It seems winter has arrived. Up here in the mountains we have snow that seems to be staying. Down in the valley is comes and goes. The boys are thrilled. They could live out there in the white stuff, at least in November they could. They must have slid down the tiny hill behind our house a thousand times over the last week. Little northern boys.

 We've been out walking in the woods in the snow and it is lovely. Willa loves to gaze up at the trees and take it all in. The boys play long elaborate games in the woods. One day they were tigers. Today Ari was an arctic explorer and Dori was a pet monkey who liked to carry a giant (heavy) magic snowball around with him. We've been visiting our little creek, loving its beautiful burbling voice under the thin skin of ice. The littlest boy feels very brave to step over the rocks and cross it on his own.

 and inside, there has been lots of good stuff too-
art making,

 book reading (and Movember- oh my!)

  sweet sweet sweetness-

 learning,

 knitting!

 and creating. I'm in love with this homemade laptop (there are 9 other screen/ keyboard combos in his journal including a page of Mama, Papa and Willa on Skype!) This is e-mail. I love how kids that don't actually use the computers on their own yet, still pick up so much. Both boys spent so much time making and then playing with their computers.

 a finished quilt,

 
 and a really cute model,

 who took me totally surprise when I placed her on the quilt on her back facing the other direction and then turned around to make myself a cup of tea and put some dishes away and turned back around to find her here! Things are really going to have to change around here fast! Note the scissors and small bits of chokey paper everywhere. Not pictured- marbles in every corner, playmobile bits scattered hither and thither, glass jars on low shelves, crayons and pebble collections and treasured projects in every corner of the house. But look at her. Isn't she awesome?

 For Ari's grade two homeschool we have started a new Sage/trickster humanities unit and cultural block and are loving it. We are working with Harriet Tubman's story, and cultural studies around it- listening to African American music and learning dances in circle time, making a shadow puppet plays of the Brer rabbit stories, and really sinking into the story of Harriet's life over a few weeks. This has been both wonderful and difficult for me- her story is so heavy, but so inspiring, and it is not easy for me to bring the reality of such injustice as slavery to my little boy. Yet, I can feel it really touching him on a deep level and I trust the wisdom of the Enki philosophy. This is a good thing. Just for the joy of watching my boy make connections for himself- that verse we started in circle is actually about Harriet herself, and that song we heard Mavis Staples sing on our Cd is the same one Harriet herself sang, and she too ate food like we are cooking, and heard the same Brer Rabbit tales we heard- he is just thrilled to tie it all together. Walking this journey together is such a gift.

 

And Dori joins us for the parts that work for a 5 year old- the dances, the crafts- and I read the stories to Ari when Dori is listening to his quiet time story. He has his kindy stories that we read together that he loves. And Willa- she loves the dances most of all. We put her in the highchair and bop around the living room and she waves her arms and grins at us. Fun for all.

Today was a good day. A long one day, but a good one. The boys were busy this morning playing shop and mailman. I was given the role of "auntie", but luckily my job was to sit and drink tea and knit and get my letters delivered from Mexico right to the kitchen table which seemed like a good deal. We worked on making a garland from sweater scraps- this was our advent activity from yesterday, but it we didn't get to it until today. The boys enjoyed it for awhile and it was a satisfying use of all the felted bits I have been storing. 

Ari and Dorian wanted to work on shovelling off the pond today as they are really keen to get their skates on, but we found it a slushy mess with he warm weather we've had the past few days. The kids were content to shovel around the house instead and tired themselves out nicely.

I tried something different with circle today and it went really well. I had read about "adventure circles" which some Enki families use- where you tell a little story that ties the activities together and act out the story together. I made up a quick story about delivering presents to our friends in our horse-drawn sleigh using silks for props and the boys loved it. None of the verses or songs were new, but the story made it feel new and was fun for all of us.

We also attempted to make grain-free (sugar free, molasses-free) gingerbread cookies today and it was a bit of a failure. The kids were great about it and entertained themselves by playing a game with the cookie cutters while I wrestled with the dough. I find it discouraging sometimes, trying to adapt the foods we have enjoyed in the past to our new diets, but I'll keep trying.  Besides, I have this little goof ball to keep me laughing- he sure does know how to make us laugh!

Goodnight friends!

homeschooling happenings

We are well into November now, and a few months in on our first homeschool year, and things are going well. To be honest, it doesn't feel all that different than life before homeschooling. The kindergarten year is all about learning through play, and there is a whole lot of playing going on around here- as there was before we began homeschooling. There are some things that we have added in that are specific to Enki kindergarten and these have been going very well. One is the kindergarten Folk and Fairy Tales- we read one each week and each story is told at least 3 times a week. This summer I went through the collection, and picked out the stories I though would best meet Ari. Mostly I have been using these, but it is nice to have a large collection so I can look through and choose something different when the one I had chosen for the week doesn't feel quite right. So far we have read:

The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin from India
Matreshka from Russia
Jack and the Sass Patch from southern US
The Talking Fish from Armenia
Persimmon Monster from Korea
Little Red Cap from Western Europe
The Star Frog from Peru
Lubachka from Russia 
and this week we are reading a story from Japan called Cherry Chee.

Ari listens closely to these stories, and I often hear parts of the stories reflected back in his play. He especially loves the Baba Yaga stories we have done- she is scary, but the children in the stories always get the best of her which he delights in.

One of the things that really speaks to me about the Enki philosophy is how the developmental issues of children at each grade level is always a focus, and the curriculum is meant to mirror these issues for the children. I can really feel Ari making some of those big kindergarten developmental leaps right now- the new levels of individuality and awareness of self, which, for all children, is both exciting and unsettling. Therefor all the stories for children at this developmental level essentially tell the same larger story- that one can go out into the  world, face challenges, and return to a safe and dependable home. So over and over, these stories are told to the kindergartner to mirror their large developmental questions. And the fact that this same overarching story is being told through stories from around the world feels essential to me- the underlying message (though of course this is never said overtly,) is that all people are on this same human journey together and that we all have the same access to wisdom and insight.  

Another aspect of Enki that really drew me was the sensory integration activities that have been put to seasonal song and verse. I discovered Enki before I had children of my own when I was working as a music teacher in a local public school. I was really drawn to these activities for the classroom-  integrating the movement and sensory activities children need to learn and grow, with music and poetry that follows the seasons just seemed so beautiful to me. I wondered though, if I would be able to use these activities at home, as a "circle" can feel a little forced in a small family setting. I chose to give it a try though,and it has been going really well. I have been keeping circle very short and very active with lots of leaping about and boisterous singing- and so far the kids are into it. I have mostly been using the Enki materials, though I have been digging into the music teacher repertoire for some of the songs I remember kindergartners really enjoying. I am choosing activities that target the sensory integration aspects I think are most important for Ari, while making sure it stays short and sweet. I am hoping in the next few years we can get together with other homeschoolers and have our kids experience the feeling of a larger circle. We enjoyed this at Enki camp last year, and I would love to have this be a regular part of our week.

Ari has also, on his own, been exporing letters a lot, asking how to form the letters he doesn't know yet, making large strings of letters he wants us to read to him (he finds this very funny!) and copying words he sees. I really am sold on the idea that kids don't need to be "taught" letters and reading yet at this age- seeing the delight and wonder he experiences just by playing around with letters on his own is evidence enough. If I was "teaching" at this point I know it would shut this discovery process right down. I love seeing how organic and self-motivated his learning is at this stage. There is plenty of time for "teaching" and language instruction. Admittedly, the teacher in me can hardly wait to get started on the grade 1 materials- but it feels right to wait until Ari is really ready.

All in all, things are going really well with our home learning. Of course, some days go smoother than others, and some days the "official" curriculum stuff just gets lost amidst the chaos of the day. But the days when our rhythm is strong and we are able to keep all the piece in place- they are lovely indeed. Though learning at home will always have has its own struggles, there really is no place we would rather be right now.
Happy Thursday friends.

learning at home

It is a little funny how much I have been thinking about homeschooling lately. After all, we are starting with Kindergarten- a year that is about play more than anything, and a grade that is not even mandatory. As well, I happen to hold the belief that kindergarten is too young for academics, and am using a curriculum that also believes that waiting until the child is at least 6 until reading and writing is wisest. Because of this we so we will not be doing any direct instruction of letters or numbers this year or other things regularly thought of as "schooling." Really, our days will change very little from how they looked before we were officially homeschooling- we will read books, sing songs, play games, bake, do crafts, spend lots of time outside. But somehow this year feels like a big one. Everywhere we go people say to Ari, "Oh, you must be starting school this year!" and all of a sudden we have to declare a new status, or rather he does, as he is more than happy to do so- "Ya!" he says "I'm a homeschooler!"

So there it is. He is a homeschooler. We are homeschoolers. It has been a bit of a journey to get here, to the place where we knew this was right for our family. I have been interested in alternative education for a long time, and knew, while I was in university  working on my undergrad and then my teachers certificate, that I would not be teaching in the public system. But I always imagined I would be a teacher at an alternative school. I thought I would be part of starting one in our little town. And when I had kids, I thought, they would be part of this little school we would start. But somehow I have a school aged kid and there is no little school. Not yet anyway. Maybe someday. But starting a school is no small feat, and it isn't something I could take on alone. And when it comes right down to it, I don't want to send my kids off anywhere just yet, even the perfect little school.

I enjoy my time with my children immensely, and I see them thriving at home. They are learning so much every day and I feel blessed to witness it and be part of it here at home. I don't think it is going to be easy, I hardly have the kind of kids who are going to sit politely with their hands folded on their desks, waiting for instruction (do those kids of kids actually exist?) I know there will be struggles and conflict at times. But we will be working things through together, figuring it out together, growing and learning together.

And it wont be just us either. It takes a village to educate a child, right? There will be friends and family and neighbours and community members. There will be other kids, lots of them- homeschoolers and schoolers, to play with and learn from. There will be communities found in sports or music or other chosen activities. There will be communities for me the homeschooling mom to be part of- other mamas and papas to talk with and share ideas together. There are the Enki discussion groups I belong to, and the people I value in my life to give good advice and steer me back in the right direction if I veer off course. We have a good team I think.

And then there is this child. This first-born, this beautiful free spirit who I will be learning beside. This boy who is so full of wonder and exuberance and delight in the world that watching him learn is a blessing. Though I will be guiding him on this path, we will be walking it side-by-side, me providing the compass, he pointing out all the beauty and splendor along the way.

It is good, I think- this choice we made. It is just the right one for us right now. Someday there likely will be other choices to be made, but for now we will be doing our learning at home, right where we all love to be.

kindy update

I started writing this post awhile ago, so the pictures are not exactly current- I feel cold looking at pictures of my boy outside in bare feet now!



We have been working with the Enki kindergarten material for almost 3 months now, so I figured I should do a little update, or at least get a few details down for myself to remember. Things have been going really well, we are keeping it simple and mostly just trying to keep a good rhythm going and to make sure that the Enki stories are read at least 3 times each before we move on. I have also been trying to keep a regular project time happening, although that slides quickly when the littlest monkey decides not to nap, or when other bit of life get in the way. But we are trying to have a baking day, a craft day, and a painting day each week. Ari loves the projects and it is fun to have a little time in the afternoon to work on things together.

When I was planning out our first few months, I thought I would take it very slow, and chose the stories that had very little that would be challenging or difficult or scary. These were mostly folk tales, or stories Ari would be familiar with. But the first couple rounds of stories just didn't seem to be meeting him. He sat through them, and never resisted the ritual of story time or the repetition, but he just didn't seem to be sinking into the stories at all. He seemed mostly to be waiting to blow out the story time candle and play with the wax!

So I flipped through my resources and chose one of the younger fairy tales that still had some bite to it- "the Wolf and the Seven Kids" about a wolf who eats up six little goats while their mother is gone, and the seventh one goes with his mother to cut open the wolf and let the kids out and then fills the wolf's belly with stones and sews him back up. This makes the wolf thirsty and he goes for a drink in the well and falls to his death. Nice right? But this story really seemed to meet Ari. He listened in that wonderful slack jaw, totally-in-the-story way you hope for and the thing that struck me tho most was how much more grounded he seemed, more patient and content during the week we were reading this story. It seems that this story was just right on the mark developmentally, and he felt seen somehow.


That was our biggest success story so far. I keep digging through the book, trying to find the stories that will meed him like this, but I realized last night, that because I want to do two years of kindy with him, I had not been even looking at the stories for middle and older kindergartners, thinking I should save them for next year. But I read through a few of the middle ones and I think that he is more at this stage, so I am going to try out a few of these ones. From his play, and the ideas he talks about, he seems to need a bit more challenge, needs his feisty-ness mirrored somehow. But he is still really young, and there are stories that he is clearly not ready for yet. The fairy-tale type story with parents dying and evil stepmothers and such are not where he is at. But some ugly trolls or green-haired witches or hungry tigers or nasty zimwis might do the boy some good!

I have been very careful with adding in a movement circle. I myself am so excited by the Enki movement component and love the songs and circle activities. But I knew starting out that this would be the most likely place for conflict with Ari- if he feels that he is being taught or led directly he resists heartily. So I have slipped a few fun movement activities into our days but have not done anything formal. Ari needs a ton of physical activity in his day to stay grounded and happy, so keeping him active is my main challenge. But he is so good at creating this for himself when he needs it though- and dancing to his favorite music (he's our family DJ!) is providing a good deal of the sensory activity he needs- because dancing is serious business that involves leaping, rolling, spinning, crawling etc. I also sometimes set up an obstacle course in the house with lots of climbing, jumping, slithering, running and swinging and spinning required, which is always a hit.

And of course, we get outside too, and sledding and skiing and skating will cover a lot of the physical needs. Trying to keep Dorian happy outside for long enough to tire Ari out is the main challenge right now, but it seems to be getting better.

Projects have been going very well (except when Dori doesn't nap, as I mentioned.) Ari loves cooking and baking and crafting and painting. I have found the Enki craft activities to be mostly beyond him- knot tying, braiding, finger knitting etc, is all more than he is ready for. So I have been pulling out simple activities from various sources to cover our crafting needs. Earthways
Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children by Carol Petrash is a good one. And there are always great ideas to be found on the Crafty Crow.

I have also backed off with wet-on-wet painting. I realized that this was another place that could cause some conflict- it is too rule-ish for him right now to have to wash his brush a certain way, and not mix the paints together etc. I do love this style of painting for young kids to really have an experience of colour without getting too caught up in creating forms, and I will add in more wet-on-wet later when he seems ready and when I think he could learn the painting "rules" through the Enki painting stories.

For now it seems more nourishing to him to just have a set of watercolours and play around with them as he chooses. I am going to look for a set with fewer colours and ones that can be popped in and out (I know they exist, but haven't been able to track any down, does anyone know what company makes such a thing?) so he can still sink into the experience of the colours without too many choices. I might try giving him lightly soaked paper too, and see if this can make his painting experience a little less heady, as lately he has been focused on painting forms, rather than just filling the page with colour.
All in all things have been going really well, and I am really glad we are going this route- with Enki (of course you all already know that I am in love with Enki!) and with a slow intro to Kindergarten year. We are having fun and glad to be homeschoolers.

beginning the journey

Last week was our first official week as a homeschooling family. Maybe official isn't the right word exactly, Ari is still young for Kindergarten, so this not a registered, reporting homeschooling sort of year, more of a year to get our feet wet and to tighten up our home rhythm and take the chance to slowly add in a few more structured activities to what we already do at home. I haven't even said the word Kindergarten to Ari, this is just a quiet slide into homeschooling. Next year will be the time to really celebrate him becoming a kindergartner, but for now, I don't think he has noticed much change. We cook, we play, we walk in the woods, we garden, we make stuff, we read stories. He doesn't need a name for this, this is just his life!

When we got back from my summer Enki courses I started reading the early childhood materials again and realized that we were ready to start in on a light Kindy year with Ari, with the plan to do another full year of kindy next year. I figured this would help to meet his need for more structure and focus and meet my need for, well, more structure and focus! I got excited about the Enki materials all over again during the planning process, reading through the Kindergarten stories and seeing how they really are so right on developmentally. I chose from the simplest folk tales to begin with as Ari is still very easily frightened, but there are so very many stories in the Kindergarten books, that I could easily pull out all the the ones that will suit him well now, and and still have enough to do another year or even another year and a half of Kindy after this.
::Our first kindy craft project:: ::autumn nature table::
:: our story time book::

Aside from stories, the biggest piece of the Enki early childhood curriculum is rhythm. There are other pieces as well, but this is the big one. A family rhythm is something I've been trying to hold together for the past few years, and I've had some amount of success with it- quiet time has become an integral un-missable part of our day, for instance- but there are lots of times where things just fall apart into chaos. And I see how much better both my kids do when the day moves along in a predictable (but not rigid, or stifling) rhythm. So I spent some time this summer thinking of what our ideal family rhythm would look like, and almost two weeks in, I can say it feel pretty great so far! The kids are more settled, I feel less frazzled, and we all are feeling pretty happy with our new rhythm. Though again, I don't talk about this with the kids. They just show me, that they are happy with how things are going.

Maybe I'll write a post about rhythm soon, it feels like a big one, but really the big changes are just tightening things up and adding in the weekly story and having a daily project- craft, painting, baking, nature walk. These are all things we sometimes do, but now they have a time each week that Ari can rely on.

:: free play- the most important school-work for a kindergartner::

I am excited to be embarking on this journey with my family and to join the ranks of all the wonderful homeschooling mamas out there. For a long time I imagined being involved with a small alternative school, but there is just nothing like that where we are, and the idea of starting one from the ground up is daunting to say the least. And the more we were reading, browsing the homeschooling forums, chatting with Enki parents, and meeting so many amazing homeschooling families and their incredible kids, the more we started realizing that homeschooling is where it is at for us. We are open to many future scenarios, but right now we are happy to be doing our learning in our own backyard!