the rest of the pack of boys.)

Meanwhile, J was adventuring in a class about poisonous animals with his buddy B and other classmates. (J is in the gray shirt with his back to me, of course....) The kids were making origami frogs (quite a coincidence, eh?? He only just taught himself how to make origami penguins last week!), which they were painting in bright colors to warn everyone they were poison dart frogs.

Zoo Boy reading a book to one of the museum's resident rabbits. I really wish this picture had come out better. But Zoo Boy moved his head at just the wrong time, both blurring the photo and obscuring the bunny's cute little face. Er, cute BIG face. That's the biggest bunny I've ever seen!

After the museum, we adventured ourselves over to the mall for dinner and some time at the bookstore while B and his mom waited out rush hour traffic before heading home. It was a rare treat to get to spend two days in a row with them! And it's always more fun to have adventures with good friends.

random shots

A few random shots from the past couple of days:

Snowy Breakfast:

Here are the sheep having breakfast as the sun comes up over our tree line (behind me) yesterday morning.



On the Tundra:

The kids at play in the sheep pasture. They were pretty disappointed to discover that this snow is too sticky for good sledding. But they found other ways to entertain themselves with the fluffy white stuff (a lot of it involved "hey, I've got a surprise for you" followed by a snowball).

Baaaaa Humbug:

Here's J with the "snow lamb" he and I built.







Invasion of the Hay Scratchers:

The chickens take advantage of the kids leaving the sheep tent unzipped to make themselves at home.


Budding Musicians:

J and Zoo Boy carefully study the music and instructions for their chosen instruments, J's harmonica and Zoo Boy's Boomwackers.

reading

Zoo Boy is reading. This is somewhat new, although not entirely unexpected. He's been working on spelling out words he sees for months on and off. He's been verbally playing around with letter sounds. He's stopped asking what words say when he sees them, I think because he now KNOWS what they say. Prior to a month or so ago "what does that word say?" was a common question.

The realization came on Friday, when he "read" a book to one of our homeschooling friends who was here for a playdate. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, watching the other kids play as Zoo Boy worked his way through a familiar book. About mid-way into it, my friend said "He's really doing well with his reading!" I was about to tell her that he's just got the book memorized, but I hesitated and watched what he was actually doing. He was pointing to each word as he said it, readily stating the words he knew by sight, sounding out the shorter ones, looking to her for help with the longer ones. When she gave him the first sound, most times he was able to sound out the rest of the word. This was not recitation, he was actually reading the book. Hm! I thought. Wonder how long this has been going on....

That night, I told The Map Man that Zoo Boy was reading. He scoffed and declared that it's just memorization. No, I told him, I'm certain that he's reading, and explained the scenario. He skeptically smiled and didn't mention it again. Until the next day. We were watching football, he went out into the kitchen for a few minutes, and when he returned he said "You're right, Zoo Boy is reading." I looked questioningly at him, and he told me that at that moment, Zoo Boy was in the living room playing with a puzzle card game where you match 3 pictures and letters to make words -- only he was rearranging the cards to make unique words.

There's been a lot of discussion lately on the Enki support list about reading, how to help kids learn, when it's appropriate, how much support to provide. For the most part I've completely ignored the thread. It's not that I don't find it interesting, I just feel that I have absolutely nothing to add to a discussion on it. Our kids have learned to read entirely on their own -- what do *I* know about learning to read?

What I do find puzzling is where this early reading comes from. Neither The Map Man nor I were early readers. Sure, we learned right along with the rest of our first grade classes how to read via Dick and Jane (See spot run!). Like my kids, I've always adored books and wanted to be read to constantly. But I can remember the day I came home with my first reader, absolutely thrilled that I could finally read a book on my own -- that the teacher taught me how to read! (In retrospect, I can see that as the point in my life where I was convinced that I had to be taught how to do things, that I couldn't learn things on my own. What a lesson to teach a kid....) My kids don't have that same level of being thrilled to know how to read. They were each thoroughly convinced they would do it, the thought that they couldn't never entered their minds. To them, there is nothing amazing about it. It just is. They possess the inherent wisdom to know that they WILL learn. They don't need to be taught a thing.

I read on one holistic blogger's site that she would be considered a Holistic Education failure because her daughter is an early reader. And the perception is partially true -- many children raised and educated holistically don't learn to read until they are 7 or 8 years old, some even older, because that is when most kids are naturally ready to read. But to call early reading a failure is one of the silliest things I've ever heard. I agree that actively TEACHING a child to read before they are ready for it is wrong. (I also believe that some children have obstacles that will need to be overcome in order for them to read -- dyslexia is only one example -- and in those cases it IS up to the educator to help facilitate learning to read. Not at age 4 or 5, though.) But to discourage a child from learning to read at a time when she is naturally ready for it is every bit as big a failing as "teaching" them to read before they are ready for it.

Giving our children the space to learn at their own pace, when they are developmentally ready for it, is the responsibility we take on when we make the decision to facilitate our children's education. Other than the unconditional love of a parent, it's the greatest gift we'll ever give them.

snowy scenes around the farm

Back during those horrible ice storms last month, someone asked me why I live in New England if I don't like it here. Now, I know that I was whining it up pretty good at the time, because that sort of ice storm makes our lives, well, hell. But not liking New England?! Nothing could be further from the truth! I can't imagine myself living anywhere else. I'll even go so far as to say that I love winter. Mind you, I find the difficulties that the cold and snowy weather bring more challenging as the years pass and my body ages, but still, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Not even a nice warm beach chair in the Caribbean. (Well, especially not that -- that sort of thing has never held any appeal to me!)

In any case, this afternoon, as I was walking around the property, soaking in the beautiful snowy scenes, I thought that I would take and post some photos so that all of you dear readers can share in the beauty of this afternoon of white splendor with us. Especially those of you in horribly mild places like Alabama and California...shudder.

The first photo of the series is of an old community (many trees growing from one spot as a single tree) Red Maple tree, which I refer to as "My Grandmother". The next is of the barnyard, taken from the corner of the house. The picture to the left of us now is the edge of the horse pasture (also taken from the corner of the house, I just turned around after snapping the barnyard, and captured the view in the other direction).

Here is the north side of the sheep pasture -- that's the same Grandmother maple in the foreground. The fallen limb has been there for the past couple of years, and is one of my kids' favorite play areas, serving as both jungle gym and tree fort.

The south side of the sheep pasture, taken from the top of the kids' sledding hill (near the entrance to the sheep tent). The ground slopes away pretty good there, although it's hard to tell from this picture.

The snow continued lightly for the rest of the day, and even now it's flurrying out. The animals all stuck close to their shelters today, but will no doubt be out and roaming, exploring the fluff, at sun-up tomorrow. Soon there will be tracks plowed through the pastures, and an hour or two of sunshine will take care of the frosting on the trees. But for now all is covered in a pristine, even blanket of white.

stormy morning

Here's the view from the sheep tent this morning. Hard to tell (other than it looking particularly dim out), but it's snowing to beat the band in this picture. I was down doing my morning chores and knocking snow off the roof of the tent (which is labeled as "not rated for snow load", requiring us to visit the sheep tent every couple hours when it's storming to make sure the roof is clear and not in danger of imminent collapse). It's a really pretty storm, and we're only supposed to get a very reasonable 7 to 9 inches. Anything under 10 inches makes for nice scenery and plenty of snow to play in, but not so much that it cripples daily operations for us. Of course, The Map Man is out there snowblowing right now, but I think it's likely he'll get in a half a day's work today. Certainly beats the heck out of an ice storm! This is what winter is SUPPOSED to be like, so we're pretty happy with it today. Now let's wait and see what the storm coming on Thursday is supposed to bring.

After taking the above photo, I turned around and took a picture inside the tent too. It's a little blurry, as there wasn't much in the way of lighting in there during the early morning snowstorm, but you can see the sheep contentedly munching their breakfast hay, warm, dry, and cozy in out of the storm. In fact, on a day like this, I'm the ONLY one out in it, all the critters are snuggled cozy into their stalls and shelters. Which makes me wonder a bit about my sanity....

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Those are the openings lines from this article on nutrition from the New York Times, which I've been reading this morning and nodding my head at. It's what I've always believed -- that the human body is best served by eating the foods it was designed (by evolution) to eat: real, whole foods, and the sorts of whole foods that can be naturally digested. In other words, foods that your body can utilize in their raw form. These sorts of foods include meats, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and not much else. We could argue dairy -- I mean, it CAN be consumed raw. But did the ancestors that developed our digestive system have access to dairy? Were they out milking mammoths? I'm guessing not. I remain on the fence about dairy. But we can all agree that grains and legumes (i.e. beans) can NOT be digested without cooking them. So what makes us think that they could possibly be good for us to eat?

Real foods. As in NOT pre-cooked, pre-packaged, pre-processed foods. Not the sorts of things that are loaded up with sugar, salt, chemicals, preservatives, colors and flavors (artificial OR natural).

And in this day and age, in this polluted over-medicated world we live in, I'll take it one step further -- organic foods. Or, better, foods that you grow organically yourself.

I've undertaken an important project this year. I'm attempting to grow all of our own foods. Or as much of them as I can. Chicken and lamb -- that's a given, although I've not quite been able to bring myself to butcher, clean, cook and eat a chicken yet. (We have a butcher do the lambs for us.) Eggs, check! Beef -- well, we don't have room for cattle. But I DO know a farmer who grows his cattle holistically, and I'm comfortable buying a side of beef from him when he has one available. And this year I'll be bringing in a dairy ram to breed to my ewes so that we'll have a future ready supply of fresh sheep's milk for our dairy needs -- milk, butter, yogurt, cheese. So plenty of animal protein available.

But the majority of our diet should be PLANTS. Meat is good, but overdoing it is not. We were developed as hunter-gatherers, and given that we were hunting with rocks and sticks, my guess is that we weren't eating meat nearly as much as we were eating fresh fruits and veggies. So, gardening comes into play -- I want to grow plenty of good veggies for fresh use during the summer and to freeze for use the rest of the year. We don't own fruit trees (and probably won't, we need the space it would require for pasture for the animals at this point), but there IS an organic orchard about an hour from here -- I could certainly stock up there this fall, and can enough to take us through the rest of the year. Or, the grocery stores are now carrying a pretty good supply of organic fruits and veggies. And, even more appealing, there are lots of wild blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries growing in the woodlands around here. Strawberry plants in my garden are a given, as are Watermelons.

Now, about that "not too much" part. I can see that being a problem for me, and most of the western world. Overeating, even of good, healthy, whole foods, is not good for your body. And probably accounts for a lot of my excess baggage. Oh, I like to blame my hormones and the fact that I carried two enormous babies to term at an age where some women are becoming grandmothers. But with my extremely active lifestyle (and let's face it, with all the manure slinging I do, I should be downright buff!), there's only one thing accounting for the roll around my middle (and my arms, and my thighs....), and that's an excessive intake of food.

Of course, it's easy to KNOW how to eat right. It's quite another to actually do it. As I sit here sipping my hot chocolate (from a packet with questionable ingredients in it) and munching a handful of bright orange powdered Sun Chips (what IS that powdery stuff, anyway???), I wonder just how much hypocrisy I'm capable of. (But hey, it could be a diet coke and a handful of pork rinds, so I guess it could be worse!) We've stock piled a lot of CRAP in our cabinets and freezers. We're working our way through them. The really atrocious stuff is being fed to the pig (poor Pig!). The rest is slowly being consumed by us, and is not being replaced. Eventually we'll get to the point where there's only healthy (TRULY healthy) foods in the house, and then I'll have no choice but to grab a glass of water and a handful of walnuts when I sit down to type.

It's a work in progress. But understanding human history and biology and how they, by necessity, relate to nutrition and health is the first step in the right direction.

week #17, winter #5, or...

...What We Did Instead of Homeschooling This Week.

This was one of those weeks where the kids were too involved with their own projects and creative play for me to "bother" them with "schoolwork". That's the very BEST part of homeschooling -- you can go with what is actually working for your kids, and avoid having to squash their natural creativity. I had some pretty good stuff planned. But what the kids came up with on their own was better. Like here, where they acted out a scene from an Inuit village on our Nature Table.

And this -- Zoo Boy had brought me a book to read, and just as we were finishing up, J came in and announced "There are six Matryoskas hiding in the kitchen, can you find them all?" And Zoo Boy was off to find them. J's creativity was running high in general this week, and I was happy to be able to give him the space to run with it.


Zoo Boy continued pursuing his interest in cooking by helping out with dinner this week, too. We took advantage of the January thaw by taking some walks to look at winter trees and explore stone walls instead of having adventure circle. We did stick to our general daily rhythms, and we did have our nightly Family Story Time, during which we read The Quilt Story, by Tony Johnston and Tomie dePaola; The Big Snow, by Berta and Elmer Hader; and The Story of the Snow Children by Sibylle von Olfers (which I was extremely impressed with -- not so much the book itself, but in the response of the children to this story. It immediately grabbed their attention and they sat breathless as I read it. Happily, I already have a few other of von Olfers' stories sitting on our bookshelf for future Family Story Times). With my "extra" time this week, I fiddled around a bit more with our daily rhythms, fine-tuning and tweaking the order we do things in to make everything flow just a little smoother. And I started reading a bit of the Enki Education 1st Grade materials, which are even more impressive than the Kindergarten materials (and that's saying quite a bit!).

We also went to the children's museum, where both kids participated in an animal program (here Zoo Boy prepares to pet a chinchilla with his "two petting fingers", while J watches on with a smile), and J took a museum class called "Let's Be Dr. Doolittle" where he learned how animals communicate, and got to "talk" to quite a few of the animals that live at the museum. We topped off the week by having a playdate here with some homeschooling pals, which was a lot of fun for the kids and for us Moms, too.

Here's The Map Man's project for the week -- cutting a new door in the barn. Actually, by the time he's done with the project, the door on the left will no longer exist, and instead of two stalls in our barn, there will be three. Oh, and that paddock we're looking through will have a temporary line of fencing through it (which will become part of the permanent paddock fencing once spring comes and we're able to dig fence post holes again). I'll post some photos of the finished product next week.