Really?

Some people seem to think that home schooled kids don't get enough socialization. Ha! Really?  I think our home schooled children have more social interactions than many of their peers. Our lives are a whirlwind of activities, parties, get-togethers, playdates, and events. Take last week, for example. The week started with a knap-in on Whidbey Island, where flint knappers got together to practice their trade. The kids flint knapped and practiced archery with the seasoned, old farts folks.  Luke wore the buck skin shirt he made.  Don't worry, the deer he is shooting at is not real.

The next day, they hung out with one of their friends at the creek, and then a few days later, they spent two days with another friend, at another creek.  When I say "hanging out at the creek", I mean more like throwing mud at each other and hurling themselves off a log into the ice cold water.  The picture below reminds me of a picture I took of the pigs a few days ago.

Their friend Alden.

Their friend Charlie.

That same week, we took their pal Charlie on a hike to Heather Lake, and later back home to a sleepover.  Charlie is another home schooled boy, and he is delightful: extremely polite, charming, well behaved, considerate, and kind.  Plus, my kids adore him.  They had a blast on the hike, and later after the hike, when they played rowdy football until dark.  Then there was a sleepover in our Fort, and then the next morning at 7am another rousing game of football.

That's Steve and the boys in the lake.  Me?  No. 

And with all these activities, we managed to attend our friends' housewarming party, which turned out to be super fun - for us and the kids.  We have such an awesome community of friends.  Here is Eva with her best buddy at the party.  Yes, Eva is also getting lots of socialization, despite being home schooled.

Let's see, what else happened this week?

Sunflowers:

Preparing the figs from our tree for dehydrating:

Having the roofing delivered so Steve can start putting a new roof on.  After many days of hot weather and sunshine, it promptly starting raining after the roofing delivery.

Also, I cut into the Cabra Al Vino (wine soaked) cheese I made a few months ago.  Isn't it pretty and oh-so-fancy?  And doesn't Steve look oh-so-happy for getting to try it?

I will leave you with a picture that shows that fall is coming.  There are plenty of crunchy leaves on the ground.  The air is getting colder.  Mornings feel autumn-y...

The joy(s) of home schooling

Look at these boys! They are proudly showing off the bows they made with Steve on Saturday, when we hosted a bunch of homeschooled kids at our homestead to teach them how to make their own bows. Imagine a shop full of eight to eleven year old boys, red cheeked, rasping off wood from staves, joking and laughing, chatting and rough housing. I got to hang out with the moms inside the house, and every time I ventured out to check on the boys and Steve in the wood shop, my heart jumped with joy.

I adore these home schooled kids. They are so open, curious and well behaved. They look an adult in the eye and converse easily, respectfully, comfortably. They are used to being around adults and even enjoy our company, I can tell.

Lately, I have loved home schooling. Sure, I go through periods of freaking out and questioning our choices. But lately, things have felt so right. Our boys are happy and thriving. Not only academically (I am happy to say that in a recent test, they scored one and two grade levels above where they “should” be in math, and sky high in reading and writing). But it's not about academics for us. It's about helping them discover who they are and want to be, and fostering their talents and interests. It's about giving them the time and freedom to explore, work with their hands as well as their minds, and grab opportunities when they arise.

The other day, snow came down in huge, feather-like flakes. Instead of sitting in school somewhere, the boys built a snow fort with their Dad.  We went for a walk and collected ice from the creek.  They worked on their bows. They played their fiddle and keyboard for hours, without having to be prodded by us adults. They wrote pages upon pages of action stories, complete with comic illustrations.  I taught them how to make power point presentations on the computer, and they went wild with it.  The family has learned a lot about cougars, falcons, and rattle snakes since then.

People sometimes ask me what kind of curriculum we use. We love “Moving Beyond the Page”, which is similar to Oak Meadow and very big on literature.  I like teaching it because I get to read all the great books as well.  It includes an inter-disciplinary approach to language arts, science and social studies.

For math, we use Singapore.  I like it because it has a good teaching guide, explaining to the person who teaches the kid how to teach it.  For someone like me, who hates math, who doesn't have a natural inclination towards math and critical thinking, it's great.  

First snow, grumpy goats, happy children, and lots of dishes!

It's 10 am, and I am sitting in front of the blazing wood stove, enjoying a cup of tea --- ALONE!  There are no kids in the house.  Usually, we home school around this time.  But who needs to add, subtract, multiply or divide when you can play outside in the snow instead.  Yes, SNOW!
This is what I woke up to this morning when I went outside to milk the goats.  The white specks are snowflakes, really, truly, they are!

The goats were a little bit grumpy and hungry when I got to the barn.  They are not particularly fond of snow, since it covers up all the delicious green stuff they like to eat.

In the meantime, Steve brought in more fire wood.  What an excellent provider he is!  He cuts the trees down, splits them, and makes sure the wood box is never empty.  Bring on the cold!!!

And after milking, there are the never ending dishes...  It's not my favorite job.  I'd rather be knitting, to be sure.  But who am I to complain?  Everyone in our family has chores.  Steve brought in fire wood.  Kai fed the chickens and collected their eggs.  Lukas dried the dishes.

And Eva's job?  Make messes and noise.  But honestly, I am so glad she is able to make messes.  She was sick for two days last week, and it was scary: high fever, lethargy, vomiting, and non-stop crying.  She is all better now, full of piss and vinegar, as Steve likes to put it so elegantly.  Here she is, getting ready for playing in the snow.

Lukas got into the snow man making spirit.  I know, you Germans or Minnesotans or Alaskans roll your eyes at this "snow", scoffing, but hey, it's wet, it's white, it's cold, and you can make it into a snow man, even though there is not that much of it!

My father called me this morning from Germany, telling me that they are drowning in snow.  I remember my childhood days in Germany, waking up to a world completely blanketed in white fluffy-ness, walking to school in snow that came up to my thighs, and sledding for hours with my sisters.

Here are two pictures he sent me this morning.  It's the street where I grew up.

So I am used to snow in the winter.  But there is nothing like being snowed in here in Marblemount, tucked right up against the mountains and the mighty Cascades.  We live one mile up a forest service road, which doesn't get plowed at all.  Some winters, we can't get Steve's four wheel drive truck out to the Highway, let alone my mini van.  That means we either hunker down, eat my canned food from the garden, raide my cheese cave, and don't see anyone for days, or we pay someone to plow us out.  Sometimes, the snow gets so heavy that people can't do that, even with a bulldozer.  One year, this happened in conjunction with more than a week of power outage.  You can imagine our cabin fever!

Ohhh boy, the kids are coming in.  Wet snow shoes, hats, mittens, coats, socks, red cheeks, cold noses, hungry appetites.  I guess it's time to feed them - and then sit down for home schooling.

Home schooling in the wilderness - what's it like?

I home school my kiddos, which is great, but lonely sometimes.  We live in the boonies, and I don't mean in some charming sub-suburban lot with a big backyard and garden.  I am talking about wilderness type of boonies, where bears steal our apples, bobcats poop in our yard, and bald eagles and hawks make sure that our old chickens get... disposed of.  I am talking about having to drive half an hour to get to the tiny town of Concrete, and one hour and 15 minutes to the "big" city of Mount Vernon, which harbors the closest health food store.  (That's why I grow a lot of our own food and raise goats for our own milk.  We never run out of milk or have to "go to the store" go get more.  Like a three hour round trip to get milk for our breakfast oatmeal).

So.  Back to home schooling.  You probably think I am some kind of freak, depriving my kids of a social life, making them milk the goats and do farm chores, with no friends to play with.  Well, this couldn't be further from the truth.  In fact, our social life is sometimes a little bit overwhelming.  Being rural folks and all, we really like our neighbors and immediate community.  A lot of amazing people live here, and a lot of them have kids, and some of them home school.  You bet we hang out a lot.  Especially in winter.

You see, we get 100 inches of precip here.  That's one hundred.  That's a lot of rain, showers, water, snow, mist, fog, downpour, and drizzle.  Sometimes I am tempted to check the feet of the old timers around here, just to see if they have webbed toes.

Home schooling in this wet, dark climate is hard sometimes, not so much in the summer, but in the winter, when we are all cooped up in the house together.  You know, the days when I have insomnia all night, and have to drag myself out to the barn to milk the goats, and then come in the kitchen to see that my three year old angel is strewing dog kibbles all over the floor.  When my eight year old shuts down because I make him do addition and subtraction.  When my ten year old gives me a terrible attitude about helping me do dishes.  When my wonderful, active kids bounce off the walls because they don't want to go out in the torrential rain.

So we go to "town" once a week to attend a home schooling program with lots of awesome moms, kids, and experienced teachers.  It's heaven for the kids, because they get to hang out with their buddies (and learn some stuff from the teachers, but who cares about that?), and it's heaven for me because I get to hang out with the other moms who are just so cool.  They can relate to my experience, instead of talking with non-home schooling moms who say, "Oh, you get to stay home all day and do nothing, and enjoy your sweet kids?"  Oh, yes, honey, that's right.

So that's what we did today, and it was the kind of day when the rain is a topic on NPR, because there are flood and storm warnings.  Our two and a half hour commute was wet, but beautiful.  Here are some images:

WET ROADS

WET FIELDS

WET RIVERS

WET MOUNTAINS

WET CLOUDS

WET TREES

MORE WET CLOUDS MAKING WET RAIN

Homeschool nature class in the wild

Yesterday's nature class for our home school group was a smashing success - soggy and cold, but a smashing success.  Despite the weather, there were a lot of smiles...

We walked out to our debris hut camp, where the kids gathered leaves and fortified the debris hut roof.
See how cozy and dry little Eva is inside the shelter?

We then did a fire challenge, where two teams had to light a fire with materials they gathered (plus some dry cedar we supplied), but it was really, really hard with all the wet materials.  The competitive spirit roared, if not the fires....  Here is a happy girl scraping cedar to start the fire.

Which team will burn the string first?  None.... It was too wet!  They all put in a great effort, though.
Steve assisted in the fire building, and soon it was nice and warm, ready to roast sausages, trout, and fry an egg on the keyhole fire pit, which is a way to cook on heated rocks.  The kids (and adult assistants) were duly impressed.

The kids have been playing a number of awareness games (owl eyes, deer ears) to help them slow down and expand their senses in the wild.  They also did a "sit spot", where they find a quiet spot in nature and become very quiet and aware.  You would be astonished to witness some of the younger kids actually sitting down quietly without complaining.

The kids are having so much fun romping around in the wild, learning new skills, bonding with their friends, while we grown-ups gently guide them, but let them be wild and happy.
You can find out more about it here.