Just Because You Have To

Tali climbed this against my advice and had a very scary descent!

There seems to be a common perception that kids need to learn to do things 'just because they have to'. People tell me there are lots of things we do just because we have to, like cooking food, math practice, driving safely, paying taxes, etc.

As adults, we don't do things because we have to; we do things because we choose to. I don't want to do my taxes every year, but I choose to. I certainly don't have to pay taxes; sure somebody will be angry and try to punish me or take my money if I don't pay them, but that doesn't stop plenty of other people from refusing to pay or simply hiding away their money. I pay taxes because I choose to. I know I will feel better about myself as a contributing member of society, if I pay. So I do. (Though I may not often like the way the current government chooses to use my money!)

This is how I make every choice. I look at my circumstances and figure out what course of action will serve me best, and proceed. What better skill to teach my children than to make wise choices! Forcing them to do things 'because they have to' is only telling them that they have no choices, and then when the time comes for them to be responsible adults, who will they turn to, to make their choices for them?

But what if they fall? What if they fail? What if they're hurt... or worse? Of course we don't want them to make unwise choices and run into problems. But how will they learn if they are never given freedom to explore? I give my children plenty of advice, but they don't always follow it. And I keep open arms and a good first aid kit around for when their choices don't work out the way they hope they will.

The likelihood is that my children will fall. They will fail. And they will hurt. I try to minimize the hazards, but in the end the pain will teach them to make better choices the next time. There will be no 'just because you have to', and in its place there will be wisdom.

Wonderful Unschooling Moment

As registered year-round homelearners, our kids get certain student rates, and we often have to explain why we still use these discounts during the summer, when most kids aren't in school.

Today, as I was requesting our discount, a clerk said "oh, summer school, eh?"

To which I replied, "no, we're just unschoolers".

"Hey? Homeschoolers?"

"Well, yes, we're registered as homelearners, but in practice we're unschooling." I prepared for the usual sarcasm, bewilderment and/or disbelief.

Instead, the woman looked me in the eyes and said exactly this: "Unschooling? I've never heard of that. So it's like learning by experience or something?"

Yes. That is what she said.
I smiled, and said. "Yes. Exactly."

Of course she had the usual worries and fears about learning math and getting into university, but within less than a minute of conversation she was enthusiastically nodding her head and grinning. What a wonderful day! I love meeting people with open minds!!

Wildflowers

I love photographing wildflowers. Just love it. I used to keep a blog for it (see it here), but... other pursuits got in the way. So I basically just do it once a year while camping, now! Here are some shots from this weekend:

tiger lily

lupine

arnica

paintbrush

fireweed

northern checkerspot butterfly

bunchberry

pyrola

pyrola

twin berry

one-sided wintergreen with twinflowers in the background

twinflowers

seedpods! Looks like a lily but not sure what! (Tigerlily?)

alpine rhododendron (not sure which)

white bog orchid

alpine willow (not sure which)

alpine willow (not sure which)

lily? solomon's seal? (not sure which)

false lily of the valley

Camping

Every summer we go camping with our local Nature Club at some off-island site. This year the camp was at a little lake in the mountains, and after a couple days of hiking, swimming, kayaking and visiting with friends, we also stopped for a play in the river on the way home.

Uncle and Auntie waiting for us at the ferry terminal.

Dusty roads following them up the pass.

Tali and Uncle's early morning kayak.

Camping style.

We love our friends!

Tali found this dead trout floating in the lake! (Photo: Michelle)

Moose footprints by a high mountain stream!

...aforementioned high mountain stream...

Lower coastal river. Such beautiful soft fine sand!

Perfect sculpture and play sand!!

Mourning Cloak Butterflies' Destructive Babies

Or... Raising Indigenous Butterfly Larvae.

This story begins with our aspen being eaten -- literally munched away from the top down by nasty little babies. At first we thought it must be tent caterpillars, but since we couldn't see any tent-webs, we examined a little more closely. And then... we found this:

(photo from whatsthatbug.com)

So we put some in a jar with some of the young shoots from the aspen. After consuming about half of them, they attached themselves to the underside of the jar's lid, rim, and the branches inside, and began to form chrysalises.

Here is one of the caterpillars just newly hanging upside down, with a completed chrysalis.

And then... happily on a day we were teaching a Wild Art Camp, the first butterfly emerged!

We did see it take flight, but were not prepared to take photos as it ably fluttered up into the bare aspen branches. So here is a photo from Encyclopedia Britannica... this is what our caterpillar became!

Goodbye, Hazel

Our sweet dog, Hazel Parachute Piccolino, came to live with us when she was a baby, in October of 2009.
Yesterday she died.

Hazel and Tiel, 2010

We got Hazel in 2009, as I posted on our other blog.
I've written many times about her life, and today I will write about her death, and why and how it happened.

As her first year progressed, we discovered that Hazel had two problems: her allergies to all animal proteins and to grass. Animal proteins are everywhere. Even though we fed her a vegan diet and tried to keep her away from them, she still managed to get them on a fairly frequent basis. Grass is everywhere, too, and basically unavoidable. We even tried getting rid of grass from behind our house and planting a clover lawn for her... but the grass crept in faster than the clover could grow.

Grass gave her a rash and inflammation on her feet and face. She chewed it until it bled. Animal protein made her ears and intestines swell up and get infected. So her first couple of years were a yo-yo game of various medicines, trying to mitigate all the horrible reactions and infections. She was always in pain. Then we found a vet who would put her on a constant dose of Prednisone, which kept the reactions and subsequent infections at bay for a year.



She had one pretty good year.

Then last January the side-effects of the Prednisone started to catch up with her. She'd been losing her hair for some time already, but her liver was getting enlarged, and she started getting crusts on her skin. Without going into all the details of the many things we've tried and the effects of them, suffice it for me to say that she has been in agony most of the last 6 months. She has spent countless nights jumping at the side of our bed, crying in pain, and we've never been able to take that pain away. By the end of June, he liver was having problems, she had an untreatable skin infection and was losing her skin to gaping wounds at an alarming rate, and her muscles were wasting away before our eyes. The antibiotics made her nauseous and she was even more dopey from an increased dosage of Prednisone. What used to be small happy walks for her became the cause of great pain and inability for the next two days. She had so many oozing sores and goopy creams on her that sometimes we shrunk away from snuggling her, which was basically all she wanted. Then in the last few days, she often didn't want to be touched anymore, but just to lay beside us. She finally stopped finishing her food in the last couple of days, and we were forced to accept the vet's suggestion that putting her down might be the kindest thing to do.

On the day before we put her down, she was spitting out the pills Rhiannon was trying to feed her... as usual. Then she came over and lay her head in my lap, looking into my eyes plaintively, as she's been doing most of every day these past couple of months. Rhiannon handed me the pills, and I thought I'd have to open her mouth and put them in, as I often do. But I looked at her, first. I said, "Hazel, you're going to die, tomorrow. There will be no more pain, then. But these pills will keep the pain from getting worse while we wait for tomorrow." She lifted her head and ate the pills off my hand.
That night we let her chew an antler. It didn't matter anymore, and she could have whatever she wanted.

Yesterday we all went out to dig a deep hole for her in the forest by our house. She lay beside us, watching. She lay on my lap in her favourite floppy-dog position while Tali and Rhiannon lined the bottom of the deep pit with ferns. Then we went in to town together, fed her chicken (joy!), and let her do whatever she wanted at the beach. She snarfled some seaweed, walked a bit in the ocean, and lay her head in our laps, some more. She had a big poop.

Tali found a feather and wove it into my braid, as we were leaving the beach.

Then we went to the vet. He was kind and gentle, and gave us as much time as we needed. She went still in our arms, and we brought her home in the back of the car she's been in so many times. My father and I carried her from the car to her grave, where Markus stood, to lift her in. As I bent over to pass her into his arms, the feather Tali had put in my hair fell out and onto Hazel's soft fur. My parents' elderly dog, Tiel, who has been Hazel's best friend since she came to live with us, came and looked at the open grave. We put Hazel's favourite ball in, and the antler she'd been enjoying. My mother put in the ball that Tiel had surrendered to Hazel. The children picked flowers and dropped them on top of her. Then the children, Markus and I buried her with the dirt of the home she's known most of her life -- the dirt she used to roll in so happily.

Four years is an incredibly short life. We weren't ready to lose Hazel, at all. 
But Hazel was ready to go, and that was ours to accept.
There will be a hole in our home for some time, and we don't know if we'll ever have another dog.
But while Hazel was with us, she brought us unconditional love, and a whole lot of learning.

And for one good year, she was happy.

Unschooling Support from Within

Well, to be honest, it's not the unschooling that needs support, it's the parents' nervous systems. We can't really just break out of the system we grew up in without a serious amount of fear, so... we come up with solutions that help us grasp at the nothingness of our plans without steering the kids too much.

Yes that's right. I said the nothingness of our plans. We have no plans. We just have kids.

That's what's so bloody scary!! We were raised on plans! We need plans! Alan Watts ☮ had nothing on our plan-toting teachers and their threats of loser-hood and failure!! So, just to soothe our sorry selves a bit, here are some of the things we do. Of course, they're not so much recipes as new ways to look at things, and organizational choices that help us feel less neglectful. But they works for us. At least they do when we get it right and do these things before panicking.

Disclaimer:

These are our ideas. They`re what work for us, because they come from our hearts.

Your successes will come from your hearts.

Libraries
We love our books. We have piles of them. Literally 3 libraries full: kids fiction, adults everything, and kids non-fiction, which is slowly becoming so interesting to us parents that it's basically the most frequented library, now... We don't feed our kids the books, or even 'strew', as I understand some people do, but we do make an effort to buy interesting books when we come across them.

And there they are. Cool books. It is amazing to me how many times the kids can read the same book. Tal has read a couple of his favourite novels about 5 times... but just when I start to worry, he seems to have broken into his father's programming books, or old comics, art textbooks, or obscure books from the recesses of our forgotten shelves. And these books spark the most interesting curiosities and adventures!

I don't have to do anything about this, of course. The books begin the adventures and the kids finish them. But I admit I love to join them for the ride, sometimes.

Art Area
Every home should have an art area. For us it was the dining table for a long time; sometimes the kitchen floor, but recently we've managed to make it part of Rhiannon's bedroom, which means a LOT more freedom, since it doesn't have to be cleaned up so often, for meals.

The key to a good art area is having an open space with free-range and plenty of good supplies. And by good, I don`t mean expensive, I mean well-chosen. Good supplies are open-ended. They're materials that can be used in any way, and that don't limit the imagination. Bad supplies are things like colouring books, stickers, and other gimmicky things, which basically inject too much of the manufacturer's imagination into our creation. Good supplies are practically anything. We have an entire shelf of different types of paper (LOTS of discarded office printouts on white letter paper from Pappa`s work), cheap felt for sewing, origami books* and other such inspirational things. In a drawer we have a bunch of extras, including strings, sewing supplies, tapes, and some of the messier things like paints and modelling clay, and in a rotating caddy in the middle of the big table we have a really huge assortment of felt-pens, pencils, rulers, scissors, glues, etc.

The kids aren`t the only ones who make use of this excellent area, and when their inspirations take them further than their supplies or area will allow, we either move outside or into my professional studio, where the rules are stricter (to protect some of my equipment and half-finished art) but there`s some access to different supplies.

*I think origami books, while they are still instruction books, can be good if we lead by example in taking the instructions and playing with them, so that they're more a jumping-off-point for discovery, than a recipe to a particular end.

Equipment
We do have a fair amount of equipment - useful tools for open ended creation and exploration: shovels, rakes, hoses, aquariums, microscopes, telescopes, cameras, pots, bowls, and pitchers... etc. It's important to have the basic tools. Some people have access to these tools through learning centres and other such organizations, but where we live is a bit rural, and we find it useful to have these things at home. We don't spend much money on things like new clothes, toys, or dining out. We spend it on good quality used equipment that can help us with our exploration.

Rhiannon helping to build the new porch joists

Work and Rewards
We have the usual amount of house and yardwork, I think, and I`m honest with the kids about it. I don`t like being the one who does all the work, and I expect them to help out with the garden, the housekeeping, the animal care, the cooking, etc. It doesn`t always go the way I hope it will, but for the most part I think they understand that a family is a group effort, and the the lifestyle we all love is our mutual reward. Like strawberries. Yes. Strawberries. Those are worth a whole lot of weeding and watering! Hugs from the dog? Worth feeding her. Having clean clothes worth doing some laundry. These are real rewards. And often just sharing time working together as a family is a reward in itself.

TV and Movies
We don`t have a TV, actually, but there are some seriously good shows out there, and we have watched a few of them online. Same, of course, with movies, documentaries, and YouTube channels. When we find things that we like, we watch them, and, unless we`re having 1:1 parent time, the kids are welcome to join us. Sometimes we even join them for their shows!! We learn the most interesting things about the world, this way... things we`d never have ventured out to discover on our own.

Take The Kids to Work!
Not everybody happens to have an artist for a parent, but most parents have some sort of shareable interest, "hobby", or work, and I do believe that bringing the kids along for the ride - letting them see our own inspiration and process - is one of the best things we can offer them.

One beauty of this is the physical work we do, as parents, but another is the ideas we share with them. I can't describe how irritated I feel when people tell their kids they're too young to understand, or that certain topics are 'grown up things'. I don`t shelter my kids from ideas - no matter how complicated. And yes, some things go right over their heads, and others are upsetting. But I like to think that if they asked me the question, they deserve to receive the best answer I can give them. I take my son to university lectures when he wants to attend them. Sometimes the topics are completely over my head, and I'm sure he has very little understanding of what`s being discussed. But he loves them. And that's what matters.

Rhiannon at her guitar lesson with Corbin.

Outside Influence
Obviously we don't want to be completely isolated in our journeys. So we take our kids on social adventures, and also enroll them in programs. This not only gives them some input from non-parent community members and a chance to experience organized group activities, but it also gives us all time to experience the world apart from each other... which is very important for our personal development and relationships! The activities/programs that seem to work for our kids are, of course, child-directed, taught by inspired and thoughtful people, and chosen by our kids. The two mainstays are music mentoring (which I've written about, before), and their acting school, where the teachers favour process over product, and guide the kids through theatre games and the development of a play to performance, so that they really take ownership of their work and contribution... as well as their journey. In addition to this they participate in various field trips with local community organizations, and sometimes another group or class that interests them.

To-Do Lists and Would-Like-To-Do Lists
To do lists are for me. They give me some structure and help me remember what needs to get done. They also help the rest of the family see what I do with my time, and they help me feel accomplished as I check things off. I've suggested the kids make them, but they haven't really jumped on the idea.

Would-Like-To-Do lists, on the other hand... those are cool.
Yes, they're my suggestion, but the kids enjoy them, and frequently take me up on this suggestion. They don't even always keep them, but writing them out is inspiring, already, and helps them process their ideas of what is important and interesting to them. And when they do keep them, and look back at them (sometimes months after writing them) they're both an interesting glimpse at a time past, and an inspiration to get back to some things they'd forgotten about. And sometimes... just sometimes... they come in handy when the bored-nothing-to-do monster is hanging around.

Tali as Toto in the Wizard of Oz

Giving Up
Oh I just give up on my kids, I say nonchalantly. (Ha ha ha...)
As in... "What? You want me to help on this costume, and you haven't done anything yourself? Sorry. I'm busy." Yes, I abandoned him on the costume he had to make for his play, when he'd left it to the last minute, and had no idea how to make a dog mask. And neither did I.
So, Tali grumbled away to the art room, got out the white felt and cardboard, made a truly awesome dog-mask, and finally came to me for help with the ears. He'd been much more imaginative than I think I would have been, and also came up with some seriously good-looking facial-features, as well as a well-fitting base. And he made it himself.
Sometimes parents giving up gives kids the freedom they need to go do something great.

Giving up control is, of course, the main tenet of our unschooling path. As Alan Watts says,

"Let's see what you're going to do."

HOMESCHOOL, UN-SCHOOL, FUN-SCHOOL... it's all COOL.

This is a guest-post from my dear friend Suki Kaiser, who is currently living on a sailboat on the pacific ocean with her family. She describes the journey from public school through homeschooling to unschooling so beautifully! Do go check out her blog, The Wet Edge.

Let them lead the way...

This last term, we ran an experiment on our kids.

I know, you're not supposed to actually ADMIT it,

that you don't know what the heck your doing...

that even though you may love them with all your unconditional heart, 
parenting still seems to boil down to a whole lot of finger crossing and best intentions.

If you really want an acute dose of this feeling... 
take up homeschooling.

HOMESCHOOL:

Just mention the subject at a party, and observe how it immediately puts people who would otherwise get along, on opposite sides of a (nonexistent) fence.

Of course, we all know, that no ONE method of teaching is perfect,  the same thing can't possibly work for every individual...

So why does everyone get so flustered about it?

Easy. No one wants to mess up their kids.

Everyone wishes their child will grow up, bright, curious and well rounded, with enough skills to carve out a successful future.

We fret that our cherished little people, will also survive the war-zones of elementary and high schools and emerge with their fragile self-esteems in tact.

Every parent wants these things.

The issue with homeschooling is, there is no set-in-stone way to do it. Naturally, this breeds uncertainty and self doubt...

and geeze, isn't that a fun place to parent from!

The second you start to take responsibility for your child's education,  you have to actually THINK about how to teach them.

This is a really, intimidating prospect. Highly educated, PHD- wielding professionals have spent whole lives devoted to researching and experimenting this subject...

and even THEY haven't worked out all the kinks, yet.

So how on earth, are YOU not going to blow it?

Jon and I,  have experienced all of these feelings and more, during the year and a half  we've been experimenting on our poor, unsuspecting children.

We're not experts or anything but I gotta say...Holy Cow.

It has been an eye-opener.

When we first looked into withdrawing our kids from school in California, it was the middle of the year,

Kai was halfway through fourth grade and Hunter was in second.

They had always gone to public schools and could read and write and were good socially...so we knew we had that going for us.

When I looked up HOMESCHOOLING  on the internet, the first thing that came up, was how illegal it was in the State of California if you went into it willy-nilly. We needed to go through a whole bunch of red tape and this "tape" required us to reinstitute them into another system of education, immediately.

-but we weren't even sure what we wanted yet or what would work for them. We didn't know the first thing about how to teach our kids, never mind teach them on a sailboat...

For, that matter, we didn't even really know all that much about sailing a boat to Mexico...
it was a lot to take on.

So, we did what seemed safest.

We signed up with other home-schoolers, loaded up on books and downloaded curriculums based on their grade level.

Safety in numbers. Stay with the herd.

Luckily, we had friends who were already blazing the home learning path-and we even knew a few, radical folks who were into this wacky-sounding"UNSCHOOLING" thing... 

A"new-age"-sounding, learning style, which gave me mini-spasms of fear, because it just seemed NUTS to stray that far from the path of what is 'known". What kind of tye-dyed wackos lead a child into an abyss of Do-it-your-own-way, with no state-run-testing-or-formal-structures-to-guide them?

-I have since been converted, wholeheartedly, to this learning concept but we all must leap before we fly :).

We started out by sailing and schooling, sticking to the familiar structure of certain hours of the day devoted to various subjects.

We compared notes with every cruising family we met, 

(and secretly compared our children to theirs; "are they smarter? Do they keep more regular school hours?)

Monday to Friday, spelling tests, math pages, Rosetta stone, grammar, write in the journal every day, projects for social studies, science and art...

We worried incessently, that they might fall behind.

We were strict. Well, we were ridged, really...

which was a bad fit for us. 

The result was... 
we fought all the time,

with the kids, with each other, 

and homeschooling became a nightmare.

We tried all kinds of fixes.

There were "star charts',  reward systems,  "Buddy systems" 'Special days"...invariably, we ended up dolling out reams of "consequences" more often than prizes.

It all sucked.

We felt like we were failing....

the two most important people in the world, to us.

So, eventually, we did what any good parent would do;

we gave up.

No, really. We gave up and decided to try this "other" kind of home-school notion...

the one that also included that sneaky, patchoulli-smelling "unschooling" thing.

Here we were, out in the wild blue, doing all this crazy stuff.

Jon and I were always busy and learning ourselves, 

so why not trust that kids would, too?

We leapt into the unknown...

dragging our kids with us.

Which brings me to these end of the year report cards;

For the past four months, we have kept no regular school hours.

We never made the kids crack a text book-unless it was something they wanted to do and were feeling curious about.

What we did do, was provide as much support as we could for whatever interest they were showing the most enthusiasm for.

Discipline was enforced. 

We live on a boat and there are chores galore and the kids were expected to share a fairly hefty part of those.

They were taught to preform tasks that were within their abilities  --and we expected them to do these well.

We counted on them as crew and gave them responsibility.

Work ethic. Responsibility. Completing tasks-

this was homeschool.

If they chose to do schoolwork instead of cleaning the dingy, that was fine but they would still have to do the dishes and sweep the floor. 

The boat stayed reasonably clean we finally had help( and weren't so stressed out ourselves) and the kids learned how to do a lot of mature boat tasks, like care for a dingy and it's engine, provision water and fuel, and bake and cook some things for themselves.
"Cool. Responsible. Tidy" 
Words we all felt should exemplify a boat-kid.

Kai and Hunter felt pretty great about their accomplishments-and so did we. 
We told them how much we appreciated all their help-all the time.

They learned how to be better sailors WITH us.

When we looked up things in books, they were right there, over our shoulders, reading and learning and experimenting.

We made them part of the conversation, whenever possible and when it wasn't possible to engage them, we told them to beat it.

They crawled into their bunks and read and read and read and read and read....or watched a movie on their computer.

( which is not a bad thing, so stop sweating it, if you are. Just let them watch better stuff, so they can talk to you about it, after)

They wrote facts about the ocean for the blog during the crossing and discovered that they really liked to write for an audience.

(and there was no more fighting about doing journals)

Manners, chores, reading, activity, quiet time and limited exposure (but not NONE) to electronics...

We set them free to absorb everything they wanted, as they wanted...and we let them be.

There was much less fighting.
Everyone had a good time.

Then came the report cards.

Honestly, we were so proud of them and all the amazing things they had accomplished as people this year; crossing an ocean, learning to scuba dive, speaking new languages...

even despite the usual growing pains that we all expect from pre-adolescence (lippy, lazy, slobby, surly, catty), they were both awesome, hilarious, caring, gentle people that we love to be around.

Yet, there was a niggling fear about how they would measure up with those pesky grade tests, because that part wasn't the KIDS responsibility any more... 

it was totally on us.

Gulp.

"Your report cards are due..." said We, in ominous undertones.

"since we haven't been doing school the 'normal' way, we were just wondering, how do you guys feel about your progress this year?".

The kids looked to one another, uncertain.

There was a chill in the wind, maybe it was a trick question.

"Ummmmm? Ohhh-kayyyy,  I guess?" said Kai, raising his eyebrows, in a hopeful plea.

(my stomach was breeding 'bad-parent' butterflies, at this moment)

"Should we take the end of the year tests in the curriculum books to see how you do?". 
It was just a suggestion.

The kids looked a little worried.

'Don't worry". 
We assured them.
"We take full responsibility for this. If you don't know something, it's OUR fault. We will teach it to you. But at least we will all know where you are, in relation to other kids in your grade."

This took the pressure off the kids and once they knew this, they took it as a sort of "challenge"-in a good way.

We spent a few hours a day, for three days doing all the tests in their grade books.

It ended up, that we chose a few tests from the middle of the book-where they had left off- but they did those so quickly and with no problems, so we jumped them to the final tests.

We were shocked, frankly.

The kids did amazingly well.

We can't take any credit, for it either.

Everything that we have been doing for the past year had sunk in.

Their amazing brains hadn't just figured out how to do fractions by baking and times tables (because it was occasionally fun to work on them) or grammar and spelling and reading comprehension ( all  a breeze because they do it all the time anyway and read so much),

and science, is a joke because they already know more than I did, when I was in college...
they ALSO picked up everything that went on around them in their daily life;

navigation, understanding where a storm cell might from, repairing the heat exchanger on a diesel engine, figuring out why the fridge won't work and how to fix it-which means you learn about the difference between alternating and direct current-learning to shop, live and make friends, in a foreign country-where no one speaks your language-converting imperial to metric, studying wildlife, reading poetry, playing guitar, rebuilding the second stage regulator on a scuba tank...

it was ALL in there and more.

Taking away the stultifying, bullying, daily-bludgeoning-session that had become our  botched attempt at structuring  homeschool like 'conventional' school..

and they blossomed.
They bloomed.

Our kid's minds were free to explore and a few months into it, they were CRAVING information and seeking it out.

We watched carefully, for clues of what they were into and then pounced on the opportunity to teach them what they WANTED to learn...but we did it with soft, fuzzy mittens-not boxing gloves.

Our kids did their grade tests WILLINGLY.

In fact, they got off on it, because they liked that they knew so much. Kai and Hunter even took it upon themselves to relearn anything they felt vague on.

Jon and I carefully looked through everything they were supposed to know for their grade level-they had learned all of it and so much more. Totally shocking. Wasn't expecting it...

But that is what happened.

We wrote them out honest report cards with honest grades and sent them to our home learners program.

This was was a week ago.

Since then, they have been so monumentally impressed with themselves and their leaning abilities, they have been downright obnoxious.

They have spent  evenings quizzing each other ( and us) about subjects we didn't do much of.

US history, algebra(?!) 

When Kai got a consequence for not remembering to recharge his Nook ( living on solar is a bitch sometimes) he picked up SLAUGHTER HOUSE FIVE.

"That's a good book" I said.

Kai turned it over.

"What's it about?" he asked.
The world "SLAUGHTER" has potential, for an eleven-year-old boy...

"It's about this guy, who goes back and forth in time and sometimes he's in a really awful war and sometimes he's living with some aliens that kidnapped him..."

(bless you, Kurt Vonnegut, for making a masterpiece with a a log-line that good)

Kai read it in a day.

When his Nook was finally charged, he didn't want to go back to his other book.

He passed up watching a "kid-movie" with his sister, to finish it.

When he emerged from his room at eight that night, I asked him what he thought about it.

He said he liked it a lot but some of it was confusing.

Then he talked about it for two hours, about the second world war and how writing can be simple and deep at the same time.

He asked us what other good books there were that were like that.

Hunter( who has gone farther than any of us in her a Rosetta stone programs because its what she does for fun) got sick of all this discussing something she hadn't read and wanted to know if we could have a spelling contest.

So we did.

This was our experience.

These are kids we're talking about though, 
so in a month, the game could totally change....

and when it does, we will, too.

Whatever works.

So the next time, someone says..

"How is homeschooling going?" 

and you feel like you want to throw yourself on the floor sobbing?

We totally, feel ya.

You are not alone in the fear that you might screw it up.

It can be scary out here, 
on the dimly-lit path of homeschool, un-school, fun-school...

but just keep reminding yourself,
"there's no brighter light than Love",

trust in it to guide you...

and keep your fingers crossed.

Riel

Just in the pines on the heather. (And grass!)

My father's family has a cottage in Riel (Google satellite view). It's flanked on one side by heather fields, where ancient post-ringed grave-mounds rise up out of the mists in the mornings, and dune-grasses slowly invade the heather's territory, giving way only to the dwarfed pines that pop up here and there, and the ever-widening paths trodden by horses. The little house, "Hoefke 5", is flanked on the other side by a darkly colourful forest of beech, chestnut, oak, pine and rhododendrons, tended over generations by the family. This is where the family's treasures were buried, during the war, and the reason that some treasures still exist, among us, now. We like to

...eventually Hoefke 5 got a portable phone...

think about this, while exploring the often-dry pond, the fox-dens, and the little craters left by the bombs. Oh. And the neighbours. Many of them farmers, they visit the little Maria Shrine at the edge of the woods, peer towards the windows when they notice somebody's home at Hoefke 5, and generally don't converse much. During my childhood, the closest neighbours had a pig farm. Rows of inedible pig-corn lined the brick road to the heather. Their poultry woke us up in the mornings, and their sweet friendly faces welcomed us home when they noticed us arrive.

Oom Just, Grootmoeder, Sander and Jeroen at het huisje.

Cousins Just and Adrian, hanging out in het huisje.

Hoefke 5 is an old hunting cabin, with thin wooden walls and red/white/blue shutters on the windows. I love the job of going around to open the shutters, upon arriving at the house! There are low counters and a potato box under the kitchen floor. There is a big fireplace and a collection of games, and paintings of dead hunted animals, of course, too. There is a shower-room big enough to dance in, and a little WC with so much thick white paint on the walls that it nearly feels padded. There is a smell of old furniture and damp leaves; of pine trees and sand and soot. There is a warmth left by generations of our family, finding ourselves.

The van Lidth de Jeudes are an interesting family. And by this I mean the particular group of van Lidth de Jeude's who are descended from my Grootmoeder (the cottage in Riel comes, after all, from her uncle, Gerrit Kuijk). Maybe we're unusual in our humour and propensity for speaking frankly (not always a good mix), but we're also adventurous, and thoughtful. There's a strong interest in working with or traveling on the land, as well as an intellectual side. There has also been some attrition from the homeland of the Netherlands, but very little where Riel is concerned. In the van Lidth de Jeude family there is a deep authenticity; a rejection of class and stereotype. Well, in fact, there are certain uncles (and to some extent my own father) who like to strut about in their noble heritage, smoking pipes and serving cookies on ancient delft plates; wearing sweater-vests and drinking jenever elegantly. But these men all seem to suddenly shed their shirts (and sometimes everything else) when the opportunity to use chainsaws, burn brushpiles, and just generally get dirty in the woods presents itself. And it finally occurred to me that this may come from Riel.

Floris' teepee.

I was chatting with my cousin, a few days ago - the one whose life has meant that he, like I, only lived in the Netherlands at all for a couple of years, and now makes his home in Africa. But, as usual, Riel managed to work its way into our conversation. We cousins - all of us - have deep connections. We're all so close to our own siblings that we choose to get together whenever possible. And cousins like to keep connected, too -- even without words, somehow. I linked to one of those Dutch cousins on LinkedIn, and he replied "but we're always connected, of course". Exactly. For those of us on different continents the visits are rare, indeed, but the connection is still there. Some of this connection may come from our Grootmoeder's -- and now our many parents' -- efforts in keeping the family connected. But Timon and I think that some of it comes from Riel.

Heather: Maya, Emily, Just, Floris, (Allard & Marianne in the top right corner).

Riel is a place where we celebrate life: We play ridiculous games and rituals that feed into our lovely family sense of humour, and we lie down in the heather fields. We run through the sand and the brick roads and the forests. It's a place to drop the pretenses of European society. And Europe has a lot of pretenses. Maybe that's why my father escaped in his early twenties into the BC forests, coming eventually to this island on the pacific coast. I suspect he came here to get out of the pretentious European lifestyle, with its classes and customs and expectations. He came here to be real. And Riel is still in him. His humour is intact, and his relationships, and... he has a veritable rhododendron species garden.

And lucky for us of the next generation, Riel's acorns and chestnuts and beechnuts have planted themselves in our souls, too. We can't live but to look for the changing of the seasons, and to celebrate everything. We play the ridiculously silly games of Riel all over the world, now. When I once asked my 3-year-old cousin, Sander, when his birthday was, he said he didn't know, but he would know it was coming when the snowdrops bloomed. What more is there to life, really, than this?

Riel is a place for people to be authentic; to connect with the family and the land and life, without pretenses. We try so hard to make everything seem shiny... but sometimes in the bare authentic little gatherings of people just being themselves, we find real happiness.

Look deep into nature,

and then you will understand everything better.

~Albert Einstein

This is the legacy of Riel.