making the most of the light {don't rush away the days}

The kids went back to school today after an intense, but ever so fast, Summer holiday. I'm missing the holidays already. But boy was I sorta-kinda happy to put them on the bus this morning and walk home with the knowledge that I can now get started on the doing and making and planning to help the year ahead be a successful one for us, for Deadwood Creative, for our home building, for my workshops and for my creative making.

While there's so much I want to do - and I've made plans and lists and schedules (and I aim to stick to them), I also am sad that our Summer holiday is over. After such a full-on (and emotionally draining) January, I feel like we didn't really get a real and loving holiday time together as a family. I think I was rushing the holidays away, because I really needed head space from the kids. And now, I'm ever-so-sad I did that. One should never rush time away...especially when with two little ones who are ever so dear and precious.

I can feel the days already getting slightly shorter. Slowly slowly. This week I've felt myself trying to drag the day out longer. To make the most of the last few hours of sunshine. Sometimes daylight saving is annoying - other times I love it. 

On this first day back to school, I'm writing myself a mantra for how to extend the holiday feel into our daily routine.

+ Go for walks in the afternoon, or after dinner - once the dinner table is cleared

+ Bike riding in the garden in the afternoon

+ Stop work when the kids get home and be with them - delicious afternoon tea and conversation on the verandah

+ Stopping to listen to the birds calling and screeching across the sky

+ Do crafting after school with the kids

+ Have tea parties in the garden

+ Go away for weekends together - unexpected mid-term holidays

+ Take days off school if we need to, just because

+ Be late for school some times, if we need to - no excuse needed

+ Laugh and giggle together and plan what we'll do on our next holiday

Have your littles gone back to school yet? 

Are you planning all the things you'll do in your hours of kid-free time? 

Are you making delicious afternoon tea treats for when they come home? 

Here's to a new school term of happy children, content teachers and fulfilled mamas & dadas!

*these two photos are from our walk yesterday afternoon. A whole gang of black cockatoos flew over and we simply stopped in the road and watched them, and could barely count how many, but I counted my blessings that I saw them and that my babies are happy to stand and watch birds flying in the trees above us. 

still teaching/learning even though we're not homeschooling!

 Yah to that!

I've been feeling sad and worried that with our homeschooling journey over before we barely had time for it to begin, that I wouldn't be able to be the "teacher" to my children in the way I wanted. Or the way I thought I should.

But I realised that's not true. Even though it's not official book work or lesson planning or scheduled learning & teaching, it's still happening. And probably in a better, more fluid way than when we had the restrictions of the education department breathing down my neck, so to speak. 

I still receive this mailing list that makes me think and think. Lori's book and site Project Based Homeschooling is quite amazing in her ability to know where I'm up to in my thinking and doubts and reassure through her newsletter. Pretty clever hey! This post about self directed learning hit the nail on the head for me this morning.

I've been worrying that I needed to make sure my kids were keeping up with the few things we'd started and wanted to journey through, and that I feel they're missing at school. But life hasn't given us the time for me to make it happen and set it all out for the kids and do the research and find the books and information. But it's much better this way anyway. Life is telling me that it's best when the kids do their own research and finding of books and information and make it happen. That if I keep doing it for them, they won't learn to do it for themselves. 

And while I knew that, I feel that often my kids take the easy and lazy option of not doing it at all. But maybe that's because it's important to them, and they don't want to know that anyway. So, why should I be pushing them into all this research for what they're not interested in. 

Lately, Mishi has been looking through my craft, art and design books to find inspiration for making doll clothes. She's not asking me to help her, or to do it for her. She'd flicking through and reading the words, and asking help when she wants and needs it only. And I'm there for her - when she needs a word sounded out or a pattern traced and cut. She's learning names of clothing shapes and styles, and sometimes talking about eras and fashion trends. This is her interest, real and true and I know she'll pursue it without my pushing. 

And only today, Ari read on an oats box, while we were baking afternoon tea, that they would send a free bag clip if you emailed them. So - he read the box for all the info he needed to find their email address and worked out how to send an email from my account. He wrote the letter to them, and told them his recipe, and they replied saying they want a photo of him with his baking. He then searched the brand on Instagram and looked at the possibility of joining up to their mailing list. Really - I couldn't have taught him to write an email to someone unless he'd wanted to. 

So, just a reminder to me (and maybe you?) that letting our children discover something on their own is the best way for them to learn. It's so important for children now days to know how to search something (every single child knows the word Google) and how to look within the pages of false information for the true information, that's a skill that's more important than knowing how the answers to the questions we feed them.

*images are from Ari's Collections on Pinterest. Because even 8year old needs to know to how Pin! They perfectly sum up how I feel about the learning journey I go on with my little ones; the turtle express and flying in the wind.

thoughts on schooling at home {homeschooling}

Last week I announced on my instagram feed that the kids were going back to school. That we had tried homeschooling, and had decided it wasn't right for us. 

Oh, but my heart is torn about this decision. For many reasons. Some I don't know I can share here. Some....

Firstly. I want to share with you why homeschooling didn't "work" for us. You might be thinking we only gave it a short trial, and yes, that's so true. But I think we threw ourselves into it as quickly as I throw us into other things. Of course, I'm the one doing the throwing / pushing / pulling, and they all come along with me. 

I wanted homeschooling to be us. I wanted us to be homeschooling. But in reality, the situation that we are currently living in ~ one tiny house, with no space for study, or creativity, or spreading out of books, reading, drawing, making, doing. No space to be away from each other. No space to choose to be together. No space to be organised and planned. Only space to feel on top of each other constantly. Not really very good to suddenly throw us into 24hours on top of each other. Suddenly it felt like the school hours were 7 hours of baby-sitting we were missing out on, 7 hours (that includes bus travel time, etc) of peace and quiet that we were missing. 

And sometimes I realised it also included 7 hours of doing something separate to each other. I stopped asking the kids what they'd done during the day. Because I'd been there with them the whole time, I neither needed to ask, nor wanted to hear their voices whining at me again. And maybe perhaps they didn't want to go over school work with me again, either.

Sam and I lost time to be alone together. To talk with no-one interrupting, or over-hearing, or wanting to be part of it all. No time to just sit and enjoy being with each other; a quiet coffee in the sun (once the kids have gone off to school) with your partner is surely an important thing in any relationship.

I did barely any - actually maybe none - crochet or screen printing or sewing or anything once the kids started schooling at home. Everything creative I did involved them, and had them at my side. And oh yes, that's what I wanted. It is what I DO want. But I also wanted just snippets of myself. My head my thoughts. Small snippets that I never got. 

I think, really, the biggest thing was that our little skateboard jewellery making business got a little bit busier. YAH to that!! And I needed to spend time working on all that was needed for that. And that meant taking time away from schooling and the children. And whenever I wasn't there at their side doing work, preparing work, pushing and enticing work to happen it just didn't. The kids thought they were on holiday if I wasn't teacher at the school desk. 

I guess it's unfair of me to have expected them to be any different. But I think that I expected they would "self learn" a lot more than they did. I think they were maybe too used to school where the teacher walks them through everything. I wanted them to grab their passions and interests and run away with it, and me be there to offer thoughts and advice and encouragement and assistance, and drive them to the library or show them how to make papier mache. Oh. How naive was I!!

Having said that; some school days were excellent. They made me the happiest mama in the world. To sit with my two babies and see them soaking up the learning. To talk with them about things that interested them, and help them discover more. To hear them sharing and learning and teaching each other. For them to be side-by-side learning were some of the happiest moments. 

and therein lies my heart ache. For though I know we can continue much at home, now that they are going back to school, I also know that after-school, weekends and holidays are brief, and that mostly they want to play and explore and 'not do school work'. We will always, as a family, be learners and explorers and teachers in our home (that is something I cannot give up), but I know that with them at school it is in a limited capacity, and that sometimes I am battling against the norm of a public schooling education with my thoughts and ideas to stretch their little minds further and bigger and deeper. Sometimes they feel locked into a system that they don't want to break out of. The ease of cut and paste from a google page, instead of exploring the library or art gallery or museum for the answer. Of saying that their school teacher says their work is good enough, and they're happy with good enough.....

Oh the sadness of a mama who knows her children have more potential than they will receive at school. 

I want it to be known that the school they go to, the local public school, is beautiful and supportive and loving, and has a solid foundation of honest and real values. I just feel that the education system in general lets education and learning down. Every week it seems I hear a teacher, or ex-teacher, talking about the stupid paperwork rather than actual teaching they have to do. And having 20-something other kids in a classroom isn't always the best learning environment. But then, maybe sometimes it is. Children are strong and resilient and perhaps we can give them enough (more than enough!) at home to counter what they will miss.

This for me is an on-going thought / feeling. I hope that with them and me together we can make learning endlessly happen in our family, in a happy contented joyful manner. Perhaps this can be the best of both options - the 7 hours of space that we all needed (them and us), and then the other time of sharing and learning and evolving and growing and expanding.

The one thing I do know about schooling of our children, is that there is rarely a "right" answer, and sometimes that right answer changes weekly. As parents we are always weighing the options of right and best against mediocre. I guess a school who openly cares and supports and knows my children is a wonderful thing indeed and that I should embrace.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, experiences, feelings on this.

brave or .....

Over the past few weeks/months whenever I've talked with someone about our new homeschooling adventures they have proclaimed me to be brave. "Wow, I could never do that. You're so brave", generally with real admiration in their tone. My response has generally been "yeah, or stupid". 

I was saving writing about our homeschooling journey on this blog, as I have thoughts/ideals that it's a crafting/making/creative/small business blog. But, I think I need to realise that it's a me blog. And right now the me who writes, owns and is this blog is all about homeschooling.*

Let me start off by saying that so far in this 6 weeks since we left school, and began homeschooling, it has not been an easy or smooth transition. Not that I thought it would, but I had hoped it would be easier than it has been. I think I guessed the kids would settle into their school routine and allow me to sit and be their book-work teacher for at least 3-4 hours a day. And I had crazily assumed that the daily work would just sort of write itself and evolve easily. I mean; my kids can read (one learning, one very proficient) and write, and are highly intelligent inquisitive children. I think I assumed we'd all skip along a path of self-learning and enjoying reading/writing/working every day. 

Ha! Let me say that louder HA!. (Therein lies the "stupid" part. The part that thought it would all happen on it's own! Ha. I hear all our teachers laughing hysterically at that one). 

Well, actually that has happened on many wonderful mornings; we've sat down with our books and a semi-planned idea of what we'd work on. And stayed at it contentedly for a good couple of hours. Beautiful. The kids learning and talking and remembering and being inspired and excited. But then the next day it didn't happen. And another day they wanted to play Barbies / Lego / building fairy houses / on the iPad for an extra few hours. Or the maths work was too hard. Or they didn't want to put in the effort of the English or the research for the project we'd talked about doing. And it's dwindled. Day by day has slipped into a semi-holiday. 

Of course, in our home even on holidays and weekends and Sunday mornings there is life learning happening. Reading and writing and story telling and making and planning and exploring and discovering and researching are always happening around here. We talk about things at breakfast, or recite our times tables in the car, or make up Haiku's when we see a beautiful cloud. Or a play evolves from a remembered snippet of a favourite story. And they curl into bed at night, and we read stories together - sometimes him reading, sometimes her, sometimes me.

And I think all this is good. It's schooling. I believe it would fall under what is generally termed natural learning or un-schooling. And I love that. It seems to fit within our life and days and the kids self-learning personalities.

Aside from my need to be totally dedicated and on top of recording and note taking to assure the board of studies that my kids are learning and doing work (and really - perhaps learning more, and more passionately, than many classroom children); I think it's all good. 

All good. On the schooling front. 

oh but. but but.... What I'm really rambling on about here is: Is it all good on the mama/teacher/carer/cleaner/hugger/bookreader/crafter front. What I'm wondering is. When do I get my break? That moment between teacher and mama.

I love my children. More than the moon and the trees and life. No denying that ever at all. But I'm wondering when I'll be brave enough give over wholly of myself, and be there with them endlessly. And stop wanting/expecting/demanding that time for myself. As I see it needs to be. I'm eager here if there's anyone with experience reading able to give some advice, or take my children for a day or so.... 

Will homecshooling give them everything. But take everything from me?

Wondering if I'm brave enough.

*though I am keen to hear from you, my dear readers, whose thoughts and visits I really really honestly value and respect and don't take for granted. I'm eager to hear if you'd like to read more of this style of style of blogging, or if you've come here to see pretty pictures of things I make? Please do do leave a comment and let me know. I love that blogs, this blog, can be a conversation between friends. 

{images from top: maricor/maricar; rummage, but found here; bottom 2 from my words Pinterest page.} If you'd like to see pretty pictures that I'm posting, head on over and follow me on Instagram. It seems a teeny too much stretch to get those images from my phone or camera onto the computer.

today ::

today ari asked me, as we were driving past the cemetery, what it was.
i explained to him, though i knew he already knew, that it was where some people bury the people they love, when they die.
he then asked me, when all the family people have buried all the people who have died, who buries the last family person, when they die.

i had to stop and think, for a moment, and totally appreciate his thinking. his logical way of working it all out. and i smiled.
i took it literally to mean - the very last person on earth. who will bury that person. or who will mourn that person.
of course. we know
no-one will need to mourn the last person.

children remind you to think about things, don't they.
they take nothing for granted.
accept nothing as it is presented.
ask many questions until they are content that they know for themselves, what it means.
not knowing the rote of learning, the knowledge of learning.

volcano

Volcanoes have been big around here for a while now. Ari draws them, talks about them, looks at pictures of them, talks about them.....

Amongst all the talk, and looking for pictures on the wonderful internet. And trying to explain that my Dad doesn't live on a volcano; actually within the rim of a very extinct volcano.
I moved our blackboard into the kitchen, and the kids have been drawing and writing while I cook and clean around them.
I told him letter by letter how to write the word, after which he drew this fantastic volcano to show us all what it was. Don't you love that blast coming out. Last week he wrote 'lava' too. Sometimes he writes his words from right to left because he's left-handed. Both my brother and sister are left handed, and it seems Ari is the only next generation to be. I do remember a lot of mirror writing from my siblings as we were growing up; them learning how to write with a fountain pen and not smudge too much!
So, I guess we have been doing our homeschooling just while we do our daily living. I think that I've talked a lot about homeschooling over the past year or so, and now Ari says that he doesn't want to go to school and that he wants to school at home.
I think from having read many great blogs, I know this is very possible. I know that Ari, and hopefully Mishi, will be the right sort of children / people for being homeschooled. I'm just not sure if I have the energy or continuation to do it. Make sense? Also, I keep thinking, school is more than just learning. It is about the socialisation and being part of something else - firstly I'm not so good at 'making friends' for myself or my children. Secondly, should they have to be friends with who I am friends with, will they have the opportunity to find their own friends, people who I would normally never have anything to do with - but who are right for my kids.
Just more thoughts on this homeschooling option.

We are going, this weekend, to a Steiner Spring Festival, which I am very excited about. Haven't been to one for many years, and my children have never been to one. Candle making, bead making, silk dying, tie dying as well as music and lantern parades and food and ..... Oh the wonderful things from my childhood. Ari asked her to make a funny face, so he could photograph her - this is her silly face!(I think she's copying from Ari, who quite likes to make the same sort of face).

have I mentioned.....

....that walking is well and truly happening here, now. She was doing that tentative little scurry around the furniture and holding hands walking, for a little while. But while we were at my Dad's house two weekends ago, with all the bigger children scampering and running about, she came home walking. It's odd to see her doing the occasional crawl, now, if she wants to get somewhere really fast.

Her funny little walk - a tiny bit side-ways, with a scuffle sort of stance. She's very confident in it now. Sometimes she still overbalances and tumbles down, but generally she can stop herself from falling quite well.

And she pushes things - chairs, toy prams, wooden trolley full of library books. And can carry things quite well, also. Today when I gave her a plate of watermelon, she just picked it up and walked off down the hallway with it held firmly in her two hands.

Really, she does so much that everyone else does. Not a baby anymore. Last night, Sam asked Ari why there were some crayons that hadn't been put away in the basket with the others. Ari sat on the couch and had a tiny whinge about it. Mishi just walked over and picked them all up and went to put them away.

And potty-training is happening slowly, also. She has just done this herself. We are encouraging it, but by no means forcing it. When she has no clothes on, she just takes herself off to the potty, sometimes she sits down fully clothed -as an indication that she needs to go. And, of course, she needs toilet paper to wipe herself as well.

It's pretty amazing really, isn't it, the way they learn so much by just mimicking and copying and trying over and over until they can do it. I keep wondering if Ari was like this, at this age (Mishi is almost 14 mths now). And I can't quite remember. I guess that he wasn't really up to a lot of things she is, mainly because there wasn't the constant older sibling stimulation that Mishi gets from Ari.

I've been reading a book called Detoxing Childhood. A lot of it is really stuff I know (or should know, and be thinking about), but it's always good to have it there in front of you, again, at the moments when you need to hear it. One part talks about 'learning versus education'. This struck a note with me. So much of what children 'learn' is just our everyday life - we don't, as parents, set out to teach them to walk or talk, we encourage it when it happens, and show them by example. I think this is all falling into my constant thoughts about homeschooling or not.

I think so much of what children are taught at school is so they can an exam and get a good score, so they can go to University. And be told how to think, but also told that they have to think for themselves - but follow certain guidelines. I loved school - went to Steiner School for primary, and just the local high school. But I think, so much of what I learnt about who I am, and where I fit in, and what I do with my life now - comes from my parents, and my upbringing. Maybe more so than from school. Though maybe I'm having midnight rambles......... This was meant to be a post about Mishi walking.

And while she's growing, and shall we call her a toddler now - is she a baby anymore. And she can cope a whole day without me now, without my milk nourishment. Still, when she gets home, she's my baby. She suckles on my nipple for her milk - which is not just food, but always warmth and love. She hums her little going to sleep song, and strokes my face, and looks into my eyes. And her eyelids flicker and her eyeballs roll back into her head. And she sleeps, a baby sleep. Soft, contented, restless, dreaming, growing, learning. And, so too does my bigger baby, the three and a half year old boy baby.

city learning

Even though the countryside keeps pulling and enticing me, we still continue to find advantages of city living. Last night we went for a walk, after dinner, in the glorious afternoon-sun colours of our Summer. We had to go and water the plants at my sister's house - and of course, have a jump on their trampoline. She only lives one long block away, but we managed to draw the five minute walk out. Exploring and learning on the way.

I keep going round-about on this thought process of homeschooling. Keep wondering if it will be something that is good for our family, if we will do it. Last night really reconfirmed to me that it's not will we, but that we already are homeschooling. Each house number, letterbox we passed on our walk we stopped at. Ari and I talked about what the number was, he traced the metal forms with his fingers. We talked about how a 3 looks like a backwards E, and a 5 almost like an S. And yet again, he impressed and surprised me when he could read all but one of the letters on the STOP sign. (The P is a letter that isn't in any of our names, so he doesn't know it as well).

He has been recognising letters for quite a while now. Seeing them on street signs, shop signs, boxes we bring home from the supermarket, at the bakery, on the corner store. Especially he knows an A, I suppose that would be the first letter that most kids learn - the letters in their own name.

So, following on from that, he can write his name - beautifully is I do say so. And other letters and number-forms are slowly following.

For a long time we have been talking about numbers and letters, and it is falling into place for him (and me). His first 'writings' (possibly even more than a year ago) were generally shopping lists, long squiggly lines of words that he told us said pasta or toothpaste or cheese or tofu.

We were always reading when we were kids. It is my hope is see my kids curled up or sprawled out devouring their books, or languishing over images and words. Pity that they don't see me doing much reading these days - I think since Ari was about six months old, I have not been able to focus on any book for long enough to actually remember what the story is about! Maybe one day again, I will find the time and mental capacity for novels, and finish those that I have started.