School update

Well here comes my little break from the blog. Posting will be on the lite side as we delve into our new life over there. And just when I need to blog too--so much to share. Go figure.

Someone mentioned to me that I hadn't talked much about our homeschooling lately and this is true, probably because we haven't done much of anything different yet other than having the kids home. Right now we're unschooling and trying out little bits and pieces of Waldorf style homeschooling. We really do much of what we've always done,--story time, painting, nature walks and raiding the recycling bin armed with duct tape, glue and string. The only difference being that we do it pretty much full time now and whenever we want. It kind of makes me dread the scheduled version I've created for Fall of next year. I really think unschooling works and I trust it but I'm not alone to decide and I have to respect Seb's say in things. It's been hard enough trying to make him see the benefits of waiting for Fall for S to start reading again. Maybe over time he'll see. A few years back I thought the whole concept of unschooling was completely daft. I mean who lets their kids do NOTHING all day? Now of course I get how it works.

Actually we do a lot in a given day and we've learned lots of new things like mini bookmaking and S is really in to portrait sketches now--no idea why! He never drew people all through maternelle and up until last year. The psychologue who saw him each week at school thought this was a big sign of something wrong Now it seems he ONLY draws people. Of course he only draws people from the story of Narnia, these sort of medieval people with weapons, and then he tapes them all over the walls of our house.



One of the funnest things we've started doing is knitting. I've taught Little S finger knitting and even though it took a few weeks of trying and stopping and trying again he finally got it all on his own in one of those divine "spurt-leap" moments that John Holt talks about so often in his books. It was like suddenly it just clicked in a split second. I'm doing real knitting now which I learned by watching videos and I really enjoy it too. I hope to teach S next year and he's really eager to learn. He's very cute with his knitting and walks around with the yarn everywhere he goes. We try to do handcrafts in the afternoon a little each day to prepare for next year when we'll follow the Waldorf homeschool curriculum I've chosen. We also do a lot of wet on wet watercolor painting which is really relaxing. I have a hard time getting them to use one or two colors but they're learning. Color and paints have always been a staple in our house so it's almost impossible to backtrack and say "okay today it's just YELLOW" but we're getting there. We have a set story time after lunch where they sit around and I read to them from the internet (mainlesson.com is a great resource for this). I sometimes forget about it but they don't. They hound me chanting story time! story time! at exactly one-thirty. I'm surprised they like it so much. After story time we break out the block crayons and they get to draw their perception of the story. I push Little S to do MLB style drawings because I know this will help jumpstart him when we start lesson in the Fall. He does beautiful borders and he even reminded me that people in the moyen age did borders on their pages and books. If you know Little S he is completely obsessed with the moyen age so I'm not surprised he found a connection.



The rest of our afternoon is devoted to being outside, usually a good ninety minutes to two hours of playing, exploring and walking. We've invented some games that we regularly play and we bike a lot. It's a good rhythm.

In a few days we'll pack up the paints and supplies and haul them downstairs. I imagine we'll have to buy more supplies while we wait for our things to be shipped to China. See this is how I end up with so many art supplies--all the moves!