Reflections and intentions

There was much to process after my weekend at Taproot. After a week of down time, I thought I would share my reflections and intentions:

• Once again, I came home with the understanding that I am trying to do too much. I heard Jean Miller say last year to "go deep not wide", "value process over product", "quality not quantity" and heard it again this year, but came home with a more specific understanding of what this could mean for us. This year, I will have patience with myself and my children. I will relax, enjoy and take time with every bit of knowledge we pursue, nurturing my children's ideas and watching them grow.
• At Taproot, there are always opportunities to participate in music and art. It shows me how uncomfortable I am and how much I have to learn in these areas. This year, I am inspired to do more singing, movement and art with my kids. Even when it feels intimidating, I'm going to jump right in and do it anyway.
• Everyday with my kids I am aware that I am as much a learner as they are. We are often learning together. At Taproot, there was certainly an exchange of ideas, but I was mostly there as a learner. I noticed that the job of receiving information is pretty exhausting and the job of giving information is also pretty exhausting. We all needed down time to recover and process afterward. Many of the important connections were made during the down time. Thankfully, we were all encouraged to take care of ourselves, joining in on planned activities as we wished and this highlighted for me the value of unstructured time. I will be curious and learn along with my children. I will keep a sane pace in the household, providing plenty of unstructured time for relaxation and reflection.
• I learned a lot about myself and the ways in which I learn best. I noticed that there were some activities that were easy for me to learn from, some that I was resistant to but enjoyed once I gave it a try, and others that simply did not work for me. I will be aware of the ways in which each child learns best, ways that they are each open to being stretched a bit and activities that seem to block their learning process. I will be mindful of my children's projects, providing necessary resources and materials and reminding them where they left off when they are struggling to find something to do.

 

Reading goodies

 Lately I have realized how much time and energy I have now that my kids are a bit older and more independent. This article does a beautiful job of describing this time of life that I find myself in.

Renee Tougas wrote about the loneliness of choosing a life outside the norm. Very thought provoking.

This author writes about how to nurture creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit through education. A good read for homeschoolers or those interested in education reform.

Read this one because it doesn't do any good to tell kids to hurry anyway and because "the noticers" are important teachers in our lives.

The word "obstacles" kept jumping out at me in my reading this week:
From a self-written obituary: "...Obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path".
And from Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart: "What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we're stuck.....Whether we experience what happens to us as obstacle  and enemy or as teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality."

Happy Friday!

Road trip

This past week I took a road trip. By myself. On my way there I tried to remember the last time I had made a big trip alone. It was before kids, before marriage. It's been ages. I only just barely remember that girl I used to be, the one who liked to take frequent road trips, visiting family and friends and rocking out along the way. It's been far too long.

I drove nearly 2000 miles, 32 total hours, and listened to eight of my favorite CDs over and over again. All old CDs from my road tripping days. I was hoarse from singing by the time I returned home. I drove through the rain and in the dark. I saw the sunrise in Indiana. I saw every inch of a semi truck on fire in Illinois and more smoke than I've ever seen in my life. I saw familiar country and country I had never seen before.

I returned to Taproot Farm for Teacher Training. I went last year, thinking that I would only go once. It is pretty far away and I felt lucky to make it there at all. Connecting with others who homeschool in a similar way was an amazing experience for me. I had thought I was doing OK on my own, but experiencing community really showed me what I had been missing. Over the past year, I kept in touch with several of the women I met there. These ladies have become my community, my friends.

This year being at Taproot felt even better. I was returning to a familiar place. I even stayed in the same bedroom with my two roommates from last year. There were six of us who had returned. There was hugging, catching up, and late night chats complete with wine and snacks.

Attending these trainings has taught me so much--about working with my kids, about myself, about the variety of people and lifestyles in this world. When it's all over, my head feels full with new ideas and my heart feels full from all the connection with these beautiful friends. This week, I am taking a tremendous sigh and just enjoying all this fullness.

Planning

This is the first year I decided to really and truly make a learning plan for the coming year. Other years I have loosely followed a Waldorf curriculum, almost like a list of things we could do, and left a lot of room for flexibility around the kids' interests (for more about that read this article I wrote for a friend's blog). It was a bit fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, because let's face it, it's been 8 years of babies, diapers, and not nearly enough sleep.

This year, my seventh year of homeschooling, there are no babies, no diapers, I get enough sleep and suddenly I feel like I could do anything, including my own homeschool planning. One of the things that inspired me most about my time at Taproot Farm last summer was hearing some of the presenters talk about planning. So when I was faced with all this time this summer, I thought I would give this planning thing a try. I thought I would share some of what I found helpful in my planning process.

I purchased Jean Miller's planning guide while I was at Taproot. Jean talks about her own planning process, provides some advice about rhythm, and also has a wonderful list of Waldorf resources. She also lays out the topics for each year and some of her favorite resources for each topic. What this resource did for me is give me a framework for doing my own planning. It can be as simple as a table with three columns and three rows (9 blocks for 9 months), thinking about the possibilities, thinking about my kids and then finding resources (library books, museums, materials, etc.) that are available to me.

The more challenging part is taking four plans for four kids and thinking about how to bring them together so I don't lose my mind. Listening to Jean Miller and Alison Manzer speak at Taproot gave me some great ideas about this. Talking with these more experienced homeschooling mamas really took some pressure off (thank you, ladies!). Here are just a few of the goodies I got from hearing them speak:

• I was fairly blown away by Alison's description of bringing different ages together on similar topics (or example: farming and botany). I had to laugh at myself for being blocked on that one. But yes, of course, it would be easy enough to find books, outings and projects that would be good for two similar topics and then have two kids (or more) going in the same direction.
• Go deep, not wide. Instead of doing so much, do a few things well. 
• Process not product. There isn't always something to show for every learning process and there doesn't have to be something in the main lesson book for every block for every kid. 

Hrm....Taproot, Taproot, Taproot. Yes, my time at Taproot last summer and the people I connected with there have continued to inspire me all year long.

I do know not to get too attached to plans, but setting our own intention for this coming year also feels really good. I intend to remain flexible and hold space for my kids to follow other interests that come up throughout the year. There are always learning detours and these are often unforgettable experiences for all of us.

Summertime

We have just never really taken summer off. But this year for the first time my boy asked for a summer. He wanted a real summer with less structure and some sort of end of summer where we get back to our usual thing. We have always just kept a daily habit of learning. Times when we snuggle up and read together, times when we write together, times when we are at the table painting or drawing, and of course days when we either go out in the country to hike or into the city for museum visits. We just live and learn through our fine full days, all of us.

My little guy, before he got so big

But this year my oldest for the first time had a sense that his friends were having a summer. A late nights, Minecraft, swimming, baseball, full-of-fun summer. And he wanted in on it. I love that he is having this summer that he wanted and I also miss those times that we snuggle up and enjoy a good book together or draw anime characters at the kitchen table. I miss our bedtime chats. It used to be "I want to BE with you" right as I was about to close my eyes at night but now this time of day is a good time to play with friends over Skype. I have that before bed time to myself, which is nice but also a little sad. My guy is definitely growing up.

But his growing up is also fun and exciting for many reasons. For one, it means that he is playing a much bigger role in his own learning. He sat down with me and we talked about what he wants to do and learn this coming year when summer is over and his friends are going back to school. I got to hear what he is loving and what he wants more of. I got to hear his thoughts on how he would like to structure his days. We talked about having regular meetings so that he can be a part of planning and I can hear what he is learning and figuring out. I know there will still be times that we are cuddled up reading together, but there will now be more times when he is learning on his own and I still want to hear about it.

Making plans with him feels a bit like a promise to return to the life we have loved once our fun summer vacation is over. I know that partly I am longing for the times when my boy wanted to BE with me, snuggle and read with me, draw at the table with me, etc. and that no plan we create will be able to take us back in time. The kids are growing up and some of these things are changing more permanently than just for the summer. This is feeling like a new chapter for us.

But the other wonderful thing about my guy growing up and wanting a free summer is that I also am benefiting from that freedom too. With this time that is available to me, I feel like I can catch up on all the things I have fallen behind on those years that I had babies in the house and I was getting settled into homeschooling. You should see my super clean and organized house, folks. And I feel like there is now time and mental energy available for some planning for what we'll do when this summertime is over.

I'll share more about that soon....

A shift from uncertainty to possibility

I usually like to write from the other side of a difficult place and not right in the thick of it, so I have been putting off writing, thinking I will find that other side soon. We have been in this difficult limbo, living with uncertainty about our future. That sounds kind of silly as I type it out, because really even when we feel certain about our future, life can take twists and turns we don't expect. So for weeks, we've just been hanging out in this difficult place, waiting for this thing to unfold so we can KNOW what is going to happen. (Again, even as I write it, I know no one can KNOW what is going to happen, but that's still where we've been.)

Thankfully we are all healthy and safe, but still in the early stages of this limbo we were anxious and clearly not our usual selves. You can bet the kids picked up on that, so we added whiny, clingy, grumpy kids to the struggle. This is when I realized that it was time for me to get myself together because they needed me to and because my worrying wasn't accomplishing anything. So I got busy with the snuggling, reading, creating, playing and working of our day-to-day life. I've kept the focus on this moment and then the next, not looking too far ahead, and just loving these people I live with. So it was back to supporting my little baker girl in finding recipes and creating her own new recipes, supporting my little photographers in their birdwatching and people watching, and learning and growing along with my almost teenager who is taking me new places with regards to technology and social dynamics that weren't even possible when I was growing up.

And a cool thing has happened along the way. As I am just paying attention to each moment, I know that uncertainty is still out there, but it is becoming easier. It feels lighter and we can laugh about it sometimes. And while we wait, we are even having some fun (yes, really) considering the possibilities of what our future might hold. It has been inspiring to me to read about people who have gone to incredible lengths to follow their dreams and how to work out the details. My husband and I talk about everything from working together as a family to build our own country home and raising chickens to selling our home and everything in it so we can hit the road in our travel trailer. We talk about moving around every couple years to experience different parts of the country but we also talk about doing everything we can to stay close to home. So in all of these discussions, we began to see that we are capable of being happy in a variety of circumstances. We are finding many ways to be excited about the changes on our horizon, that there are opportunities for us in the possibilities.

So while we are not on the other side yet, we are coming to a place of (mostly) enjoying the ride.

"Mom, let's rock!"

Lately when we are getting into the car to go somewhere, my daughter says, "Mom, let's rock!". This means "Turn up the music and roll down the windows so we can sing at the top of our lungs!".  I have been borrowing some courage and spunk from Sara Bareilles and my kids can sing along with all the songs now. We sing and smile and laugh our way all over town.

I remember some good times with my own mom who is also a mom that rocks. When I was growing up, my mom had a charcoal gray Camaro. And she was a hot mama with long curly hair wearing tight jeans, tank top and sunglasses. We would get in that Camaro, roll down the windows and blast the country music: George Strait, Hank Williams Jr., Reba McIntyre, the Judds. She loved to drive into the country looking at deer or mooing at the cows she passed along the highway. Mostly what I remember is the sun on my face, the wind in my hair, the music, the singing and the pure joy of the entire experience. Even today when I hear those old familiar songs, it takes me right back.

The family legend is that I once turned to my friend who was sitting in the back seat with me, did a big teenage eye roll and said, "My mom talks to cows". And I know I told her several times that I wished she would dress like the other mothers. Although I put on a big show of being embarrassed, I think I knew a little then what I know so much better now: how fortunate I am to have a mom who has the courage to be her own true self and knows how to have fun.