Archive for the 'homeschooling' Category

One morning earlier this month Bean called me from work to tell me he was not supposed to be at work because his 5 day break was scheduled to start that day and they’d just forgotten to tell him!

I was irritated by the news because had we known earlier we could have gone to the WA Natural Learning Network camp that was due to begin the following day. Bean suggested we still go.

The camp was at Donnelly River, 720km from Geraldton.

“Yeah!” we thought, we can totally pack and drive there in one day. And you know what? We did it!

It was so very, very worth it. We made the decision at noon, by 3pm we’d eaten a decent lunch, packed the kombi and were driving toward Perth. We got to my Mum’s place in Perth at around 8.45pm and we stopped for the night. We left for Donnelly River the next morning and we got there around 1pm, a couple of hours before the rest of our group started arriving. We drove in rain the whole way from Geraldton to Perth and then from Perth to Donnelly River, but the rain stopped when we arrived at Donnelly and didn’t start again until we were leaving a couple of days later. Perfect!

As soon as we arrived we were mobbed by very friendly kangaroos and emus, all wanting to know if we had anything edible in our pockets.

After some time spent patting kangaroos & being gawked at by much more cautious emus we managed to get up the stairs and away from the wildlife, drop our stuff inside our cottage and go for a walk around the village.

Most of the rest of the group arrived that afternoon and evening, with a few arriving the following day too.

That night we had a shared meal at the old mill worker’s club which was fun, chaotic, LOUD and very fulfilling for the sprogs.

After dinner we visited our old friend who is the relief manager for the village and drank cups of tea around his fire while the sprogs played with his drum kit and drew pictures at the table. Quite late at night we trotted back to our cottage for a very, very cold night’s sleep.

The next day our group hired the flying fox for a few hours and the children all ran in and out of each other’s cottages, rode bikes along the street, fed the animals from brown paper bags full of food from the general store and bottle fed some orphaned lambs.

That second evening, which was to be our last, we asked the managers if they had a heater we could use in our cottage because our fire was not heating the space. The cottage next door, which our friends were staying in, was very warm where ours was cold and our fire had been going all day while they’d lit theirs just an hour or so before. The managers couldn’t find a heater and offered to move us to a different cottage as well as reimbursing us for the night and giving us two bottles of wine.

We accepted their offer to move, and gave the wine to our friends who had been sharing their wine and beer with Bean and sharing their warm loungeroom with all of us for the evening.

That night we all slept so well in our new cottage that we decided to request an extra night rather than a reimbursement for the previous night. Our request was granted so we spent the day hanging out with the group rather than packing and heading home.

The next day rain was forecast so we decided to pack early and head off once the rain set in.

The drive back to Perth was pretty scary. A storm had hit and trees were being uprooted in the paddocks next to the road, trees had fallen over the road, large road signs were ripped out with footings still intact and we passed a caravan that had been blown on its side while being towed in the other direction. We made it back to Perth in one piece though, where we had dinner with some old friends before heading back to my Mum’s place for the night.

For the return trip to Geraldton we took the new Indian Ocean Drive, a much nicer drive than the inland roads. The sprogs were so tired after the weekend they were happy to stop infrequently and Van Halen (the white kombi) didn’t miss a beat, sitting comfortably at 60mph on the open roads, so we made it home in good time.

It took me over a week to get to the bottom of mount washmore once we were home, but luckily the post camp high lasted just as long.

A brilliant spontaneous weekend. We’re looking forward to the next camp.

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Thank you all for your kind comments for my last post both on the blog and via email. I tried to respond to you all, however some of the emails were eaten in cyberspace as both I and my computer got used to the new mobile phone internet connection.

This camp came just after I wrote that post and vastly improved my state of mind.

It’s been a few weeks now since Lauren has put an end to the Unschool Monday meme she hosted at Owlet, but I’m going to write one last Unschool Monday post simply because I’ve got something to say about unschooling and it happens to be Monday!

Seven months ago I wrote about my decision to return to formal study. I planned to “upgrade” my herbal medicine qualification to a naturopathy qualification and it was only going to take me around 12-18 months. I’ve recently decided to withdraw from the course and I made that official today.

There are so many reasons, but it all really comes down to the rather simple fact that I don’t really want to be a naturopath. I’m heading in a different direction and so I’m happy with the herbal medicine qualification I currently have. Currently I’m able to help my family and my friends with the knowledge I’ve already gained from 10 years of formal and informal study and that’s really all I want out of natural medicine so there’s little point in continuing just to finish the naturopathy degree.

The primary difference between the qualification I have and the qualification I was working toward is homoeopathy. I don’t want to practice homoeopathy. I’m very skeptical of homoeopathy and it just doesn’t have a place in my life. I’ve tried to include it, but my passionate belief lies with herbs and nutritional therapies.

The last 7 months haven’t been wasted though, it’s been great to revisit this study because I’d be forever wondering if I should return to it had I not given it another go. Now I am certain I don’t want to work as a natural therapist in a clinic situation and I’m really excited to close the book on that chapter of my life and move forward to the next adventure.

When I was a child I had an impressively large collection of Barbie dolls. Many of them were hand-me-downs from my older sister who had lovingly cared for her dolls and was utterly dismayed when I got my claws into them… I thought I could improve on Barbie’s face with a little biro (ok, a lot of biro!). Our younger sister was worse still, she pulled their heads off so often that they became loose and would fall off during play. When that happened she would always say, in character,

“Oh no! My head fell off, just wait while I pick it up.”

She also cut their hair, very short. She cut it when the head was attached to the body, and when the head was separated from the body. She wasn’t fussy, if it had hair, she’d cut it.

Fast forward a couple of years and I began buying Barbies of my own with my pocket money. I lovingly cared for them, just like my older sister had cared for hers. I adored my Barbies, they were my favourite toys to play with. They had managed to keep me captivated all through my childhood. They were a toy that evolved with me, from the basic doll play of a young child to more elaborate character play spanning several “episodes” where I created personalities for my favourite dolls and used them to act out long and involved plots. I played with Barbies a lot, I even played with them when I was in high school. I had two friends, one from primary school and one I’d met at high school, who also played with Barbies still. I’m certain there were more of us, but it wasn’t cool to admit it so we pretended to everyone else we knew that we didn’t play Barbies when we visited each other. No, we “hung out” (playing Barbies!).

As a young teenager my Barbie play moved from character play to character and scene creation. I created a character in my mind, gave her a name and made her clothes out of old socks and fabric from my Mum’s stash. I then built her an environment that expressed her personality. I’d make dioramas out of cardboard boxes, poster paint, fabric and craft glue. I never really played anything out once I’d created a character and an environment. I just posed the doll in there for a little while until I felt inspired to develop a new character.

One sunny day I was in the backyard hand sewing some clothes for a Barbie when a friend of my Mum’s (who I didn’t like then, and who I still find incredibly irritating all these years later) came out and teased me for playing with Barbies. She shamed me, told me I was “too old”, and asked me when I was going to grow up like everyone else in high school.

After that I decided it was time to pass my entire collection on to my younger sister who wasn’t particularly interested. It wasn’t long before we were packing the dolls, their horses, their cars, their accessories (I told you I had an impressively large collection!) into big boxes and giving them to the little girls who lived across the road.

I was really sad to see my Barbies go. I hadn’t wanted to stop playing with them.

Now we’ll fast forward a few more years. I’d finished high school, long since forgotten about the Barbies. I was at uni and I met a fella who sparked my interest in feminism. Here’s a funny fact for you… most women I know remove their body hair for men, but for this particular man I stopped removing my body hair. He told me he’d never been with a woman who shaved her arm pits, and being eager to please that particular man I stopped shaving mine, realised how much easier life became and in the 8 years since I’ve not looked back. I’ll have to remember to thank him next time I see him! Anyhow, I digress…

So, back to the Barbies, my young hairy self began to critique fashion dolls. They’re a cog in the huge machine of patriarchal oppression. They create unrealistic “beauty” ideals for young girls. They perpetuate intolerance. They represent a narrow expression of femaleness. Etcetera…

I decided then that no child of mine would ever play with fashion dolls! It’s so easy to idealise the way we’ll parent when we’re not yet parents, isn’t it?! So, I the hairy, feminist, idealistic parent of as-yet not conceived children would not set my child up to idolise a symbol of opression. When my daughter was born I adhered to it too. I ranted to my family, I gave strict instructions to them all to never, never, never buy my daughter a Barbie doll, and they’ve been obeyed for 4.5yrs (those strict instructions still stand, in case you were wondering). I had my older sister on my team also. We were the anti-Barbie brigade and you should have seen us go!

Let’s fast forward again shall we, because this story is already getting ridiculously long… We’ll fast forward to last week. Boxing Day to be exact. The day I, the hairy anti-Barbie feminist Mama, bought THREE fashion dolls. One for Sprout. One for Moe. One for me!

I know, I know. Those who know me in real life can pick your jaws of the floor now and allow me to explain myself.

Back in October 2010 I wrote this post about toy weapons and my (then) feelings toward them. The first comment, from Kestrel, on that post is one that introduced a whole new perspective to me. Here is the first part of Kestrel’s comment, for those who don’t want to click the link.

There is an essay in Katrina Kennison’s “Mitten Strings For God” which you may find helpful. She has tow sons and one has never shown any interest in things that (to quote from memory) slice, swat, explode, shoot but her other son has always been fascinated by pirates, swords and guns. Because of her own attitudes towards weapons that son began to name himself “bad”.

I began to wonder if it was ok to impose my own value judgements on my children and the things they expressed interest in. I know I hate it when someone poo-poos something I’m interested in. I know I hated it when my Mum’s friend did it to me as a young teenager. What happened to me then, being shamed into giving up something I really enjoyed, could very well be what I would end up doing to my own children. The thought that I could say or do something that would lead my children to believe that they were bad because I didn’t approve of their interest was really upsetting. After lots of discussion with myself, with Bean and with other parents, I resolved to be a bit less black and white about everything my children showed an interest in. Sure, I can discuss issues with my children, I can explain why guns are harmful, why Barbies are harmful etc. but at the end of the day, I’m not interested in creating a forbidden fruit or creating a situation where my children believe there’s something wrong with them because they like something I don’t approve of.

For the record, Sprout is really fascinated with killing monsters at the moment. She’s hugely into guns, though she hasn’t got any toy weapons she still uses sticks to pretend. I’ve been told it’s very normal for 4 year old children to be into weapons and fighting games. I view it as an opportunity to discuss violence with her. She’s reminded regularly to play carefully with her”guns”. She knows (though sometimes needs reminding) that if someone says or otherwise indicates that they don’t want to play that game that she’s expected to respect that and stop the game. She knows she’s not bad for playing at killing monsters. She knows she’s not bad for telling someone she just killed them. We’ve been able to give boundaries, while not stifling the phase she’s in right now.

So, how does that tangent relate to me, anti-Barbie me, buying fashion dolls for my children?!

I’ve taken Sprout into toy stores a few times, and every time since around the time she turned four she’s asked me about the fashion dolls. I’ve dismissed it, told her they’re just toys, told her they’re for doll’s houses, told her all sorts of things without trying to put (too much of) my own value judgement on it. She was never going to get one, right? So what did it matter? Wrong. She kept saying things like,

“Oh I really wish I could have one of them.”

And I would reply,

“Why? What makes you want one?”

She could never give me an answer beyond saying that she just wanted one.

I remembered how much I had loved playing with my Barbies, and felt like a bit of an arsehole for telling her she couldn’t have one. I still couldn’t get past the Barbie thing though. All the bloody make up. Ewww. I started doing some research on Barbie-sized dolls that weren’t Barbie. I was looking for something my daughter could relate to a little more. I found a few, but the ones that stuck out at me were the Liv Dolls. They were inexpensive, unlike the Japanese dolls I’d found that were a bit more realistic. The Liv Dolls don’t tick all my boxes. In fact, they tick few. They still have skinny bodies, disproportionately big heads (reminding me somewhat of starved catwalk models) and flawless skin/make up.

What they did offer, aside from a price tag that make them attainable, was more realistic eyes, an articulated body, flat feet that can wear normal shoes and hair that can be replaced with a new wig so hair cutting wouldn’t be such a big deal.

I decided to buy a doll for each of the sproggets, and one for me, so there’d be enough for us to play with all together. If I’d just got one for Sprout then Moe may have decided to wreck the game since he couldn’t play. I also wanted to play with my daughter, so that’s where my doll comes in to the equation.

While I was reading about dolls I came across a few tutorials for how to remove the stock face paint on dolls and how to repaint faces and seal them so they could be played with without rubbing the paint off. I also found some inspiration for handmade doll’s clothes, which I thought couldn’t possibly be too hard… I was slightly wrong there! Sewing anything in miniature is an exercise in frustration. Aaaaanyway…

I decided that for the cost of these dolls I could wipe one of the faces, and try my hand at customising. At the very worst we’d just have a doll with unpainted features, it’d have to be better than the stock make up look, surely?

So I got the materials I needed (acetone based nail polish remover, acrylic paints, matte varnish, gloss varnish) and had a go.

Before

After wiping stock paint off and before painting

After face repaint.

Turns out I’m not so bad at painting doll’s faces. After I did the first one Sprout asked me to do hers, she wanted freckles on her doll too. I got a wig for Sprout’s doll that is closer to her hair colour so her doll shares her eye and hair colour. She has named her doll “Annie” and Annie comes to a lot of places with us. Annie originally had inserted eyelashes like the others I’ve done, but Sprout wanted yellow eyelashes and on learning that I can’t buy yellow eyelashes she decided she’d rather Annie have no eyelashes than brown ones!

Annie, dressed as a pumpkin!

I’ve made 3 or 4 t-shirts for Annie (and friends), a couple of skirts, a couple of dresses, some overalls and a pair of pants.

I have since wiped the paint off my doll, but left Moe’s for now since Moe broke the leg on his doll and has shown that he’s still too young to be interested in dressing dolls.

My doll

I have also spent this week customising dolls for my niece and nephew. The children of aforementioned older sister, who is also anti-Barbie! With my sister’s permission I’ll be giving my 9 year old niece and 5 year old nephew their first fashion dolls. A cowgirl and a farmer…

So, it’s not a perfect solution. There is still something anti-feminist about them, but it’s been a good compromise for our family, and at the end of the day I have to acknowledge that despite my obsession with fashion dolls as a child and young teenager (and even now, as an adult I suppose), I’m still hairy and damned happy about it!

Yesterday we got together with some natural learning families at the home of a lovely family who are testing the waters after their eldest child expressed a desire to homeschool. Some of the families live here already, and some are moving here in the coming months. It was such a lovely gathering that we’ve decided to get together again next week while most of us are still around. One of the families will have to return to Perth befoe then which is unfortunate, but the rest of us are able to come along. Each family had both Mum and Dad there, since it’s holiday time, and it was really lovely to connect with other natural learning families in a group situation.

The sprogs had a great time, and Sprout has told us how much she’s looking forward to the next gathering. I am too, and I’m also really looking forward to it being a regular occurence when we’re all living in Denmark.

After the gathering we went back to the home of one of the families and had some lunch together. Our children play well together and we really enjoy spending time with them all so it was a nice segway from larger group gathering to smaller group to just our family group again this evening.

I borrowed a book about pagan celebrations from them after a bit of a chat about our desire to bring more seasonal celebration into our lives. My sister owns the book, but I’ve only quickly flicked through it before. It was nice to talk about the nature of celebration with other people, especially these people because they’re just so open.

I really enjoy spending time with other natural learning families, I come away feeling energised and inspired.

I haven’t joined in with Unschool Monday for a while, I’ve dropped in to Owlet every Monday and followed the links to read everyone else’s posts but haven’t contributed myself. I suppose I haven’t had much to say about unschooling, it’s just becoming so much a part of our lives that I don’t compartmentalise it enough to come up with a fresh and original post each week. Other stuff going on has also meant I’ve been a little absent from the blog of late, and I rarely have photos to add to my posts so I don’t bother writing any! Ha, lots has been going on… lots of learning, lots of living, I’ve just stopped documenting it very reliably!

So here I am, the prodigal Unschool Mondayer, here on a Tuesday and wanting to tell you all about the writing that’s been going on here at the shed.

Sprout has been showing some interest in reading and writing for a while now. Every day she’ll spend a little or a lot of time sitting on her bed flicking through the various books she’s chosen at the library. She asks us to read the stories to her all the time, and she has begun recognising some very simple words from the books. Everywhere we go she’s recognising the letters “Z” and “O” which are the first letters of her name and her brother’s name, and one day last week she wrote a “Z” on our garden path with chalk which she proudly exclaimed was a “Z for (her name)”.

Today she was drawing on a pad of paper and after a short time she showed me a Z and an O. She asked me to write the rest of her name and Moe’s name so she could copy it. Amazingly, she came very close to writing the names properly. When she asked me to write “Kimba” so she could write my name she astounded me, and her Dad, with how accurately she copied it. She was chuffed with herself every time she asked if she’d got a letter right and we told her that she had. It was just delightful to see her so pleased with herself.

I have asked my Mum to get her an alphabet chart for Christmas, so she has the letters to refer to in her own time and in her own space.

It’s quite exciting to see these seeds of writing being sown, all in her own time, all under her own steam.

I loooove natural learning!

Unschool Monday is inspired by Owlet.

Due to my own study committments, lack of (local) family support and an as yet unestablished local support network I’m having to consider placing the sprogs in care for a few hours each week. I have called around looking for a place that is suitable (there are a number of criteria I require) and I found one carer that appeared to tick my boxes but got a call from her this morning, the day I was supposed to meet her, telling me her funding had been cut! Back to the drawing board.

I don’t actually want to place my children in daycare though.

I know it’s not like school, but it’s not like homeschooling either! It’s just not what I want. We have chosen to be a single income family so there is always a parent home (or out!) with the sprogs. If we lived closer to supportive family, or if we knew folk down here who we could call on for child care help then we’d take that opportunity. Daycare just doesn’t fit anywhere in our parenting & educational philosophies.

The solution we’ve come up with so far is for Bean to continue to work a five day week, but substitute one weekday for a Saturday so he can spend the time I’m at college being their primary carer. It’ll take longer for me to finish the course, because I’ll need to do classes until I’ve finished all the units and then do clinic prac, instead of being able to do them concurrently. I don’t mind though, life isn’t a race and it’s taken me six years to get back to this field of study anyway! I’ll never get back this time with my young sprogs, so what difference will it really make if I take another two years to finish this course instead of ome?

Besides, in that time we may find an alternate carer for the sprogs for the three or four hours one day a week that I’d be attending the class. Nothing is impossible!

Unschool Monday is inspired by Owlet

When I was at school my Mum packed an apple in my lunchbox every day, and every day that uneaten apple would go home again. It wasn’t that I didn’t like apples. I just didn’t like lunchbox apples.

Lunchbox apple bounced around in my lunchbox, in my backpack, on the walk to school every morning. Lunchbox apple got bruised by all that bouncing, and lunchbox apple squashed my sandwich too.

By the time lunch break rolled around the bruises on lunchbox apple were an unappealing shade of brown and my squashed sandwich looked much less appealing than the gloriously presented sandwiches my Mum made for us at the weekend.

I’m so glad I don’t have any pressure to pack a perfect (or even merely adequate) school lunch each day. I don’t have to worry about having lunch (and breakfast) made at sparrow fart five days a week, I don’t have to worry about my sprogs having the latest lunchbox fad foods, and I don’t have to worry about how I’d pack the lunches we do have into a small box.

Yesterday for morning tea we shared a platter with cut apple & ABC* paste, carrot sticks, cut orange, cashew nuts, goji berries, date & coconut rolls**, honey-cinnamon pop corn***, and a cup of rooibos tea with honey and raw cow milk. For lunch we had cous cous with tuna & salad vegetables, it took a couple of minutes to make and tasted great. I’d be hard pressed to have both of those meals presented nicely in a lunchbox before the school day began. I’m very pleased there’s no pressure to do it every day, it makes those days when we have to pack a lunch feel like a novelty, not a chore.

*almond, Brazil nut & cashew – we use it as a dip for cut apple

**blended dates rolled into logs and coated with desicated coconut

***melt 2Tbs butter & 2 Tbs honey with 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon on the stove, then pour over freshly popped popcorn

Unschool Monday is inspired by Owlet.

Not going to school means not being confined to holidaying during designated term breaks. It means unschool holidays when we would like to holiday, not when the calendar determines we can. The sproggets and I are in Perth right now. We plan to stay for two weeks. Bean drove up with us Friday evening but, unfortunately, had to return to Albany Sunday afternoon because he has to work weekdays.

I chose to bring the sproggets to Perth at this time for a few reasons, practical reasons & emotional reasons.

Practically speaking, Bean was scheduled four or five days work 2.5hrs drive from home, not very far away but far enough that he’d have to stay on site while the job was done. Four or five days and nights in our little, still toiletless, shed without Bean didn’t seem very appealing to me. We are using a camping toilet which Bean empties at his parent’s house each night. I don’t go to their house, so the reality of not having a permanent toilet (yet) would become more than a mere inconveience.

Emotionally, I knew the sprogs would find Bean’s absence from their evenings harder if their environment was the same & their Dad was just not around, so it made sense to change the environment, to turn it into a holiday. I’m also aware of how empty my cup is after 5 months in Albany, I have come to rely on the relative break the end of Bean’s work day brings, and I lack confidence in my ability to parent the sprogs respectfully all day & all night without respite. Knowing that I’d find support in Perth, practically & emotionally, I arranged to stay with my Mum for the week that Bean would be working away.

Then, his boss changed the schedule! I had built up our trip to Perth to the sproggets and to myself, I didn’t want to change it at late notice! So our one week in Perth has turned into two weeks.

I’m quite excited about our time in Perth. We’ve got so much planned. We’ll be catching up with the natural learning network a few times, which I’m very excited about since we don’t regularly see other homeschooling families. We’re also catching up with a lot of our Perth based friends, familiar people who we’ve already done the budding friendship rituals with, people we just know better than the acquaintences we’ve met at the library & park in Albany. I packed our bathers too, because it’s so delightfully sunny here in Perth that I feel certain we’ll have an opportunity to use them over the next two weeks.

Right now, the sproggets are in the courtyard of my Mum’s townhouse – they’re nude, playing in the sunshine with buckets of warm water. It’s still far too cold & windy in Albany for such an activity so as far as they’re concerned the unschool holidays are off to a great start!

Unschool Monday inspired by Owlet.

A lot of my unschooling posts could very easily be labelled “parenting”, “things my kids do”, “kids”, “learning in general”, “journal”, “day in the life”… you get the idea.

That’s because natural learning isn’t exclusive to unschoolers. Everyone learns naturally, whether they’re 8 months old, 8 years old, 18 years old, 80 years old (again, you get the idea). Everyone learns naturally, whether they’re full time unschoolers, full time schoolers, full time workers, part time workers, part time schoolers, you know? Learning is one of those things we can’t escape, even if we wanted to!

I don’t mean to come off as exclusive when I write unschooling posts, and I certainly hope that I don’t. My aims in writing posts about unschooling are to explore (and record the development of) my own unschooling philosophy, and to share with my readers how boringly normal unschooling can be. Facilitating our children’s natural learning is not rocket science, it’s just parenting* really.

Obviously, my children are still quite young. If we were sending them to school Sprout would only be in kindy this year, and Moe wouldn’t be going for another couple of years, so while they’re not officially “school age” there’s probably going to be a lot of similarities between many of my unschooling posts & many other “Mummy blogger” posts. The posts where I discuss the evolution of our unschooling philosophies will be more typical of an unschooler’s blog, but those posts that describe how our days go, those “unschool Monday” posts where I waffle about painting, playdough, craft, story time at the library… well they’re just not exclusive – all Mummy blogs have those posts.

*Some days I do wonder whether rocket science is actually harder than parenting…

This morning I was granted a little sleep in.

Bean goes to Tafe Mondays, so he doesn’t have to be out the door quite as early as other weekdays. Bean got up with the sproggets today & while I lay in bed dozing, he put some Cat Stevens on the stereo, changed Moe’s nappy & dressed him, left Sprout in her pyjamas at her request*, made them all some porridge for breakfast & then cleaned up. He let me know when he was almost ready to go so I could get up & do my morning ritual without any interruption because I was not the only parent at home & the sproggets had been catered for already, amazing!

Once Bean left I made a smoothie for myself & the sproggets. We sat together & drank our smoothies then the sproggets each did their own thing while I cleaned up the blender & glasses. Yes, you read that right… the sproggets each did their own thing.

Not only that though, they continued to do their own thing for quite some time after I’d finished cleaning the smoothie dishes. In that time of quiet, self directed play, I was able to do some study(!). I read (& understood) 3 pages of a chapter on the endocrine system without interruption(!!) & they were still playing when I finished.

In the end, I actually asked them to play with me. I was energised & in the mood for meaningful interaction, I was feeling able to make ammends for the times I’ve said,

“Not right now, I don’t want to/I can’t be bothered/I’m too tired/I’m too busy.”

I asked Sprout what she wanted to do & she told me she’d like to play with the playdough.

“Yes!” I said, “And we can do better than just playdough… we can do playdough & coloured pop-sticks & pipe cleaners & GOOGLY EYES!”

We played playdough together, on & off, all day. Interspersed with lots of scrummy snacks & more self-directed play. I’m amazed at the complete lack of input required from me today. I’m amazed at the relative harmony between Moe & Sprout, so few disagreements, so much co-operation. I’m amazed at how nicely the day flowed, both sproggets freely entertaining themselves for a whole gloriously easy day, with me even being able to get a bit of stress free reading done for college!

*Sprout stayed in her pyjamas all day, until we all went for a quick walk with Dave when Bean came home at 4pm. That’s the beauty of Mondays, our only full weekday at home, we can sloth about in our jarmies all day long & still learn heaps, laugh heaps & love heaps!

Unschool Monday is inspired by Owlet.